Personally, I only turn off my notifications when I really don't want to read anything for a short period, i.e., big project deadline, etc. If I'm active, I let everything come in to my e-mail?

Why?

Because my e-mail software (I use Outlook) gives me far better tools for dealing with massive amounts of messages than Ryze's web-based interface does.

If you're getting too many messages in your Inbox, then get them out of your Inbox! Set up a mail rule to put all your Ryze notifications in a single folder, and you never see them in your Inbox. Then you go process that folder when you're ready. Sort the messages by topic, rather than date, and it will make it easy to delete the vast majority of them very quickly.

Here are some more detailed tips I previously posted on my network, The Virtual Handshake, as to how to deal with a large volume of messages from Ryze (and elsewhere):

1. Turn off automatic send/receive on your e-mail -- Don't let yourself get distracted every 5, 10, 30 minutes. Handle your e-mail when you choose to, rather than when it happens.

2. Master mail rules -- Set up rules to route all of your Ryze messages into one folder. Or you may even want to set up different folders for each network. Even when a particular board gets overwhelming for me, I never opt to stop receiving messages and just read them on the web. Outlook allows me to sort by subject (as do pretty much all e-mail clients), which I can't do on Ryze, so I find it more useful for processing large numbers of posts than the web interface.

3. Master the art of scanning -- 80% or more of the messages from the networks, I never even look at the title, because it's just one of the block of messages on a subject that I delete. The rest, I scan the titles and delete another 80%.

4. First, last, rest -- With whatever's left, instead of reading the whole conversation, start with the first message. If it's not interesting, then delete *everything* on that topic. If it's mildly interesting, then go to the end of the messages you have on the topic, and pick out someone whose opinion you normally put some weight in. Read what they have to say, and decide if the rest of the conversation is worth reading and responding to.

5. Read many, reply once -- Don't try to reply to every single person who has posted on a topic. Read the replies, and craft a single response that addresses everyone. You help prevent the infoglut, plus you have the opportunity to be more reflective and thoughtful in your reply, thus being more likely to add value to the community.

For some more on this, my coauthor and I were just featured in an article on CNN and CareerBuilder that relates:

Seven rules for a tidy inbox

Private Reply to Scott Allen (new win)