Chris Savage has a great post on 5 ways to get to inbox zero. Here’s another tip.
Set aside 1 hour sometime this week to go through your emails and kill them.
Seeing and thinking “1 – 100 of hundreds” is psychologically tiring. Seeing a full inbox on my iPhone distracts me from what I want to actually get done. Get it off your mind. Set aside an hour sometime this week and get through it all. Not next week, not the month after, but this week. Set an appointment in MobileMe or Google Calendar or whatever. You might not want to inbox zero right this moment—that’s okay. Just postpone it, but when that time comes, put on some music, fire up your email, and get deleting/responding/whatever you have to do.