I find an interesting contradiction between the recommendations to

a) check your email only at scheduled times

b) when you are working, say no to interruptions

c) instead of replying with an email, walk over to someone’s desk [and assume that they are ready to chat with you at any moment instead of sending them an email that they can read on their own schedule]

You've omitted the immediately preceding qualifier: "if something can’t be resolved quickly on email, suggest a meeting or simply walk to your colleague’s desk to confirm a plan."

The party sending the email has already 1. signalled importance and 2. your own filter has indicated your agre,ent.

If 1. was in fact false, there's the (perhaps remote) possibility that the sender(s) will come to realise that "send email" corresponds to "I will be interrupted in return".

As an organisational norm, this is likely a Good Thing to cultivate.

Letsop's principle: be conservative in what you accept and liberal in what you send.

You're inferring that the only option is to interrupt someone, when it's perfectly possible to schedule a meeting or send a message asking them when they can make some time for a quick chat.

Schedule is predictable well in advance. Interruptions aren't.

My struggle is with interesting but low value vs boring but high value.

The energy cost or effort cost of a task is inversely related to how much interest the task holds for me.

Same. I think attaching deadlines and someone to keep you accountable may be the only cure.

This is the pain of actually loving this field. Your job is to do productive stuff, but you just want to study those cache-oblivious ds.

Keep a log or diary of what you're spending time on.

I'm a fan of the Bullet Journal model. Paper & pen, but organised.

Note your important tasks/goals, and actual time allocations.

Learn to say "no" to the trivial, or, better, structure your environment such that they don't present themselves.

Also recognise the limits to, and robbers of, yor attention and focus.

It's still a struggle, but most of us can manage some improvement.

I've tried bullet journaling. I like the idea, but it's just not natural for how I capture information.

So I do a sort of pomodoro, where I work for a while and use the break to do a recap of what I was working on. It helps keep me cognizant of how much time I'm spending on what.

"Keep a log or diary" ...another low value work

You are labouring under a severe misapprehension.