Inbox Zero Isn't The Goal Anymore. Try Inbox Infinity

Life Kit

NPR

Kids & Family, Self-improvement, Business, Health & Fitness, Education

4.5 • 4.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Unread emails can be a source of anxiety for a lot of people. So instead of trying to read, filter or delete everything in your inbox, what if you just ignored it?

In this episode, New York Times technology reporter Taylor Lorenz shares how spending less time on email and changing the way she thought about online communication has increased her productivity and given her back hours of time.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, LifeKit. My name is Mayawa Ina and I am a reporter and a producer. So maybe you've
0:10.6	heard of the concept of inbox zero, which is this quest to get rid of the badge on your
0:16.9	inbox that constantly reminds you how many unread emails you have. Maybe inbox zero is
0:24.2	some sort of symbol of having your life together or not. But on this episode we're talking about
0:32.8	inbox infinity. It is the opposite of inbox zero. I described it as just letting email messages
0:41.6	wash over you and responding to the ones that you can but ignoring most of them.
0:47.6	I know my blood pressure went up too. That voice you just heard was Taylor Lorenz. She's a
0:53.6	technology reporter for the New York Times and she wrote an article about inbox infinity back in 2019.
1:00.4	It's a short and sweet concept and it may work for anyone looking for a different way of managing
1:05.8	their inbox or inboxes. In Taylor's case it's a later start setting some boundaries and remove
1:12.6	the expectation of constant communication altogether. We'll get into inbox infinity after the break.
1:31.9	I was curious about the reception to the piece if you can think back to that and what you heard
1:38.4	from people and whether or not people were like this is great advice. I'm implementing this now
1:43.5	or yeah it was two reactions basically. There was a bunch of people that were like yes this is my
1:50.5	philosophy. I never had a name for it but I've given up on email. I think that was a lot of people
1:54.6	just completely given up on email because it's such a broken system. Then I had a lot of really
2:00.3	angry people too. People that were like oh you're so entitled or oh this is so rude and to them
2:09.2	I would say it's not rude. It's not rude to be like I don't have time to answer or respond or
2:17.6	even read your emails. I get close to around a thousand emails a day give or take. Sometimes I've
2:25.0	gotten as many as five thousand a day. Sometimes I have one day I even got eight thousand emails in
2:29.9	one day. There is no possible way for me to read thousands of emails a day. There's just none and
2:36.6	much less respond to them and every time you respond to one you get emails back. I just think
	...

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