Treat your inbox like a throne room.

The protagonist obtains an audience with the king. Most of us are familiar with this cliche movie scene. A gigantic empty throne room and an uncomfortable walk to the platform where the king awaits, bored and surrounded by his counsel. In reality, only the most important people would ever gain an in-person meeting. Wayne Dyer, an American author has a famous quote: "if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." It summarizes a technique called cognitive reframing. I'd like to use it to flip how you think about your email inbox.

You're an important person–the king or queen of your own life. Your email inbox is your throne room. It's where envoys visit to beg favor, peasants plead for relief, couriers deliver messages, and nobles arrive to gain your attention. Every email is a person entering your throne room. Why are you letting so many people in? Why are you wasting your time? What should you do about it?

Turn them away.

How hard do you think it would be for you to get a meeting with the Queen of England? Try impossible. There is an administrative army that you would need to penetrate before it could happen. Her time is far too important. Yours is too. Much of your email should never reach you. You need your own officials to handle these silly requests of your time. Try the following:

• Unsubscribe. If you're like me, my email gets signed up for a lot of junk. Willing or otherwise, this fills your throne room with a cacophony of distraction. Be rigorous and unsubscribe from these emails. It takes longer than deleting or archiving them but you'll save massive time in the long run. If you've never done this it could take a significant amount of time up front. Set aside time each day to process those emails. They will become more rare as time goes on.
• Filter. Some emails will get to you without an unsubscribe option. Ask yourself: would I be fine if I never received this type of email again? If the answer is yes, add a filter to trash it. An example of emails that fall into this category are privacy policy updates. The law requires them but–if you're like me–you can do without.

Let someone else handle them.

Go back to that attempt at a meeting with the Queen. Let's say you punched through the first layer of officials. You'd arrive at an office with a person that could make it happen. They'll ask for an explanation. Then you'll be turned away. There was a chance, but once the official heard what you wanted they knew it wasn't important. It took some thinking–that's why you got so far–but they've fielded those requests before and know not to bother. You'll need to train them yourself. Try the following:

• Filter. Reserve this for emails that you want to keep but don't need to handle. Get familiar with the automatic filtering methods of your email client. Some emails will be harder than others to dial in; make sure you test your filter before putting it into place. My favorite types of emails that fall into this category are bills. For example, I like to keep a record of my bills but many are on autopay. I tag them and handle them in a variety of ways. For bills that I need to pay I filter them out of my inbox and use reminders to check them later. It cuts down on my context switching and gives me control over when to handle those tasks.
• Delegate. If the best productivity hack is to not do something, the second best is to have someone else do it. This tactic depends on the email, who's sending it, and your role in the organization. If you've ever uttered the words, "it'll be faster if I do it" then you will want to consider this option for some of your tasks. It can take real work to transfer a task to someone else, but the moment when you forward an email to someone without worry is magical. Hiring an assistant, virtual or otherwise, takes this tactic to its extreme. Consider it.

Leave the throne room.

An empire can't run with its monarch in the throne room all day. Do you think the Queen is sitting around waiting for people to bug her with questions? I don't know for sure–because she won't meet with me–but I would guess she handles inquiries at set times each day. The rest of the time she's chasing the royal corgis or bathing in her fountain of youth. A lot of us are in the habit of checking our emails as they come in. Your phone or computer pings you when a new message arrives, you check it, and then process it. You might even save it for later, making the act of checking futile. These habits are a constant drain on your willpower and an interruption of your concentration. Try the following:

• Turn off notifications. As simple as it is powerful. If you leave notifications on, you're not a leader–you're a peasant. This recommendation applies to all your devices. And it goes beyond email. I've turned off notifications for almost every app on my phone. I've yet to regret it.
• Schedule time. Only check your inbox at set times throughout the day. The less time the better. Before you say this is impossible and move on, hear me out. If you have a habit of replying to emails immediately, other people have a habit of sending you email knowing you'll respond immediately. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The better you are at processing your email the more email you're going to get. Start by scheduling a handful of times in your day where you'll check email. Then close the email client and focus on the task at hand. You'll be glad you did.
• Delay. You may want to send the email right now but it might not be necessary to receive it so soon. This avoids the inevitable ping-pong of replies that swamp your attention. Determine when the recipient needs a reply and schedule it then. My favorite time is the end of the day, giving me a high chance of wrapping up with a clean plate. This only works if your email client supports it, but there are plugins available for most major ones that add this ability.
• Put it on pause. The same plugins that can delay sending emails may also be able to pause your inbox and not receive them for awhile. You can schedule it or use it just-in-time if you need to focus somewhere else. Also, you can use exceptions to allow email from certain people or with certain subjects to get through. It takes more work to setup but it's more powerful than scheduling time to check your email.

It's about control.

Oxford defines insidious as: proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects. Does that sound like your email inbox? That feeling you get when you check your inbox and hundreds of unread emails confront you is the feeling of helplessness. You don't decide when someone sends you an email but you can decide what do with it. The suggestions above are about taking control and establishing yourself as the ruler you know you are. How much control do you wield in your throne room?