I just don't obsessively check or respond to e-mail anymore.* Peter Drucker had a great piece of wisdom: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing wit

I just don't obsessively check or respond to e-mail anymore.* Peter Drucker had a great piece of wisdom: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all." This implies that before we do anything, we should determine whether it's important enough to do. E-mail let's everyone bypass that filter and gives the world direct access to put unfiltered tasks on your to-do list. Once I truly internalized that, it became much easier to focus on projects & tasks that I actively deemed important, instead of obsessively checking my inbox subconsciously hoping some life-changing email will appear. * I still check my e-mail once or twice a day, and flag & act upon any related to my priority projects or people. They rest get left in the inbox unread. Inbox Infinity as opposed to Inbox Zero I suppose. On last count, I had over 2,000 unread e-mails: http://screencast.com/t/EC3VBAxmwM http://screencast.com/t/EC3VBAxmwM. I think the trick is to not let that bother you. There's no law that says inboxes need to be cleared regularly. It's a remnant behavior from the physical mailboxes overflowed and became unmanageable if left unkempt. However space is practically infinite in the virtual world, and you can search for any e-mail you need in your inbox whenever you need it. Therefore cleaning my inbox seems completely unnecessary. The only kind of cleaning I do is move e-mails to an archive folder every year, which reminds me...