I work for Yahoo. People here have a serious problem with responding to emails. I think the biggest problem is the sheer volume of email that people receive. I also believe that they do not filter their mail effectively to deal with the volume.
Between work, personal, and automated alerts I probably get around 5000 a day. Despite the volume I think I manage my inbox fairly well. Here’s how you can organize your mail.
1. absolutely keep work and personal email separate. If you change jobs you never have to worry about updating a million people your new email address. If you can’t check personal email at work, then don’t do it. 😉 Trust me on this one. I used to manage email systems, and have been contacted by managers to give access to their employees inbox to see if they are using it for personal use too much.
2. create mail rules to filter your mail to certain folders (spam, colleagues, type, etc)
3. Besides your work account, you will need 2 more email accounts. One you only give out to friends and family. The other account for buying stuff online, email subscriptions lists, myspace, junk-email, etc. Think of it as your private and public email accounts.
Here are some other great ways to clean up your inbox: