I’m terrible at managing my inbox. I have folders for certain essential things, like travel. But the rest of it…

I keep emails because I intend to come back to them. When I have uninterrupted time. When I can think. When I’m in the right headspace. You can guess how often that moment arrives.

So yes. My inbox is scarily huge.

On the face of it, you might say I have organization “challenges.” But that isn’t quite true. Behavioral economics has a cleaner explanation—decision avoidance:

⓵ First, present bias. Future-me will be calmer, clearer, more available. So I hand her the decision and keep moving.

⓶ Then there’s information avoidance. Because some emails aren’t “emails.” They’re invitations to commit, respond, say no, say yes, make a trade-off, e.g., make a decision. So I leave them sitting there. Not because I forgot (ok, sometimes I do) but because I don’t want to choose yet. I’m going to “think about it.”

That combination is basically how my inbox becomes a holding tank for unmade choices. And then comes the part that keeps me from fixing it:

⓷ Choice overload. Once the pile is big enough, even starting to clean it up feels like a major decision. What do I tackle first? What if I miss something important? What if I accidentally delete the one message I’ll need later? So, I don’t begin at all or make a half-hearted attempt at it. And if this is how I postpone lower-stakes decisions in my inbox, it’s probably how I’m postponing higher-stakes ones, too.

This is one of the sneakier forms of stuck: Not dramatic. Not obvious. Just a growing layer of “later” that quietly drains your attention and energy and makes everything feel heavier than it should.

‍Because “later” isn’t a time. It’s a decision you keep postponing.

So if you’ve got an overflowing inbox of career or leadership decisions — the kind you keep meaning to come back to “when you have time to focus”—try this:
⓵ Pick one. Name the decision that’s underneath it.
⓶ Make the smallest version of that decision—then move on.

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