A zombie rising from the dead

Inbox Zero: Yea or nay? Also, 7 other things

A while back, a guy named Merlin Mann coined a phrase that has dogged a lot of people ever since: Inbox Zero.

It’s an email management system, Mann says (or said, 15-plus years ago), and the goal is to have no unread or lingering messages. The way to get there, supposedly, is to choose one of five actions for every email you receive: “delete,” “delegate,” “respond,” “defer,” or “do.”

This was all the rage at the time back in the late aughts. The New Yorker called his idea “revolutionary.” Mann planned to write a book.

Only… have you had an email inbox? (I mean, obviously, since you’re reading this email.)

As so often happens, this simple solution to a modern challenge has (for some people anyway) only led to more anxiety. I think it’s because we often confuse things that are simple with things that are easy.

Consider those five potential actions, for example.

• One of them takes literally zero time or effort: “defer,” which is incongruously placed fourth in the list.

• Another one, “delete,” …