Merlin Mann's 2006 doctrine of processing every email to an empty inbox — the 'zero' being, he insisted, the amount of attention the inbox should hold, not the number of messages, a distinction that nobody kept. Peaked around 2012 as a productivity religion and is dying because the inbox won. The record notes that people who have achieved Inbox Zero tell you, and that people who have 41,000 unread emails also tell you, with more peace.
You were there or you weren't. I remember the first week of Inbox Zero — 2006, roughly — and the specific feeling that everyone had agreed on a joke overnight without a meeting.
Small fix: the peak year is right but the peak was shorter than a year — closer to six weeks. The rest of 2012 was people explaining it.
The record notes that the phrase now appears mostly in the form 'I don't believe in inbox zero', and that this is said by people with the red badge showing five digits, and that they are, in their way, at peace.
What does it mean? Write it the way you would say it out loud.
