Why You’re Probably Failing Despite Doing Almost Everything Right

In 2007, Merlin Mann introduced Inbox Zero, a technique to process and organize emails that would help people reach — and maintain — zero unread emails in their inboxes.

The concept spread like wildfire across the corporate world. Finally, here seemed a plausible solution for a long-standing problem of managing emails, which often pulled people away from work and caused tremendous anxiety.

Books got written on the subject. Articles got published. Everyone was talking about Inbox Zero. A Google search for “how to get to inbox zero” presents over 18 million results today.

People suggested various tips and hacks: Create folders, categories, and tags. Mass delete your 22,301 unread emails and start afresh. Batch your email timings and check them just twice each day.

These shortcuts worked for a while. But soon, people tried to respond to each email as soon as it arrived so that their unread email count remained at zero. As a result, their emails either added to recipients’ confusion or led to more emails in return. Slowly, unread emails grew from 100 to 1040, to 23,150. And people spent more time in their email inboxes than on getting work done.

Experts declared that Inbox Zero doesn’t work in such loud voices that Mann came on the record to clear the air. People had taken the concept of Inbox Zero literally, he said.

Inbox Zero doesn’t literally mean having zero emails in your inbox. That’s impossible because emails will keep coming.

It means building a process to ensure that your outgoing emails are more than the incoming ones. Bringing tasks to their conclusions was more important than having a clean inbox.

“I think we would all agree it’s insane to act like a Viagra ad or a Bitcoin deposit ad is as important as an email from your boss. But have we really accepted that?” Mann asked.

What Mann meant was that we treat every email that’s about as useful as a Viagra or Bitcoin ad the same way we treat an email from our boss. And this leads to a culture where we focus more on the emails instead of the aspects that cause them, like appointments, tasks, and reference materials.

Don’t take things literally.

Taking things literally is often a bad idea.

Too often, we take something at its face value because we want to avoid the burden of thinking. Or we interpret what we see and hear in ways that align with our beliefs and values. Or we quickly agree with an idea because it sounds like an easy way out.

What happens next? You know as well as I do.

We limit our understanding of how things work. In turn, this limits our potential to make progress. And not making progress doesn’t just lead to stagnation; it also leads to regression, meaning we become dumber.

We waste time arguing on the internet about topics we barely know, which limits our ability to build a deep understanding of things.

And we get accustomed to waiting for orders, to being told what to do, which, especially at work, makes us prone to get replaced by someone cheaper and eventually, by machines.

Consider two examples:

The advice to focus on your strengths instead of your weaknesses. People often take this as an excuse to never confront their (or others’) deficiencies. But that’s not what it means. The advice means that if you’re an attacker in a football team, don’t try to be a defender. Instead, address deficiencies that impede the full flowering of your strength.

Anything you see or hear is incomplete for three reasons, as Daniel Bamberger highlighted.

First, the limitation of language. People’s vocabulary doesn’t do full justice to how they feel about love, spirit, joy, grief, and beauty. This means they cannot explain their world through language.

Second, people’s view of any event is often subjective, based on their experience of the world. This aspect gets captured by the phrase, “Is your red the same as my red?” What works for them might not work for you and vice versa.

Finally, context plays a huge impact. Life is not a mathematical equation with a single right answer. Taking things literally dismisses the deeper implied meaning, which, in turn, creates more problems than it solves.

Think before you act.

Your life will be better if you think more and act less. (Yes, even inaction is positive action sometimes.)

You can put our initial impressions to the test instead of taking them at face value. You can think twice to choose which fire to douse instead of jumping into the fire without thinking. You can apply concepts to understand them better instead of judging them based on others’ views.

This will reduce breakdowns in communication. It will make you stop waiting for a magic charm to change your life. You’ll argue less, understand better, and become wiser.

We’re the most dominant species on earth because our neocortex — the part of the brain that deals with logic, reason, and rationale — is developed the most as compared to other species.

Let’s use it to our benefit.