I use Gmail.
Actually unsubscribe from stuff. If they show up again, I hit report spam. No, I don't care if they were actually gonna stop after 14 days or whatever.
Have strict rules about how I use the inbox. If I read an email, and it isn't actionable or I don't need to do anything, I immediately delete it. _Maybe_ archive it if I think it could have CYA value like a receipt or something. Keyboard shortcuts help with this a lot. I can often make this call just from the topic line of the email, so I don't even read a lot of the less important stuff in my inbox.
The end result is that my inbox is a small (~20ish items on average) list of stuff I either need to do something about, or haven't read yet.
I don't spend much time on my emails every day. Maybe 5ish minutes. If you are the kind of person who has 5k unread emails and want to do this (used to be me), you may want to start by first declaring bankruptcy and archiving everything. I did it when I first started, turns out zero of those emails ever came back to haunt me in any way. The people in your life who are actually important or will break your kneecaps will eventually either come back or find you through alternate channels.
Unsubscribing from emails you don't want.
So many times I see posts here and other places online where people describe their complex filtering rules for sorting newsletters and other unwanted mailing list emails and they never bother to unsubscribe. If it's not legit spam, every mailing list email is required to have an unsubscribe link with a no-account option to unsub. It takes two clicks to stop getting the emails in the first place.
Some effective tools for taming your email include SaneBox, which helps declutter your inbox by prioritizing important messages, and other platforms like Front, Hiver, and Help Scout that enhance team collaboration and email management. Utilizing keyboard shortcuts can also speed up your email handling process.
Be sure to explore these tools to find the best fit for your needs and double-check their features to ensure they align with your email management goals.
A couple of years ago or so, when Google was flirting with axing free Google Workspace domains, I ended up switching my email over to 37signals’ HEY platform. I have been pretty happy with the result overall. While I don’t like that I’m forced to use their client, the benefits (and the fact that I can reasonably trust them to give me my mailboxes going forward) have been pretty great.
Unsubscribing aggressively is pretty great, and helped a lot prior to switching to HEY. What has been stellar for me however was that I can also choose to screen out emails, silently dropping their receipt. It’s a selfish choice, in that I’m not sending feedback to the list owner, but with the amount of lists I end up on, I’m not sure I totally care all that much, and the workflow to screen things out is fast and simple.
I definitely don’t think it’s for everyone, but I’ve been pretty happy with the switch and the nits I do have are vastly outweighed by the things I do like about the system.
Why tame emails at all ? Have a public email and private email, keep private email for limited use only. Use public email for bill pay, subscription etc. Use gmail, they do a good job categorizing spam, junk emails etc. When you see spam email, just hit unsubscribe and move on.
Every year I create DMZ folder and move all the email from inbox to DMZ. This way I can search old emails when I need but my inbox gets a clean start.
Cease and desist letters.
There are many, many people, and companies who operate under the false belief that the CAN-SPAM act does not apply to them; and eg create new mailing lists to blast many people with their spam. Some of these unfortunately includes corps I have business relationship with (looking at you, Google), so "mark as spam" doesn't work well. Cease and desisting their legal department does. I have changed marketing strat of multiple largecorps by being a dangerous professional.
At work, I use the Inbox Zero strategy combined with Gmail's keyboard shortcuts. It's really powerful, a total game changer. The nicest thing for me is that I can easily keep track of not just stuff that I have to react to, but email threads where I am the one waiting for a reply. You can read about it in many places, there are tons of tutorials (both written and video) out there. As far as I know, it's the way most Google employees are using Gmail too.
Aggressive un-subscribing and tagging as junk.
GMail filters for the rest.
Clearing my inbox every day by either replying, archiving, deleting, or transferring to a reminder, calendar event, issue, note, etc.
One thing that helps me and not mentioned here is to have unique email per sender. You can get random emails from icloud or fastmail.
I have my own setup where all emails to a special domain go to my inbox. I create and give emails like nike@fake.mydomain.com
This helps me to easy unsubscribe by filtering by “to” field but also to find who leaked email.
Often inbox zero fails because you're using it as a storage tool or a to do list. So have other tools for these purposes rather than modifying email for it.
What is causing it to be overwhelming? I use a zero-inbox policy. If it can be answered in 2 minutes I do it then. Otherwise I create a TODO an archive the email. All newsletters go to a particular label and skip the inbox.
Sieve filters. the Filters from exchange are shit. Sieve is more powerful and