Dear {whoever is reading},
When Gmail released 'labels', I thought it was the end of an era. I was of the opinion that adding the ability to just search for something was going to stop people from consciously manage their inbox. Prior to labels, most email platforms allowed users to create folders and organize emails into folders and it wasn't as easy to search your inbox. This forced the behaviour of keeping your inbox organized.
Fast forward 20 years and my inbox is a dreadful place to visit. Why? I have 1999+ unread emails that I have no intent of reading.
However there's have been a 'few changes' in my life and the world over the past 20 years. My life has been filled with a flourishing career, a family, the winding journey of being a founder. The world has embraced email as natively as air and water - especially companies who see your inbox as a valuable place to situate their marketing materials in to get your attention. My inbox has welcomed many hundreds of newsletters, some from real people and many from brands disguising as newsletters. Not to forget every single reminder notification you get when you have to do a task like making a payment, receive a message on LinkedIn and a notification after you've completed the action. It's safe to say that your inbox is a giant to-do list that someone else created for you and you have no control over it.
I used to try and keep my inbox organized, worry that I might miss an important email from someone - but over the past few years I have noticed myself caring less about staying on top of my inbox as the primary place for communication but see it more as a place to be notified of my transactions with the world - calendar reminders, purchase confirmations, notifications from services.
The role of my inbox has transitioned from the system of communication to the system of information to the system of notification.
This doesn't mean it isn't important. It just means that at this point in my life, it's the role I have assigned to it. It could be different a year or two from today.
A lot of my communication - with friends and family - has moved to one to one messages, Whatsapp groups Instagram forwards. I am not the greatest example of someone who is keeps in touch with their network (that's something I need to work on) but this is the state of my communication patterns now.
Would I like to be the person who sends and receives long thoughtful emails back and forth from the people I treasure in my life? Yes absolutely - there's nothing more invigorating than reading a heartfelt 'letter' from a connection knowing they invested a lot of time and thought into it.
But I accept your that era has ended, for most people. Email is now a transactional place, where you may find a few 'gems of communication' - similar to how letters, once looked forward to - are now just direct mail that goes straight from your physical mailbox into the paper shredder.
Lots of companies are trying to reinvent email - Superhuman, Hey, Cora, Notion and most recently Micro. However, the pain point that most are solving for is "managing your inbox" - the same problem Gmail was trying to solve for when they introduced labels.
I wonder if there's anyone trying to make email a place for thoughtful personal communication again? (kinda like how Medium, Substack, etc brought back long form writing in the age of bite-sized media).
Thank you for reading this far.
Yours sincerely,
Gaurabh