Great topic Judythe and one I think a lot of folks struggle with. It's not just the volume but the expectation of response time. If Sue sends what she regards as a VIP email at 3:00 on Tuesday she usually expects an answer back on Tuesday. We've trained ourselves to respond in a timely manner. But what's important to Sue may not be as vital to you so if your response is delayed by a day or two you may receive two more emails from Sue. So it becomes the volume + expectation of response time =  pressure. Hope you come up with some ideas for putting a fence around it. Using a timer can sometimes be helpful or not handling any email until pages are written and then responding to what you value the most before responding to the most urgent if that makes sense :-)