Take charge of your email: obtain the coveted “inbox zero” through willful ignorance! The inbox zero illusion becomes reality.

, ,

Background:

Many people find the relentless piling up of emails in their inbox to be stressful. There are various approaches for dealing with this. The most well-known is probably “inbox zero,” which recommends triaging emails when they’re relatively new (instead of procrastinating and letting them pile up).

Although “inbox zero” doesn’t require that you should have zero unread emails at all times, it happens to be the case that if you did have zero unread emails, you would have achieved the elusive state of “email nirvana.”

The Issue:

Unfortunately, it can be difficult (and perhaps even counterproductive) to be constantly tending an unruly and ever-growing inbox (Figure 1). But what can be done about it?

Fig. 1: The “unread count” badge claims to be helpful but really just adds stress.

Proposal:

We consider the following: the stress here is entirely caused by a person knowing that they have unread emails that they’ll have to deal with.

However, if a person legitimately doesn’t know that an email exists, it would be impossible for them to be stressed by it. The solution is obvious: just change the email interface so that no unread emails are ever displayed (Figure 2).

Fig. 2: Left (stressful): 297 unread emails! Right (relaxing): nothing to do! If a user legitimately needs to dig through their messages for some reason, they can still find their unread messages in the special “other” category shown at the bottom of the sidebar.

Alternative Hardware-Only Solution:

There’s also the possibility of a hardware-only solution to this issue: a sticker that says “0” on it (Figure 3) that you paste onto your screen to cover up the email “unread count” badge. So simple!

Fig. 3: The hardware prototype has now been successfully demonstrated in real life. Now I know that I have ZERO unread messages. I can feel the tranquility and calmness already.

Conclusion:

Look for this feature to be added to your favorite email client soon!

PROS: Reduces stress for office workers who get a lot of emails.

CONS: Could have negative effects on a person’s long-term survivability in the corporate world.

Thanks to J.D.L. for this excellent idea!

Originally published 2026-07-06.