E-mail Bankruptcy Protection?

So Lessig declared e-mail bankruptcy, not from too much spam but from too much legitimate e-mail. I know a lot of people who get way too much legit e-mail. Hell, everyone on the EFF staff probably gets too much e-mail. But the problem is double-sided.

I know that these people have e-mail problems. Not only do they have e-mail problems, but they have time problems as well. Look at Lessig and Cory Doctorow's schedules. They are everywhere talking to everyone about everything. But they are friends, coworkers or close acquaintances and I like communicating with them. But since they are friends, coworkers or close acquaintances I don't want to burden them any more than they already are. Any kind of communication with these people will suck up at least a tiny bit of their valuable time. What is a person to do?

In the case of Cory, I hardly ever send him anything. I know he somehow finds time to read stuff I post here, and it feels really good knowing that he is willing to spend his precious time reading what I write. (I promise you that I don't pimp my own posts to Cory to get them on boingboing, although it rocks when it happens!) But I feel bad that sometimes I steal his time. I have a theory, which I might expand on later, that Cory is a robot or perhaps a cyborg with a heart of gold. He consumes more information than anyone I know.

Now Lessig is a different beast, as he at least has assistants. A good friend of mine in Australia wanted to find a way to see if Larry could speak at an event in the Land Down Under™. He knew that I "knew" Larry, although I don't know if 'worked at EFF' really counts as knowing Larry. (I did have the privilege to sit across the table from him and right next to Jim Griffin at an EFF dinner, which was a real treat!) Anyways, my friend knew that trying to contact Lessig was very hard if you weren't in his 'web of trust,' and even then the chances of making contact weren't 100%.

Fred von Lohmann, also an EFF staffer, who is buried under e-mail, voicemail, and Home Theater magazines is somebody I love talking to. I used to be able to steal his time by walking to his office, stand in his doorway and asking him about music, copyright, and the joy of Macintosh ownership. I loved that. I felt bad about stealing his time, but if he was really pressed for time he would shut his door and that would be the sign that there was no time for music chat. You can't really shut your office door on your e-mail. The queue of e-mail would grow and grow and you would have the same problem once you opened your door again.

The problem I, and many other people, have is how do I maintain communication with people who are in different physical locations and are having their communication channels severely overloaded? How can my ability to communicate with them be protected from their bankruptcy? I don't think this is a selfish request as I feel I've made it clear that I respect the fact that these people have a finite amount of time and a seemingly infinite amount of communication to deal with.

"But the vast majority were kind enough to simply remain silent."

This modern world...