43 Folders posted an interesting way to start afresh in the New Year with your e-mail. I know few people who don't complain that they can't keep up with the volume of e-mail that they receive. 43 Folder's suggestion is to create a Folder in Outlook (everyone uses Outlook, right?) called DMZ, select everything in your inbox and move it into the DMZ. Now, you have a fresh, clean inbox that can't intimidate you. Many people have a hard time getting started because they know how many e-mails are in there unanswered that need their attention. This eliminates that dread. Of course, from this point on you have to be diligent, but it's probably difficult to start being diligent when you have hundreds of unanswered e-mails.
43 Folders suggests that you still need to deal with all of those e-mails in the DMZ zone, but I have a better idea. Don't even look in the DMZ folder again unless you are looking for past information, and send and e-mail to everyone "explaining" that your Outlook got infected and destroyed your inbox, then ask people to resend any e-mails that really need your attention. Do this every month (kidding).