It’s like a catchphrase these days. Everybody trying to one-up each other about how bad at email they are. You don’t fit in at dinner parties unless you “like all music except country and rap” and “haven’t looked at my inbox in a month.”

It downright scares me when I hear this from otherwise successful people. It’s straight up saying “I’m unreliable” which is a truly bizarre thing to announce, even if it’s true. They’ll gleefully tell you how they just archive massive swathes of emails in an effort to start fresh. A worthy goal, surely, but how many people were just left hanging? Nothing good is going to come from that.

I quite literally don’t want to work with someone, in any capacity, who I can’t expect email responses from. It’s unreliable and unprofessional.

I don’t wanna stress you out, but there is a better way than giving up on your inbox. You can chip away at it. You can be more vigilant at unsubscribing. You can create filters to programmatically remove things. Maybe you can even outsource it to an assistant if you have the means.

Perhaps over time on this blog we’ll gather up as many strategies as we can to fight an unruly inbox.