Ross Mayfield:

E-mail overload is the leading cause of preventable productivity loss in organizations today. The fundamental problem of this otherwise great technology is largely behavioral, and new practices and technologies are arising to solve it.

Here are the top five tactics for making e-mail an efficient and effective collaboration tool:

Establish Internal E-Mail Practices
Move Group E-mail to Collaborative Workspaces
Establish Public Protocols When Possible
Reply to E-mail by Blog
Leverage Special-Purpose Social Software

From the archive, Mark Bittman:

I believe that there has to be a way to regularly impose some thoughtfulness, or at least calm, into modern life. Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, ... I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop.