In my role I get copious email, direct, cc’d for visibility or automated stuff.

In Gmail, I build a rule to label and archive automated things like alerts or bills and keeps them out of my inbox and I can choose to engage at my leisure.

For everything else I star and archive. I have a few points throughout the day I triage or act on. Immediate response things get responded too, things I need to address but it’s not urgent I star and archive. Then I look through my starred emails occasionally to see if anything has risen in priority for me to address, and I do so. Everything else lays untouched in starred.

What I find is this keeps me close to inbox zero, helps me keep important stuff visible and often stuff I’ve starred, given time takes care of itself before I engage and I eventually unstar it to never be seen again as it just wasn’t important or didn’t need my engagement.

It works well for me. Sometimes I get behind, and that’s ok. I’m only one person, and I have time boxed time to prevent email dominating my life