To simplify, e-mail's not the boss of her

Shhh. Rebecca Antonelli has a secret. She's not really ignoring your e-mail.

A local marketing and public relations consultant, Antonelli recently added a tag line to her outgoing electronic messages: "In an effort to maximize my personal productivity ... I will be addressing email messages only three times a week."

Antonelli says she was being "eaten alive" by e-mail, often getting 500 or more a day. Inspired by advice in the popular management book, "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferriss (Crown, $19.95.), she decided to curtail how often she responds.

"I had to turn it off, because I couldn't get my work done," she said. "One person told me, 'That is the rudest thing I've ever seen.' But in this climate, you can't spend two hours on nonproductive work."

Modern workers employ a variety of tricks to control the ever-growing volume of e-mail.

Most filter spam. Many use separate accounts for work and home or set up accounts for specific projects with free services such as Google Mail. Some limit how often they check messages.

Ronald Gridley, a self-employed investor who lives in Raleigh, checks messages only in the morning and evening. That leaves the rest of the day to concentrate on getting things done.

"I try not to let it be a nuisance to me," he said. "If I'm expecting something, I may pay more attention. I try to treat it more like the regular mail."

Some people declare "e-mail bankruptcy," purge all messages and start fresh. Smart bosses have assistants sort through messages and forward only the crucial ones.

At companies such as U.S. Cellular, Fridays are e-mail-free days.

For Antonelli, who runs her own business, cutting back was risky. Clients don't like to be ignored.

"Every day I think about whether I need to change it," she said. "People still expect you to be on the other end of the e-mail 24/7."

And here's the catch: Antonelli still checks every e-mail message, every day.

But she is training clients, especially new ones, not to expect immediate gratification. In an emergency, she's available by phone, which is more personal, anyway.

"I usually will respond within a few minutes," she said. "In any business, it's all about setting expectations and exceeding expectations. I'd rather exceed expectations."