Like so many other technology innovations, the convenience of e-mail has become too much of a burden for many people. Swamped by an unmanageable number of messages and plagued by a huge amount of annoying spam and viruses, some users are declaring "email bankruptcy". They are turning off e-mail entirely and are moving back to the telephone as their preferred means of communication.

Perhaps more common, many are simply abandoning an old email address and starting fresh. Of course, this means sending emails to those you WANT to e-hear from. And the cycle starts again.

After spending 80 hours trying to clear out his backlogged inbox, Stanford Law School professor and Wired columnist Larry Lessig decided to surrender. "Bankruptcy is now my only option" he wrote in a mass message to his correspondence "creditors".

Here's how Lessig erased his debts and started again:

1. Collect the email addresses of everyone you haven't replied to. Paste them into the BCC field of a new message which you send to yourself.
2. Write a polite note explaining your predicament. Apologize profusely and promise to keep up with your email in the future.
3. Ask for a resend of anything particularly pressing, and offer to give such messages special attention.

• Declaring email bankruptcy
• Wired: How To: Be More Productive