Why You Should Embrace Inbox Zero

Introduction

How is your inbox looking right now? Would you say you’re on top of your email? Are you familiar with the term “Inbox Zero”? And why am I asking you all these questions when you have no easy way to answer me? Have I lost it?

Inbox Zero is the rare state of being so on top of your email, there is literally nothing in your inbox. This is more mythic than real—kind of a holy grail. But that’s not even completely accurate, because (as I have learned via some light research) not everybody even thinks it’s even a worthwhile ambition. In this post I will evaluate some of the widely held pros and cons of Inbox Zero, and establish why it is actually an unalloyed good thing. This is Part I of a two-part series. Part II, next week, will give you my step-by-step approach—which really does work—to achieving and maintaining Inbox Zero. This post is about convincing you to do it.

[“Art” above by ImageFX. No rights reserved.]

Before we begin…

Look, I know it’s really annoying that I’m organized and have achieved Inbox Zero and am flossing it here. I will also acknowledge that it’s really unfair how when you shoot spitwads at your screen to spite me, I can’t even see them. You know what else is annoying about me? I always get my taxes done on time (if only in the nick of time); I take great care of my teeth; and, when my wife is out of town and I’m living a streamlined bachelor-style existence, I even achieve Dishwasher Zero and Laundry Zero. Feel free to hate me for all this. If it helps at all, my body has very little core strength. I can barely run at all, and when my kids see me try, they burst out laughing. I’m a notorious cheap bastard. I pee on the rim. In fact I have lots of bad habits and I’m not trying to start a fan club here. My inbox is arguably the only part of my life I have largely under control, so try not to begrudge me it. Okay? Are we good?

Inbox Zero haters

I’m not going to get into a lot of history here, but the term Inbox Zero was coined by a guy named Merlin Mann, who gave a Google Tech Talk describing his methodology in achieving it. (Why wouldn’t you just watch that Tech Talk video instead of reading albertnet? Because it’s too long—you don’t have time. This post will take you five minutes, tops.) Mann himself had been planning a whole book about Inbox Zero, but eventually became disgruntled and halfway disavowed his own belief in the whole concept, or at least his practice of it. His book was eventually abandoned (either by Mann or the reading public, I can’t tell which). This opened the door to naysayers like Mike Sturm who wrote an article in Medium called “Inbox Infinity” with the tagline, “Why I’ve stopped caring about how many emails are in my inbox, and why you should, too.” Sturm maintains that it’s more important to focus on what truly contributes to life goals and well-being, which means taking a balanced approach to email management, blah blah blah.

This is defeatist bullshit. A “balanced approach”? Either you use a methodology or you don’t. It doesn’t work to “balance” your approach across two or more different systems. That’s like a “balanced approach” to birth control where you sometimes use a condom, sometimes practice abstinence, and sometimes pull-&-pray. Look, there is a best approach to your inbox and you should just use it. Sturm tried Inbox Zero, he failed, and so he tried to not just move the goalposts but redefine the entire game. Which he doesn’t get to do. The reality is, email is like a burning bush and we have to beat it back or it will consume us. I suspect you wouldn’t be almost 700 words into this post if you didn’t think there’s some truth to this.

Of course Sturm isn’t the only person who seems completely willing to neglect his or her email. For decades I have been hearing all kinds of people talk about how far behind they are on it; it’s practically a default. “Man, I have 476 unread emails,” a person will say, almost as if bragging. Why do people admit this kind of thing? Am I supposed to be impressed? It’s like somebody saying, “Dude, I literally haven’t had a bowel movement in 12 days.” I don’t want to hear it! You know what else is annoying? When you send an important email to a friend, family member, or work contact and they never see it because they’re so overwhelmed. Maybe you’re a small business owner and you invoice a client and don’t get paid, and then the client is like, “Oh, you emailed me? I didn’t see it! I’m so behind on email!” Look: if you’re a grown-up, that means you pay your bills, you do your taxes, and you keep up with email. I’m not interested in your excuses, particularly the sugar-coated versions of “I am a hopeless correspondent.” If you wouldn’t say to me, “I’ve stopped wiping my ass because I’d rather focus on life goals and well-being,” then don’t tell me you never saw my email.

Often, resistance to Inbox Zero (or passive failure to embrace it) is based on pessimism or resignation. This article in Ladders describes a survey of “1,001 Americans with ‘white-collar’ jobs” which found that 24% believe Inbox Zero is “impossible.” The survey also found that 27% called the effort “borderline OCD.” I find this second category pretty annoying. As with the blanket pejorative term “anal retentive” (a harsh accusation based on the baseless, widely discredited pet theories of a known clown), “borderline OCD” attempts to label perfectly valid behavior as being somehow pathological or at least unseemly. What if there were a psychological term for the polar opposite of OCD? Like, “Passive Lackadaisical Disorder,” or PLD? How come when a person tries to be meticulous, precise, and/or efficient, people cast aspersions, but those who are basically out to lunch get a free pass?

Who strives for Inbox Zero?

Personally, I don’t know of a single other person who achieves, or even tries to achieve, Inbox Zero. This doesn’t mean I’m not surrounded by people who do it and just don’t bother to mention it, of course. Instead of pestering my friends about this (what am I gonna do, blast out a giant group email?), I did some light research, and was surprised by what I found. The Ladders article asserts that 55% of people in their survey claim to have achieved Inbox Zero (which is a little hard to believe considering that 51% of those responding called it either “borderline OCD” or “impossible”). An Adobe study described here, also of 1,000 white collar Americans, found that 55% of Americans at least attempt to achieve Inbox Zero. It also notes that among 18- to 24-year-olds, 68% strive for Inbox Zero. (This flies in the face of a rumor I’ve often heard that younger people have given up on email altogether in favor of social media platforms. This same 18- to 24-year-old cohort leads the nation in checking work email before getting into the office and while on vacation.)

So: if you think Inbox Zero is just for weirdos like me, think again.

The case for Inbox Zero

You know what contributes to goals and well-being? Managing your time, and freeing your brain from the anxiety of a) knowing you’re not on top of things, and b) knowing you’re not doing anything about it. Inbox Zero is about being more effective with email, meaning you’ll possibly read less of it, definitely re-read much less of it, and stop missing important emails because they were buried under all the unimportant ones.

Here’s a sad story. For years I never made any attempt to manage my Gmail inbox, because I hadn’t traditionally used that account for real, person-to-person email. (It was originally connected to my LinkedIn account and that was about it.) I never give out my Gmail address, but Google has its ways of disseminating it (such as through auto-fill with other Gmail users). Surprisingly enough, a reader of this blog, instead of using the “email me here” link that’s at the bottom of every post, got my Gmail address from my Blogger profile and emailed me, at my Gmail address, about one of my posts. The post was a blow-by-blow race report of a Tour de Suisse stage, and included this tidbit:

The emailer was an employee of the aforementioned salad dressing company and here is what he wrote:

Dear Mr. Dana,

My name is Michael A— and I am working for Bruno’s Best. I just saw one of your blogs about the tour de Suisse 2014 in the internet. Nothing against the guys from Gruyère. They produce great cheese, but I am confident that our salad dressing is not that bad as well. J

Just in case you never tried it and will visit Switzerland anytime in the future, you are invited for a dinner at our place. 

Starter : Salad with Bruno’s Salad Dressing
Main Course : Fondue with cheese from Gruyère

How does that sound to you ? J

BEST regards,

Michael A—

I’ve maintained Inbox Zero with my work and personal email for several years, but did not bother doing it with Gmail until a week or so ago, and that’s when I saw the above email, from 2016! It breaks my heart that I missed this email. Not only must I have seemed rude not to reply, but I actually did visit Switzerland (albeit in 2023, though he did say “anytime in the future”) and I could have had a nice meal with this friendly guy! If your inbox is a disaster, how do you know how many important emails like this you may have missed?

I think maintaining Inbox Zero is something everyone should strive for, instead of just putting their head in the sand because it seems so daunting. I think of it like credit card debt: once you fall behind, it can seem hopeless to catch up, so you just resolve not to think about it. Living beyond your means via the convenience of credit might feel like prioritizing what’s important, like family, life goals, well-being, etc., but isn’t throwing money away on interest a pretty big deal? About 47-48% of Americans carry a credit card balance (according to Bankrate and Lending Tree), leading to a net $1.2 trillion in credit card debt ... a curious parallel to the 45% of Americans who don’t worry about their inboxes. The cost of missing emails, forgetting to follow up, and carrying that nagging sense of being behind on work correspondence is of course harder to measure than interest payments … but it’s a cost nonetheless, and not just to the person whose inbox is a mess, but to the people trying to reach him.

But the best reason to adopt Inbox Zero is to make better use of our time, so that we spend less of it doing email. The Adobe study found that those surveyed spend 2.5 hours per day, during the week, on personal email, and 6.4 hours per workday  on business email. Combined, that’s over half our waking hours! Whether that factoid is actually true or not, email is a big part of our lives so it seems absurd not to try to streamline it. And it’s worth noting that the 18- to 24-year-old respondents, who more often strive for Inbox Zero, spend only 5.8 hours per day on work email vs. the overall 6.4. (Wouldn’t you like an extra 36 minutes of your life back each day?)

Over the last several years, since embracing Inbox Zero, I have spent far less time on the following:

• Rereading email
• Searching for an email I know (or perhaps only think) I caught a glimpse of at some point
• Setting aside time, eventually, to file previously read emails, a devastatingly inefficient process because I have to re-familiarize myself with the context of each email
• Doing damage control because I was out of the loop on an important matter I should have kept abreast of

In addition, I have a far easier time prioritizing which emails I should read first, since I’m looking at a handful of them instead of a giant pile.

Tune in next time…

If you already do Inbox Zero but want to see how my method may differ from yours, you are my kind of reader and should definitely check out my next post, “How to Achieve Inbox Zero.” And if you don’t do Inbox Zero today but I’ve piqued your interest, you are also my kind of reader and should definitely check out my next post. And if you feel bored by this entire discussion but have somehow made it to the end of this post, your are also my kind of reader and should definitely check out my next post. And finally, if you are now absolutely certain that you never want to read another word about Inbox Zero ever again, you are still my kind of reader and should click here, and then come back next week anyway.

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