Over on A VC today Fred Wilson shared that he was basically starting over on email in 2014. Archiving everything. Starting from scratch.

Given his position and popularity I am sure that Fred gets quite a bit of email, much more then me. But I was feeling a bit overwhelmed myself back in November as Black Friday approached and the marketing emails were on the rise. Back then I made a simple decision. I was going to unsubscribe from all emails. If it did not come from a real person I did not want to see it.

I am about seven weeks into this experiment. What a difference it makes. Instead of spending my first 20 minutes every day wading through mail I have about 10 fresh messages in the morning.

I do not have so much incoming mail that I need to do the nuclear option like Fred. Most likely either do you. Try the unsubscribe option. It worked wonders for me.