You aren't as important as you think you are. No one can usefully deal with 500 emails per day. Not even you, Mr. Super Important Whoever-you-are. You can hate email with a white-hot fury and stress yourself to an early grave, or you can get over yourself.
You are not that important.
Those 500 emails you get every day don't all need or even deserve a personal, thoughtful response. You do not have that much going on in your life. You are not in charge of that many things. You are not that important.
Are you getting it yet?
Learn to hit the archive1 button very quickly. You should know within 5 seconds whether an email actually deserves action on your part. 500 emails per day times 5 seconds each means you should be able to burn through your inbox in 41 minutes at most. 5 seconds per email isn't enough, you say? You're doing it wrong. Skim faster.
Forty-one minutes per day for the most hardcore of email users. You, even you, Mr. Super Important Person, can spare forty-one measly minutes.
If you spend literally 2 3 or 4 hours per day handling email, you're doing it absolutely wrong. You have some sort of inflated sense of how important you are. Getting over that is the key to handling email in a reasonable amount of time.
But I'm different
No you're not.