AI and work · 2 min read

Inbox zero was never the goal

I built a workflow so good I stopped dreading my inbox. That turned out to be the problem.

As I’m sure many of you have too, I built a workflow to triage our larger number of incoming messages. It’s brilliant. I no longer dread opening Zendesk or my inbox; I simply don’t look at it any more. The tool makes excellent suggestions for replies, and at the click of a button I can approve them. For 90% of messages this is good enough. The other 10% I can just edit by hand. Finally, inbox zero is within reach!

The problem is, inbox zero was never the goal. Inbox zero doesn’t scale and grow a business.

The intersection of agents and my desire for order seems to have sucked me into reactive busy work.

Part two: what I do instead.

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