How to Survive the Email Onslaught

A spate of new survival manuals is addressing the problem of swamped inboxes, writes Salon's Scott Rosenberg. But how does one navigate through the sea of attachments, spam, and forwarded off-color jokes? Most experts agree on striving for emptiness: delete ruthlessly.

To battle overflowing inboxes, you must find a way to round up the miscellaneous messages into one folder, says one expert, although some opt for a messier, more cluttered approach, especially users of Google's Gmail, which encourages a large archive. When it comes to sending mail, one nettiquette expert asserts the Golden Rule: "Think before you send. Send email you would like to receive." (More email stories.)