Is your Inbox overwhelmed?

I learned a new term from one of the blogs that I follow. Signal sources. The author of Mighty Bargain Hunter said that he has way too many projects (all with accompanying emails, or SIGNALS) that he is working on. To tame the email inbox beast, he had set up various filters for most all his email.

MBH said, "With only a few important projects and sources of information (signal sources) it’s straightforward to handle them all. But bring in dozens, or possibly hundreds, of other signal sources, and some filtering is needed to avoid going completely insane." While this appeared to be working, he realized that "a tamed beast is still a beast" and that "now some important e-mails could be stuck in a place I didn’t expect".

So, to tackle this problem head on, he has disabled almost all of his email filters. This is forcing him to ACT on his emails as he receives them, instead of "storing them" with filters.
This ACTion has taken him as far as even canceling a membership or two (so far) in those SIGNALS that send out too many unnecessary emails.

I think I like this. But will I, pack rat that I am, actually take that step and thin out my own signals? Oh, look, there's a shiny, new traffic exchange....