Email is our stock-in-trade, but it’s become such a scourge for Tech bigwigs like Intel, IBM, Google and Microsoft, they’ve actually formed a non-profit called the “Information Overload Research Group” to take back their inboxes, and they’re holding their first meeting in Manhattan today.

For those unburdened by unopened email, go ahead and read your next message. But if you need to clean out or ignore your inbox, BB* can help.

1-Begin with the IORP’s own recommendations>>

2-Think a clean inbox equals a clear mind? Follow the advice of Amit Gupta, editor of the excellent email newsletter Photojojo: Don’t open any email you’re not prepared to respond to, file, or delete immediately. “Leaving mail you’ve already read in your inbox is what makes you fall behind.”

3-Declare “Email Bankruptcy” like Microsoft’s Joel Cherkis (heard in the NPR series The E-Mail Age) and delete your entire inbox. Then join the “Inbox Victory” campaign, and submit a photo of your “defeated foe”>>

4-Use E-Mail Addict if you have Gmail. It shuts you out of your inbox for 14 minutes at a time, so you can, like, work.

5-In Intel’s 10 commandments of email, computing productivity manager Nathan Zeldes recommends creating a “Five Weeks” folder that will delete all those emails you’re not sure what to do with, in five weeks.

6-Jonathan Spira, chief analyst at research firm Basex, thinks filing email is a waste of time. The real problem is “content pollution,” like the nice but unnecessary “Great, thanks” reply. If you must say two words, use the subject line.

7-If an email generates more than 4 responses, pick up the phone, says one Fortune 500 company VP in Lifehacker’s list of email tips>>. Similarly, Tony Wright, CEO of RescueTime, cuts down on “Where do you want to meet?” messages by offering two options upfront.

8-Speaking of Mr. Wright, download RescueTime to track your email use and wean yourself from compulsive inbox checking — after you read BB, of course.

*Our own tactics include a mixture of filing, filtering, ignoring and when it gets really bad, deleting all undealt-with-messages older than three months.

Sent by Nicole.

Screenshot courtesy the Inbox Victory initiative at Free Art and Technology Lab.