It was 2:14 PM on a Tuesday in October—October 12th, 2021, to be exact. I remember because I was sitting in my home office, staring at a little gold medal emoji on my screen. I had done it. I hit ‘Inbox Zero’ in Superhuman. Every single thread was archived, snoozed, or deleted. I felt like a productivity god. I felt clean. Then, about ten minutes later, I realized I hadn’t actually done anything for my actual job in four hours. I was supposed to be finishing a strategy deck for our Q4 planning, but instead, I was a world-class sorter of digital mail. I was a highly-paid mail clerk. It was pathetic.
We’ve been sold this idea that an empty inbox equals a clear mind. It’s a lie. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently: an empty inbox is usually just proof that you spent your most valuable hours reacting to other people’s agendas instead of building your own. If your inbox is at zero, your most important projects are probably at a standstill.
The day I realized I was a professional email-answerer
I used to be obsessed with the tools. I paid $30 a month for Superhuman because I thought the keyboard shortcuts would make me faster. And they did! I could archive a newsletter about AI trends in 0.4 seconds. I could reply “Thanks, will look later” to my boss with a flick of my wrist. But the faster I got, the more emails I received. It’s a feedback loop from hell. You reply fast, people reply back faster. You’re essentially training your colleagues to treat you like an Instant Messenger service rather than a human being who needs time to think.
I might be wrong about this, but I think the entire “productivity” industry is just a way for us to feel busy without being productive. We love the dopamine hit of the Archive button. It feels like a win. But deep work—the kind of work that actually moves the needle, the kind where you lose track of time and solve a hard problem—doesn’t happen in an inbox. It happens when you ignore the world for three hours. You can’t do that if you’re checking your mail every twelve minutes to make sure that little number stays at zero.
The $30/month lie
I’ve come to absolutely loathe Superhuman. I know people love it, and they swear by the “speed,” but I think it’s a predatory product. It gamifies the very thing that keeps us from doing our best work. It makes you feel like an elite athlete for doing the most basic, shallow task imaginable: reading text. I cancelled my subscription six months ago and went back to the basic, ugly Gmail interface. It’s slower. It’s clunky. And that’s exactly why I love it. It makes me want to spend less time there. Total waste of money.
The more efficient you are at email, the more email you will be forced to do.
My 22-day experiment with being “unresponsive”
Last November, I decided to track my output. I spent 22 work days tracking exactly how much time I spent in “processing mode” vs. “creation mode.” I used a simple stopwatch on my desk. On days where I prioritized Inbox Zero, I averaged 147 minutes of email time and produced, on average, 1.5 pages of actual documentation or code. On days where I let the inbox rot—I’m talking 50+ unread messages by EOD—I averaged 32 minutes of email and 6 pages of output. The math isn’t even close. My brain was 4x more productive when I was being a “bad” communicator.
Here is my unfair take that I know will annoy people: If you reply to every email within five minutes, I don’t trust you with big projects. It tells me you don’t have anything more important to do. It tells me your focus is fragile. I’ve started intentionally waiting 4-24 hours to reply to non-urgent stuff just to prove to myself (and them) that I’m busy doing the work they actually hired me for. It’s uncomfortable. People get annoyed. But the work is better.
The part that actually works
- Check email twice a day. 11 AM and 4 PM. That’s it.
- Turn off every single notification. If it’s a real emergency, they’ll call you. (They never call).
- Accept the mess. An unread inbox is a sign of a busy life.
- Stop using “productivity” apps that make email feel like a video game.
I used to think I was being disciplined by keeping my inbox clean. I was completely wrong. I was just scared of the hard work. It’s much easier to clear 50 emails than it is to stare at a blank Google Doc and figure out a product strategy. Inbox Zero is a form of procrastination that looks like work. It’s the ultimate hiding spot for people who are afraid to be great.
Anyway, I digress. The point is that your inbox is a conveyor belt of other people’s priorities, and if you spend all day standing at that belt, you’ll never build anything of your own. I still struggle with it. Sometimes I see that notification bubble and my thumb twitches. It’s an addiction.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be fully “cured” of the need to organize my digital life. But I do know that my best work—the stuff I’m actually proud of—happened when my inbox was a complete disaster.
Stop cleaning the house and go build something.