This is the way. I check my emails twice a day, once in the morning, so I know if any issues arose overnight, and once after lunch. Constantly checking your mail is a massive drain on efficiency as you're constantly mentally context switching.

If something catastrophic happens, someone will ping you on chat. Once you get over the initial anxiety that you might be "out of the loop", it becomes a lot easier to maintain focus and be much more productive for much less stress.

When you do check your mail, remember, just like in a test, read everything before you start replying! The conversation will progress, so you don't want to reply to an earlier mail if a later one supercedes it. Sorting most recent first helps with this.

If you're just sitting on your hands not opening the emails during work time then that's kinda weird. If you have more urgent stuff then no issues with that, if it's really urgent people would probably call anyway