I'm an email hoarder and I need a 12-step program.

Baydin's Email Game is the answer to my problem. It's dubbed "Email Management Made Fun". It works with Gmail and Google Apps.

But, I Don't Have Gmail

If you don't have a Gmail account, I'm sure you're thinking "I don't need ANOTHER email account". You're right. You don't. You can set up a Gmail address and have virtually all of your POP and IMAP email accounts flow into your new Gmail account including the ability to send from your existing email address(es).

From there, each email you read is assigned a time limit. You decide what you want to do with each email, including reply, label/file/archive, Boomerang, skip, archive and more.

Boomerang

Boomerang is my favorite feature. It allows you to specify a time that you want the email to return to the top of your inbox. Instead of leaving your email in it's original place, using the "I'll read it later" mentality, you can return the email to the top of your inbox in hours, days, weeks, etc. using preset options or customizing them.

But wait, I need to do something NOW

If you click on a link within the email, the game pauses.

If you need to respond, you're given 3 minutes by default.

If only I could…

All settings are customizable, including whether you start with the newest messages or the oldest messages. With over 18,000 emails this weekend, I'm now down to 17,520. As I go, I'm unsubscribing to those that I regularly delete without reading. Part of the reason I'm still over 17,000 is that I'm rescheduling emails by Boomerang to a time that's more suitable for me to read and act upon them.

Over next weekend, I plan to use The Email Game to weed through old emails and I think I can get rid of them all!