In my team I have some developers that always have two or three IM windows open. The majority of these windows are not related with the project where they are nor with asking or offering programming help. I also use IM and, off course, some of my "talks" are not related with the job. But I feel that when I am using IM my productivity drops. I mean, there is more "mental" work to change the scope between the task I am doing and the conversation every time a new message arrive. Do you face the same situation? Is there some good practices to avoid this (excluding, off course, stopping using IM)?