I think this touches on something really important about the way humans organize their time. You talk about flow, which is a pretty important concept(/buzzword) nowadays in game design, as in the sensation of being immersed in your process. I like the idea of "chop" as a counter-concept, as in something that jolts you suddenly out of your process. I wonder if it would be possible to programatically arrange your work environment to present your work to you as a game, orchestrating your experience so that you're constantly kept "in flow."

Is it chop if you can anticipate it? What if your IMs and E-mails only pinged at specific, prearranged intervals? Would they still annoy you, or would you learn their rhythms and work with them?