1. I usually email myself notes throughout the day (read this article, watch this video, do this thing, etc.). This fills up my inbox with useless stuff that I almost never get around to doing, but don't want to delete.

2. I'm subscribed to a million GitHub repositories which generates tons of email notifications per day about comments, pull request notifications, etc., even if it's a project I no longer actively work on.

3. I'm subscribed to a ton of random commercial stuff: rewards programs, 'deal' emails, stuff like that.

4. I get a lot of email from people who have technical questions about articles I've written or code I've published. I probably get close to 3 a day. These usually take a ton of time to answer and I typically lag on getting responses out.

So, with all that said, here are my email tips that have been working well for me! I'm not perfect, but I've been slowly catching up and maintaining an ever decreasing inbox size for my personal email (work is a whole other story).

TIP 1: Don't use your inbox as a reminder tool. Put your todo items in a note taking app (I use Google Keep). Put your 'articles to read' and 'videos to watch' in a queueing service like @Pocket. This removes a lot of my self-generated backlog.

TIP 2: Use GitHub's 'Unwatch' feature ruthlessly on any project you aren't actively working on. This is especially important if you are part of larger GitHub orgs with lots of repos. The email noise can be tremendous. This cuts down on a lot of it.

TIP 3: Unsubscribe from every single commercial email you get that isn't 100% actionable. For me, this meant unsubscribing from a thousand different deal/rewards programs/etc. type of email that were all cluttering my inbox up.

Even though I sorta like some of them it was just too much, and since not every single email was actionable, it had to go. UNSUBSCRIBE!

TIP 4: Set aside some time every single day at the same time to answer email. During this time slot just plow through whatever email you have remaining even if it seems like a massive job.