You know those friends who will just grab your phone out of your hand if you mention a crazy email you got the other day, rather than just letting you read it out loud? They obviously don't understand that seeing someone's Gmail inbox is like looking into their bedroom. You don't just barge in uninvited, and if you do, you withhold judgment, whether it's spotless or there's a few socks on the floor. Or 13,000 socks. Or 13,000 unread emails. Or—as I had about six months ago—70,000 unread emails.
For a few years (like once I hit 20k until I topped out at 70k) my inbox resembled Grey Gardens, a once-stately institution overgrown with weeds and cat poop and dying dreams. I didn't do it on purpose, I just didn't delete the unread emails because there always seemed like something more urgent to do.
The bulk of it was spam. Not necessarily the "penis enlargement" or "Nigerian prince" variety (although I got those, too), but endless amounts of work spam ("Working on an article about Jennifer Aniston's hands?!?! Talk to our plastic surgeon who had nothing to do with that!" or "Hi Anna! Check out Swiss Cheese Incorporated's new single, 'Light Fixtures'" See above re. dying dreams). And the rest were email blasts from clothing or beauty stores like J.Crew, Net-a-Porter, Gilt, Rue La La, Sephora — basically anywhere I'd purchased at least one thing, at least one time. (Ann Taylor's were my favorite.)
Once they start building up, defeatism takes over. How can one woman compete against thousands of unsolicited emails? As they accumulated, I briefly considered hiring an undergraduate to come over just to hit "Select unread" and "Delete" from sunup to sundown. But I didn't want them seeing my inbox, so I didn't go through with it. You can't blame me, considering it's such a mark of shame that there are tutorials online on how to delete the "Unread Email" number on your iPhone. But eventually, to be honest, it was… kind of fun? I had created an Internet-age monster, and it was alive, and (mostly) a secret. I even bought more space for my wild email greenhouse to continue thriving, because I was too overwhelmed to do anything else about it.
Earlier this month, a meme called "There are two kinds of people in this world" went viral. It posits that there are "the 0 unread emails people," and "the 13,000 unread emails people." Like many other memes about how there are "two kinds of people in this world," it's popular because it suggests that the world can all be boiled down to Divergent but with more boring categories (in this case, an unread-emails caste system) and lets one half of us look down on the other half. This implies, obviously, that the 13k people are disorganized, forgetful, and easily overwhelmed. It encourages the "0 unread" set to equate their efficient email management with some Olympian feat like swimming the English Channel or climbing Mount Everest.
Or maybe they just have the time-management ability, the reasonable workload, or even the available emotional bandwidth to face the unread-email grind—alas, not all of us can keep a sparkling inbox all the time. "I'll have a few days of back to back meetings, or a few days of work travel… and my inbox is the stuff of nightmares in no time," says Leah, 29. "I'm not one of those people who files to archive or puts everything in folders. I never will be." That said, she's made inbox management work for her: "I get a few spare hours one day on the weekend to plow through it and mass delete."
With inboxes becoming ever-increasingly linked to our social, professional, and private lives, it's easy to become overwhelmed—whether your inbox is pristine or a mess. "I delete emails really methodically/obsessively, but that's like a coping mechanism for me," says Carrie, a 26-year-old writer. "I do it when I'm procrastinating reading/dealing with legitimate emails from friends or bosses or editors. I have a lot of anxiety over email. I let a ton of important stuff go unread for hours or days at a time because I'm not ready to confront it. I get paralyzed."
Of course, there's also the fear of the Email that Got Away: What if you carelessly delete something important, or cool, or an email that would have changed your life, or whatever? Edith Zimmerman, former editor of the Hairpin, recalls: "I think I ended up opening pretty much all of my emails, even for just a second, in case there was something cool in there. Reading a random promotional newsletter gave me the idea for [viral Hairpin post] Women Laughing Alone With Salad, so you never know."
Ultimately, the turning point in my inbox arrived with my boyfriend. He was mercilessly organized with everything, including email. I thought I might be off the hook when I saw what a maverick he was with tabs — he had 50 open at any given time, and left them open. One time I closed them all (ironically, I hate browser clutter) and he was more incensed than I'd ever seen him. But he winced every time I checked my email in front of him.
He asked me if I needed any of the unread emails; I said no.
He said, "OK. Do you want me to get rid of them?"
I mentally said goodbye to my 70,000 unread PR emails. I thanked them for their constant, stable presence in my life, even when everything else was in a state of flux. And then I nodded.
He sat down in front of my laptop and did something (he just followed this weird YouTube tutorial) and they were gone. Sans any of my own effort—like, say, I'd been airlifted to the top of Mount Everest—I had 0 unread emails. I actually felt physically lighter, as if I'd finally set down a pair of 15 lb. kettlebells. Now that my inbox was cleaned out, I felt obligated to keep it that way, and ever since, I have. With unread emails. Not read ones, because I'm not a psycho.
I won't lie: It's surprisingly gratifying to step back and watch your email become a post-modern art project, if you can deal with the inconvenience, not lose any of your business correspondences, and gracefully handle the inevitable judgment. But it's nice to wake up to a clean inbox. Incidentally, I have yet to unsubscribe from any of the listservs and will probably never unsubscribe from Ann Taylor's.
