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Originally Posted by JKT
I'll provide the counter argument - why not? Because being constantly interrupted by on screen pop-ups is very annoying when you are actually trying to do something ;-)
Outlook on the PC has a similar feature and I had to turn it off as it was just far too distracting and ended up getting in my way of doing work rather than aiding it.
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I've addressed this by setting my default start and due times to essentially be at the beginning or end of a big block of time, a boundary across which I'm unlikely to be working in deep concentration. I turn on the laptop first thing in the morning and I get a blizzard of growl stickies, but many of them are things I'll do immediately (stuff involving getting the kid off to school, for example) and others remind me of things newly actionable (a bit of a pre-morning review, if you will). No interruption of deep concentration or productivity there, as I was sleeping just before that :-) Similarly, the notifications that something has gone overdue are generally at 5pm and hopefully are few in number. I probably do need to drop whatever I'm working on if it isn't also due and so that just leaves the few notifications I might get from events starting or due during the course of the day. If I put in a specific time like that, it was probably necessary, so again, the notification is an acceptable interruption. The type of the notification also gives a quick triage when the pressure is on. Option-clicking the close box on one growl notification will clear them all if you've set them to be persistent as I do.
Discussions of why this shouldn't work as well as it seems to will be read with interest and an open mind :-) I agree that jumping off to the email program every time a message arrives is usually bad for productivity.