Picking Wildflowers, a Story about Email

Story 4 of 100, #The100DayProject

Inbox zero seemed like the best idea to stay on top of email and on top of my life, so I went for it.

Each time I got an email, my phone would buzz and I would quickly and swiftly deal with it. At the end of the day or in the morning, I would swat away anything that accumulated. Gentry’s app, Mailbox, was brilliant at rewarding me for the empty inbox by showing me a happy photo from Instagram.

It lasted about 4 days. I was spending so much time, 4 hours a day, dealing with email that felt urgent and was utterly unimportant. Unsubscribing from newsletters and mass emails was a complete time sink and even marking as spam took time.

If inbox zero was felt like obsessively maintaining a perfect green lawn in arid California, what if instead I let the meadow grow and just picked the wildflowers?

Now I go through my email a few times a day and deal with the worthwhile ones. The rest, I simply leave behind. In 2 years I’ve missed perhaps a handful of important ones, although most of those followed up again so I didn’t actually miss them, and I’ve gained so much time back.