Earlier this summer, I wrote a piece about my own overflowing inbox specifically (60,000+) and more generally about the ever-escalating obsession with email maintenance. “What’s your number?” (a question that used to be NSFW) has taken on a new meaning in our productivity-obsessed culture, where a spick-and-span inbox has become a flex—shorthand for the almighty state of having one’s shit together. But also an impossible and arguably counterproductive ideal.
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This schism came through clearly in responses to my story. “100% Team Zero! Peace of mind!” wrote reader Scott, planting his flag firmly in digital-neat-freak territory. Camille Dundas, The Walrus’s director of philanthropy, is unperturbed by her cyber messiness: “I don’t like to think of them as unread . . . more like . . . saving them for when I need them.” The Walrus’s managing editor Claire Cooper was happy (and a little chuffed) to share her number: “Not to brag, but my unread email count is currently two. I’m 100% on Team Inbox Zero!”
Because life is short and busy, I cannot fathom a day when digital decluttering lands at the top, or even the bottom, of my to-do list. Come on, people, haven’t we lost the plot a bit when another LinkedIn commenter writes that they currently have fourteen unread messages that are “already stressing [them] out!”?
This is actually a pretty complex question that cognitive psychology has taken various cracks at explaining over the years. Long before the days of Hotmail and dial-up, there was the influential Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, whose research On Finished and Unfinished Tasks posited that unfinished tasks create a state of psychological tension that keeps them top of mind. This is why television series use cliffhangers to hold onto viewers: even the most emotionally satisfying conclusion fades from memory, whereas a question mark has a way of sticking around. And why otherwise formidable adults have been known to cower in fear of the little red circle. For Inbox Zero types, 1,000 unopened emails represent the possibility of 1,000 open loops, each one tugging at the brain like a toddler at snack time.
Inbox Infinity types aren’t necessarily more comfortable with open loops—many of us just don’t compute an unopened message as a loop of any kind. For us, an inbox isn’t a to-do list so much as a library—you don’t walk in expecting to read every book on the shelves. Or a storage locker: a place to keep things that may or may not matter later. Or even a cemetery. “When I come across an old one, I’ll just delete it (don’t really need a Home Depot sale from 2024), but other than that, [it’s] the graveyard for stuff I don’t have to read and I’m totally ok with it,” writes reader Ramo. (Same, Ramo, same.)
Shoutout to another influencer of the pre-Insta era: economic psychologist Herbert A. Simon, whose work on human decision making earned him a Nobel Prize. Simon’s theory of “bounded rationality” starts from a pretty obvious truth: time, information, and brainpower are finite, so we can’t optimize every decision we make. He coined the term satisficing (satisfy + suffice) to describe the alternative: instead of endlessly pursuing the best possible outcome, we reach a point where something is good enough and get on with it.
Does this mean risking the odd missed message? Of course. Satisficing means accepting that some things will slip through the cracks, and for an Inbox Zero type, that’s a possibility worth protecting against. But Infinities are protecting against an undesirable outcome too: wasting time and attention solving a “problem” that doesn’t actually cause us much distress. The Zero Chaser worries, What if I miss something important? The Infinity person worries, What if I spend half my life making sure I don’t?
The point isn’t which system is better so much as which trade-off you’re more comfortable making. That comes down partly to individual qualities—comfort with risk and ambiguity, people-pleasing tendencies—and partly to practical realities. If you’re an administrative assistant, for example, then responding to emails is the job, as opposed to a distraction that could be keeping you away from it.
Speaking of our ailing planet, the most compelling argument I heard for an inbox detox was about energy: a pileup of useless emails sitting on servers amounts to a pointless waste. And so I embarked on a purge. An acquaintance suggested I could get big results by hitting “select all” whenever I came across a prolific offender. Seven hundred and eighty-six messages from Old Navy—whoosh. Travelzoo—whoosh. NYT Cooking—you get the picture. Could it really be this easy? I thought as my number declined by the hundreds and then the thousands, like getting a haircut after ten years in the desert.
First, I discovered I’d deleted the record of a Zara transaction, leaving me stuck with an ill-fitting floral tent. (No, you try getting in touch with customer service.) Later, I arrived at the airport unable to search for my reservation number. And those are just the practical records. The other night, my best friend pulled up an old email exchange with a guy she went on a date with in 2003. These are our sacred texts. Did anyone ever ask the Ancient Egyptians to just delete the hieroglyphics?
It’s why I can’t get on board with the whole “email bankruptcy” thing, a hack suggested by The Walrus contributing writer Michelle Cyca: “Delete everything, no apologies,” she writes in one comment thread. She goes on to describe the most aspirational “out of office” she ever received: an employee on mat leave advising that she was out for twelve months and would delete everything upon her return.
It’s funny because this is really where the two camps come together: two very different ways of saying, If it’s important enough, it will find me. Or I will find it! My inbox may be a graveyard, but every now and then, I need to dig up a body.
