If you think about it, our lives these days are made up of multiple inboxes. Whether it’s your email inbox, your WhatsApp account, your texting app, your Slack channels, or your social media feeds, everything is more or less an inbox. But nothing sparks more anxiety than the email inbox. With over 200 billion new emails being sent daily, seeing them flood in faster than you can reply to them can make it feel as if managing emails has become your sole full-time job. That’s why many people try to follow what is called the Inbox Zero method.
What is the Inbox Zero method, and how does it work? Does it actually work, or is it merely a fast track to burning out big-time? We will take a look at its history, its methodology, the various ways you can keep it going, and whether or not it works at the end of the day. We will be using Gmail in our article, but the tips and theories obviously equally apply to all email services.