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Email is just a medium, and as such the ideal use of it is to go in, meet the expectations of your contacts, move conversations forward and then get out to focus on other work.

The combination of inbox zero, prioritized emails and excellent folder organization give you the means to liberate yourself of the worst of the time-consuming effort associated with email.

1. Every hour or two, do a quick scan to bring your inbox down to zero. By doing it regularly you can check for urgent emails and stay on top of everything. The key thing to avoid is too much mental interruption to your regular work. A light scan will not require too much brain effort, and doing it once every hour or two will not interrupt you too much. Do not read emails too deeply, or start thinking about possible replies, as that will push the details of your main work out of your head causing a major slowdown in your ability to get things done.
2. Once or twice a day go deep and 'do email'. As this requires full concentration (it is a big shift of your 'mental context', in GTD® parlance), it should be treated as a proper block of work. After dealing with the high priority email, focus on each project in turn to efficiently batch process similar emails together.

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