I just tried that, apparently it doesn't work for messages, which is the only thing I need from Facebook (for the two people who message me there). I guess I'll just keep relying on the twenty-minute-late email notification for messaging.
I also use custom CSS on the Facebook website to break some of it's linearity. This make it less likely that I will browse mindlessly. Facebook UI is designed as a precise drug and simply changing it a little bit will disrupt that. (I use a red UI, a noisy background, bigger fonts, etc.)
I use pidgin, with the newer facebook plugin - it doesn't look as sexy, but it does almost all I need (except for uploading files), and I have a bunch of other accounts connected. When I need to upload stuff, I just go to https://messenger.com