Having 50 e-mails before the second – or third – cup or morning coffee isn’t unusual for many business people these days. The overflowing inbox has become the norm. And these days when it seems everyone has a BlackBerry, iPhone or some similar device, there’s no such thing as leaving the e-mail at the office.

For the majority of uses, e-mail is an effective business communication tool. We can ask a colleague or client a brief question without intruding on their time. We can share documents or photos. We can create automatic tasks and reminders based on an e-mail to-do shared from the boss.

But there are those times when e-mail gets the best of us and mired in an inbox that has well exceeded the triple-digit mark. So how do we dig out?

Here are a few tips on getting your Inbox under control:

• When at all possible, respond to an e-mail immediately and then either delete or file it.
• Schedule daily e-mail sessions. Set aside 30 minutes or an hour each day to simply respond to e-mails.
• Go offline. If you have a looming deadline or a report that needs your full concentration, close your e-mail.
•  Create a file system. Outlook and most e-mail systems – even the Web-based ones – allow you to create a folder system. Rather than letting dozens of e-mails languish in your inbox, file them away. Plus, when you need to reference a past message, you won’t spend 15 minutes searching for it.
• Manage your newsletter subscriptions. Nothing can consume an inbox like daily or weekly e-blasts. Yes, there are e-blasts you want to read, but often you don’t find the time. Unsubscribe to anything that’s not pertinent to your industry or necessary for your job.

Here are a few more good tips from David Silverman’s Words at Work Blog. Particularly, his suggestion about not keeping any e-mail for longer than a month is a good one. Hey, if you haven’t read it, completed the task or passed it on to someone else, you’re probably not going to.

Let’s hear your ideas – what has worked for you in managing the e-mail flood?