This afternoon, I stumbled by chance on a scientific radio programme discussing, amongst other things, multi-tasking and the effect of notifications and interruptions on the user's workflow. This problem will likely be known to GNOME 3 users (who have seen their productivity increase) and developers in general.
The programme will be available until 2016 on France Inter's website, enough time for you to learn French to understand it, should that be necessary :)
