Nick Bilton came up with 10 ideas for fixing the email glut. These are my favorites:

• Add reply buttons for YES, NO and MAYBE – Some messages just don’t need a comprehensive reply. If someone e-mails me and asks if I’m available to attend a meeting, rather than take the time to write back with a detailed response, why can’t I just click a YES, NO, or MAYBE button? One click and the e-mail has been dealt with.
• Cut off anything longer than 140 characters – Speaking of Twitter, do we really need more than 140 characters for most messages? E-mail applications could add a button that would cut off all content longer than 140 characters.
• A monthly word limit – We have limits on Internet bandwidth, and surcharges to limit the number of minutes we can talk on our cellphones. Why not limit the number of words an e-mail account can pump out each month? (If you go over, that new government e-mail tax kicks in …)