Have you guys ever done the math on that? You asked or allowed for 24000 interruptions from literally every human being in the world who could fall onto a keyboard and make an e-mail go to you. ( Merlin Mann Show archive.org snapshot )
So you decided to put a price on your attention Show archive.org snapshot and not check your e-mail 24000 times a year. A first step is to disable automatic e-mail checks in Thunderbird.