My email Inbox folder at work currently holds 181 items. Most of them are there because they need some kind of a follow-up, but I can’t deal with them right now or the action to be taken is in the future. Merlin Mann is a well known figure in the productivity and GTD (Getting Things Done) world (Merlin Mann’s website). Recently he gave a great talk at Google, called Inbox Zero, which is the name of his system for handling very large amounts of email.
After watching the video and taking action I now have 21 items in my Inbox folder. Soon to be zero.