Life’s Too Short for So Much E-Mail

[Commentary] Last year, Royal Pingdom, which monitors Internet usage, said that in 2010, 107 trillion e-mails were sent. A report this year from the Radicati Group, a market research firm, found that in 2011, there were 3.1 billion active e-mail accounts in the world. The report noted that, on average, corporate employees sent and received 105 e-mails a day. Sure, some of those e-mails are important. But 105 a day? All of this has led me to believe that something is terribly wrong with e-mail. What’s more, I don’t believe it can be fixed. I’ve tried everything. Priority mail, filters, more filters, filters within filters, away messages, third-party e-mail tools. None of these supposed solutions work. Last year, I decided to try to reach In-box Zero, the Zen-like state of a consistently empty in-box. I spent countless hours one evening replying to neglected messages. I woke up the next morning to find that most of my replies had received replies, and so, once again, my in-box was brimming. It all felt like one big practical joke.