The main goal of proper inbox maintenance is to keep your inbox available for newly-received items. Don’t get the shakes… it IS possible, and it DOES work.
Emptying your inbox does not mean HANDLING every item immediately; it means SORTING them.
By flushing your inbox each time you open it, you will be able to clearly label items, find them more easily, and respond appropriately to messages when the time is right. This way, you also avoid a serious accumulation of messages that need a response but ultimately get lost in the shuffle. After all, nobody wants to have to send a message that reads, “I’m so sorry it has taken me so long to respond to you; I have just been going through old e-mails and realized I’d never responded to your message.” By keeping your inbox clean and manageable, you will have a failsafe system in place to ensure that every message receives a response.
(excerpted from Inbox Detox (Acanthus Publishing, 2009))
