Inbox Zero

All inboxes should be at zero.

Sounds like LinkedIn-tier advice. But if you struggle with replying to people in a timely manner (or at all), inbox zero is a good strategy for two reasons:

1. No false negatives: if an inbox is empty, you know you’ve handled everything.
2. Camouflage problem: important communications hide among irrelevance.

The failure mode of inbox-greater-than-zero: you read four emails, three are trivial, one needs a reply. You get distracted. You keep glancing at the four emails and think “probably fine.” The important one hides among the trivial ones. A quick glance doesn’t show anything obviously wrong.

With inbox zero, if you see anything in the inbox, you know unambiguously there’s work to do. If there’s nothing, you know unambiguously there isn’t.

Problem: Most communication apps (Discord, Slack, iMessage) don’t have a real inbox concept — just read/unread flags. No separation between inbox and archive, so it takes more discipline.