Inbox Zero and Other Nightmares
See also: Marie Kondo, open shelves, and early mornings
I know you should not compare yourself to others. It’s a 101 concept—just keep your eyes on your own page.
And yet. My husband and I often work from home at the same time. (I can actually look through my window to see through into his office window—hi Josh!) This, for the most part, allows us both to chat and socialize just enough. But it does mean we get a closer peek at one another’s work habits. Josh, who I find to be a very reasonable person that I mostly understand, does one thing that seems truly unhinged. He has a totally empty email inbox.
I can’t snoop on his work emails, because, surprise, there are none there. Zip. There’s all deleted, filed, or responded to. This aspirational approach called inbox zero is the stuff of legends. There’s nothing buried in there that he’s forgotten.
Let us return to my multiple emails, crowding my computer screen right now. To tally it up exactly would only stress me out, but across my different accounts I have thousands and thousands of emails hanging out. Truly, what does this matter? Who is looking? I promise you I’m responding to emails and generally organized enough to know what’s happening. But just that glimpse of a completely empty inbox makes me feel as if the promised land is just out of reach.1
It’s the same way I feel about the Marie Kondo method.2 It does sound nice to be rid of those extra items around the house that I don’t particularly love. But to get there, to find that perfection of everything lined up neatly with spaciousness and order, now that’s the trouble.
I wrote last year what it was like to take responsibility for letting some of the details go in my life. To not over fix, clean, or organize all the details around me is an act of gender equality and generally helping my sense of well-being. But to stop there is to deny that even as I seek to choose healthier ways of existing (like not spending hours trying to delete emails because what will that even do), I’m still surrounded by all the messages of what I “should” be doing.
It might be the allure of productive early mornings, or a consistent workout routine, or even a color-coded meal prep system—I bet you have something that whispers your name. Come, it says. I will make your life manageable.
To this I say, be careful of superficial fixes to systemic problems. Do you need Marie Kondo or 12 weeks paid parental leave? Do you need inbox zero, or for your job to be appropriately scaled?
I asked Josh about his beautifully empty inbox and confirmed that part of what keeps his email so tidy is that it is his job to manage communication. He is an administrator and is pro at forwarding along emails and providing answers to those who need them. He works 9-5, Monday through Friday and has an amount of work that fit into that time. It works because it’s his job. If you want to be more like Josh, don’t worry so much about inbox zero, get yourself an organization with boundaries.
And don’t worry, I also found out this fun fact. Josh’s emails aren’t deleted, he just archives them out of view. He still has 82,484 emails stored up, just in a variety of folders and places tucked out of view. In my main work account, I have a mere 3196. It’s not a competition, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good.
Recipe recommendation
Perhaps less a recipe and more a way of life, Julia Turshen’s post about soup making will give you all you need to know about how to assemble a delicious soup. It’s a chart, for soup. What could be better? As someone always making something out of random pantry ingredients this is a great way to become more confident about throwing a few things together.
Sunday songs
What life looks like
Babysitting days
At this point in writing I took a detour to delete hundreds of emails. It did not do anything to change the nature of the universe.
Goodness gracious did Marie Kondo get herself back in the news recently with revelations of not being perfectly tidy all the time—the horror! https://www.npr.org/2023/01/29/1152149068/marie-kondo-revealed-shes-kind-of-given-up-on-being-so-tidy-people-freaked-out