[300bps]

With over 121,000 unread emails in my “everything” gmail account I’ve come to the same conclusion.

It only becomes a major issue when I want to find an email from a real person. It’s amazing - every marketing email seems to come up on every search I do almost like they’re keyword stuffing.

If there’s a better way to do it that doesn’t involve obsessive inbox 0 protocol but what the OP describes is what I’ve mentally decided to do as well.

[ghaff]

One thing I do is that if something comes in that I think I might want to refer to at some point, I'll give it an &archive label. (I used to have a more elaborate set of labels but these days I mostly just throw most things in one place and rely on search for the rest). And then just periodically delete older stuff that hasn't been files--especially if it's unread. I might take some time to skim things to see if there's anything I want to save.