… the number of emails that you could, in principle, receive, is essentially infinite. But … the number of messages you’ll have time to read properly, reply to, or just make a considered decision to delete is strictly finite. So getting better at processing your email is like getting faster and faster at climbing up an infinitely tall ladder: you’ll feel more rushed, but no matter how quickly you go, you’ll never reach the top. In ancient Greek myth, the gods punish King Sisyphus for his arrogance by sentencing him to push an enormous boulder up a hill, only to see it roll back down again, an action he is condemned to repeat for all eternity. In the contemporary version, Sisyphus would empty his inbox, lean back and take a deep breath, before hearing a familiar ping: “You have new messages…”
It gets worse though because … every time you reply to an email, there’s a good chance of provoking a reply to that email, which itself may require another reply, and so on and so on, until the heat death of the universe. At the same time, you’ll become known as someone who responds promptly to email, so more people will consider it worth their while to message you to begin with …
So it’s not simply you never get through your email, it’s that the process of ‘getting through your email’ actually generates more email.
