Things I don’t understand: Fake Inbox Zero

I don’t understand Fake Inbox Zero.  It’s the idea that your inbox should always have zero messages.  As distinct from Actual Inbox Zero:

“It’s about how to reclaim your email, your atten­tion, and your life. That “zero?” It’s not how many mes­sages are in your inbox–it’s how much of your own brain is in that inbox. Especially when you don’t want it to be. That’s it.” – Merlin Mann

The Fake Inbox Zero and Hardcore GTDers don’t make any sense to me.  Let’s study my e-mail from a random 24-hour period:

1. A newsletter I have no desire to read
2. A recruiter
3. A voicemail from my landlord making sure they took care of a leak
4. A client telling me to expect delivery of something
5. Another newsletter I have no desire to read
6. 3 spams that slipped through the spam filter
7. Small talk from a friend that requires no reply
8. Automatic alerts that I’ve already read
9. Errors from a system that I’m not going to read
10. An automatic report that I’m not going to read
11. More automated alerts that I’ve already read
12. One e-mail that requires a reply.  I replied immediately.
13. Notification of new tickets that probably no one will ever work on
14. A receipt that I will never read
15. A reminder that I took action on immediately
16. A reminder that I already had filed a ticket for, so no further action was required
17. Spam that slipped through the filter
18. A mailing list inquiry that didn’t look interesting
19. Another reminder that I had already filed a ticket for, so no further action was required
20. An e-mail putting off scheduling a meeting, so no further action was required
21. Automatic notifications about tickets that I don’t need to read
22. An e-mail that didn’t require a response

If I was a Fake Inbox Zeroer or Hardcore GTDer, I’d have to take 22 actions in almost as many hours.  For them, every e-mail requires a response, a postpone (into a task system or similar) or an explicit ignore.

What I actually do is I opt-in to my e-mail.  I took two actions: I took action on #12 and on #15.  The others are just sitting in my inbox.  I’m not going to do anything with them, but I don’t have to delete them either.  They can just sit there.

I have over 5,000 messages in my inbox just sitting there.  It would be pretty easy to “Select All, Delete.”  But if you wait half an hour, I’ll have another message in the inbox.  Why spend a lot of time cleaning up a mess that anyone can make?

(While I was deciding if I needed to write any more for this article, I got another e-mail.  It required no action.)

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