[corrral]

I gave up on this years ago when I realized the only valuable things coming to my email were transactional emails, anyway. The rest is... newsletters and shit.

If you're only checking your email to use the "search" function for something very specific, or to find an expected transactional email sent within the last minute, there's not much reason to bother setting up filters.

Text is probably the best way for non-friends to get through to me, because I mostly ignore email and calls since they're overrun with crap, though the current campaign season is really trying to make text useless, too. So many damn fundraising texts, usually from candidates in other states entirely.

[nicbou]

I have the opposite approach. My inbox is 95% signal. I run my business through email so that's important.

[soramimo]

I have the same approach as you.

Newsletter that I didn't subscribe to? One strike, you're out (unsubscribe and occasionally report as spam).

Updates from sites I care about (e.g. bank, HOA, etc) that come more than once a year? Create an email filter (gmail -> filter messages like this), skip inbox, never mark as important, apply label XYZ.

These simple hygiene measures don't take more than a few minutes each week and save tons of time and focus.