Robert Nyman, of Mozilla fame, shares his thoughts on email. I don’t share his method these days, but stay on top of email without much effort nonetheless. This part struck me as true:
Many people complain that e-mail is broken, but I think it’s a great communication form. I can deal with it when I feel I have the time and can get back to people when it suits me. If I need to concentrate on something else, I won’t let it interrupt my flow – just have notifications off/e-mail closed/don’t read it, and then get to it while you can.