People are hideously bad at managing their inboxes. Comically so.

I’ve never really understood how bad most people seem to be at email, from “getting to Inbox Zero” to “actually responding to an email with some degree of context to what needs to be done next.” Don’t even get me going on post-meeting action items.

Here’s the basic deal with email, best I can tell:

• It’s everywhere: … and it’s probably not going anywhere.
• This is, by and large, because people are lazy: … and they like to have a method to cover their ass.
• It just reinforces hierarchy: … if someone up a chain ignores, ignores, ignores and then swoops in at the 11th hour and changes the entire project, that’s perfectly fine. If someone lower on a chain doesn’t respond instantly, they’re “not on top of things.”
• Length dichotomy: … write a long email, get back “thx.” Write a short email, get blasted by a middle manager for “not spelling everything out.”
• Very few people even respond to critical emails: … this is all too common of an issue.
• They are often meandering BS with no context: … again, a common problem.

Email is easy to use, and everyone at a given office/potential partners seem to use it, so it’s become default. It has a lot of issues, though. We think of…