Waiting
Ever notice how when you send an email to which you reallyreally hope to receive a reply, you suddenly start getting lots of spam and no real messages?
I have successfully re-trained my ears to stop expecting a cowbell sound every time I receive an email. After 4 years of my blitzmail alert - the cowbell - and hundreds of thousands of emails sent and received, it was surprisingly easy to switch to a visual tic: scanning the Gmail toolbar in Firefox approximately every 10 seconds, looking for the (1) that signals a new message. It's amazing how that little signal, the (1), sets off all kinds of excitement/reward buttons in my brain. Until I click on it and it turns out to be spam. Again. And no email. Terrible.