If you’re anything like me, you have a lot of inboxes. You know, those places — physical or digital — where things you need to deal with are deposited. And collect. And grow.
You probably have a work or school inbox — projects to wrangle or tasks to complete, phone calls to make, papers to finish writing or (if you’re a teacher) grading.
You likely also have an email inbox for work- or school-related communication. And maybe a Slack channel, too. And a personal email inbox. And maybe one (or two, or more additional email inboxes) for your side hustle, where you coordinate sales for your ebooks or guests for your podcast.
Different social media platforms have their inboxes, too — comments to check and reply to, DMs to vet and respond to, posts and videos and other content to make. Maybe you remember a time when social media used to be fun, even an escape — and today carries the echoes of fun wrapped in dread and obligation.
Maybe your texts, too, feel overwhelming — an inbox of quick-hit personal and work-related quips that demand your immediate attention and resolution, that take you out of your deep work and critical focus for someone else’s whim.
Then there’s the inboxes we forget about until they’re so full of notifications and messages that even opening the app takes a force of will you haven’t felt in months. Remembering you host (or belong to) one or more Discord servers. Realizing that a group you wanted to keep up with has been messaging in WhatsApp for months without you.
If you can’t tell by now, I have a very complicated love/hate relationship with inboxes. While they help me to feel connected, relevant, and valued, and while they bring me meaningful (and paid) work, they can also become toxic places of anxiety and overwhelm that drain my energy and sap my creative momentum.
They also do a great job of providing me with distraction when I’m resistant to doing what I consider my True Work. A quick escape into mindless busy work that gives me a sense of temporary accomplishment and later regret? Oh yeah.
Do you run your day, or does your inbox? Are you always in reaction mode? Do you constantly hit “refresh” on your inbox(es), or do you struggle to simply keep up with the deluge of notifications?
Do you have boundaries set around your inboxes — such as only checking them at certain points in the day, setting aside time to plow through to the fabled inbox 0, or even delegating their management to someone else?
However, you answered, do you want it to be that way? Is it working for you? It’s important to note that there are no right answers here — only what works for you and the creative life you want to live.
What is working for you, what’s not working, and what adjustments do you want or need to make regarding your inboxes?