Mr Kearns (51), an Irish-born lecturer at Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, is also an international speaker, educator and author, whose areas include research creativity and productivity.
He is visiting Dunedin to give to give two motivational workshops today for University of Otago postgraduate students on "the seven secrets of highly successful research students" and how to "turbocharge your writing".
The sessions are part of Otago University's annual Graduate Research Month, which aims to support postgraduate students and celebrate their achievements.
Mr Kearns said he would be advising the students that uncontrolled exposure to emails could be particularly damaging for writers.
Writers often needed to develop complex trains of thought, which could be easily disrupted if emails offering a mass of extraneous ideas were a constant distraction.
Because writers often used computers in their writing, it was particularly hard to escape emails constantly arriving on the same machines.
He suggested writers work for several hours in the morning before checking their emails, and then allocate strictly controlled periods during the day to deal with them.
