I was going to post this as a comment to this post on divine angst, but I think it's a bit long for that.
Like Kristine, I get an awful lot of emails in a day. Lots of them are various newsletters and e-periodicals, but there are also quite a few that require some more involved action.
The first email-management layer is a program called Popfile. This nifty little program is designed as a spam filter, but because of its bayesian processing, can categorize emails into all sorts of "buckets." For example, I have categories for spam, newsletters, financial, knitting, Google alerts, and more. The program takes a bit of teaching at first, but before too long it's categorizing emails just as I would. I occasionally have to do a little more teaching when a new spammer technique rears its ugly head, but, again, this doesn't take much. (To use Popfile with Exchange, check out Outclass.)
Popfile puts the classification in the message header, so next I configure Outlook to find the classification and automatically move messages to particular folders. Generally, the Inbox is reserved for strictly personal messages. Other email clients should be able to do the same thing. (I know Outlook is a hog, but I like it anyway.)
On a daily basis, I simply use Outlook's ability to have dynamic folders: I simply view that day's mail. If an email comes in that requires more than a quick action, I flag it for follow-up, which means I can get it through my task list any time, until I finish what I need it for.
Finally, I have Outlook set to archive messages every three weeks or so to keep the bloat down. But I can still get to all my old messages easily. I can easily find anything through a desktop search program (Office 2007 is a vast improvement in native search capability, and Google desktop search or Copernic work great, too). The categorization that happens with Popfile allows me to review recent messages on a particular topic (they're all in a folder) or narrow down any search for a particular message.
The daily email view keeps me from being overwhelmed, and if I want, I can review the day's emails at the end to make sure I responded to everything that needed it. You can also configure other search folders in Outlook, such as everything in the last three days or however long you'd like. (I'm sure other clients have similar functionality.) From time to time, I check out the spam folder to make sure nothing got caught that shouldn't be (it's a rare occurrence).
Best of all, I spend very little time any given day on email organization, yet it is all available and easily accessible.
It's certainly not the only way to do it, but it works great for me. Questions welcome.
