I subscribe to a lot of email discussion lists for the various secret yet high profile projects to which I contribute. Most of these lists are active, with five to ten new threads every day, each consisting of several messages. Even when the lists stay on topic, most of the time, my contribution to (and interested in) the conversation only lasts a few messages.

This creates a problem for me, as I am a neurotic email checker. Constantly seeing a stream of new messages that I am not reading makes me feel stressed out. I do not feel like I have to read them, but I do feel like SOMETHING must be done. But I cannot silence the threads by reading the messages, or by deleting them -- as soon as a new message comes in, the thread will be back, bolding up my inbox again.