How do you manage your incoming email?

... from LinkedIn Q&A:

Question:
"I am writing an article on how to manage your email inbox. What are your top 10 methods for keeping order in your incoming email? Or do you know of existing writeups on this topic? "

My answer:
It's quite simple: I use David Allens GTD process to make executive decision based on each incomming mail.
Furthermore I manually handle all mail in projectfolders based on wether it is an ongoing project, an information item or a future item.

GTD (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gtd#How_Does_GTD_Work.3F):

"When you process your inbox, follow a strict workflow:

Start at the top.
Deal with one item at a time.
Never put anything back into 'in'.

If an item requires action:
-Do it (if it takes less than two minutes), OR
-Delegate it, OR
-Defer it.

If an item does not require action:
-File it for reference, OR
-Throw it away, OR
-Incubate it for possible action later.

If it would take less than 2 minutes to do something, just do it immediately. Two minutes is a guideline, roughly the time it would take to defer the action formally."

I used to play around with different rules and flags i Outlook earlier, but my experience is that manually handling each email as any other incomming message which has to be decided on is just as or more efficient than having some other rule do it for you.

And, cleraring you inbox to zero this way is, seriously, no problem. Sort by subject and from and decide what to do on each matter. (Also see: http://www.davidco.com/blogs/kelly/archives/2007/11/digging_out_fro.html)