Having an empty inbox, or achieving “inbox zero” as some people refer to it, seems to be a holy grail, a mythical situation that is unattainable in the real world, a hypothetical freedom only enjoyable by gods who spend their days toying with platonic solids whilst draped in white muslin; personally, I reserve that luxury for the weekends.
I’m here to bring you the good news that not only is getting to inbox zero possible, the path to this Shangri-la is mind-bogglingly simple. But, like many of the very best things in life, whilst attainment and maintenance of inbox zero is simple, it’s not that easy.
What makes having an empty inbox challenging is not that it requires some complex process, or even oodles of time (it can be attained in mere minutes). What jams a spanner in the spokes, what gums the gears, what curdles the cream, is our own relationship with disorganization, our numbness and complacency in the face of overwhelming anxiety, our familiarity with fragmented focus.
For many of us, we don’t get our inboxes empty because to do so would mean losing an important part of our identity, an old part, the child part, the part that perhaps grew up in chaos and confusion. Unconsciously, letting go of anxiety can mean letting go of the familiar, even if it doesn’t serve us anymore. On some level, you know that you survived chaos, so chaos…
