both at work and my personal emails have been at good unread counts for the past decade (at most double digits on hectic times or vacation). at first i would us

both at work and my personal emails have been at good unread counts for the past decade (at most double digits on hectic times or vacation). at first i would use a lot of filters at work (especially for the automated reporting mails made by apps and ci/cd pipelines, but also for types of senders, etc.). lately i am down to just a combination of using flags and a limited set of filters for only my personal email. i have attacked the problem at the source, just like the OP. switched away from email reporting wherever possible and unsubscribed to as many email communications for non-essential things. from personal experience, it is hard to find certain emails even when you neatly organize into hundreds of folders, because mobile apps only cache the first few emails anyways. so when you really need to find something, you might as well end up searching by text. just keep going through the emails and delete the ones which already has the same information elsewhere (like those reminder emails). email threads also make things neat, and has reduced the visual clutter when using a mail app.