Coping with E-mail Overload

I must get a few hundred e-mails a day at work and at my personal address. How many of them are meaningful? For so many I just look at the header and delete the e-mail immediately. Other times I just read the first few lines of the message and quickly realize that it is not important. Excessive e-mail falls into the following categories:

• Advertisements - if you purchase something online, the vendor will send you countless e-mails for years
• Professional listservs -sometimes a topic is interesting at first and then everybody has to get his two cents and contribute to the discussion. Very often a poster will just say "I agree" or just not add anything new to the discussion. Listservs are an important method of communication among colleagues, but it should not be overused.
• Spam - no spam filter is perfect.

I think I spend more time deleting e-mail than I do reading the ones that are worthwhile. I would not want to delete a message that I really need. To use the old cliche "I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water."