Zach Schonfeld: Why we need 'Email Debt Forgiveness Day'

The best solution to the 'reply-later trap' may not be an app or tech innovation. It's a holiday. Photo / Thinkstock

First of all, I'm sorry. I meant to respond to your email ages ago. I even started typing a reply once. But I got distracted by a YouTube video of huskies howling, then fell asleep with my laptop next to me in bed.

I have, on any given day, between 10 and 30 unread messages in my inbox. Which seems mild, except that a) they're not really unread and b) most have been sitting there for weeks or even months. (Do emails have expiration dates? Do they go bad?)

It's not that I don't care about the notes that land in the mark-unread vortex. Often, it's that I care too much: I spend weeks waiting for the time to sit and draft a thoughtful reply-and then it's too late. Replying would be weird. If I do, I preface it with a polite lie, like "I only just saw this" (almost universally untrue) or "I don't check this account often" (I set up a forwarding service long ago).

Email is tyranny. According to one 2012 report, knowledge workers spend as much as 11 hours of a 40-hour workweek just reading and answering email. And how much more time do we spend merely thinking about replies yet to be sent? Entrepreneur Esther Dyson put it best when she wrote that each email "represents a task-something to read, a query to answer, a meeting to schedule, a bill to pay, a request to fulfill or deny." I emailed Dyson for further comment, but she didn't respond, which I guess proves her point.

But the best solution to the reply-later trap may not be an app or tech innovation. It's a holiday. I floated the idea last year on Twitter, in a moment of frustration.

PJ Vogt recently had the same idea (withering inboxes think alike) but a different name, and, unlike me, he took action. Vogt, who hosts the internet-themed podcast Reply All, and co-host Alex Goldman declared April 30 "Email Debt Forgiveness Day", encouraging listeners to send any email response they've been putting off "without any apologies or explanations for all the time that has lapsed." The pair then invited them to leave them voice mails with the best played on air, and the response was overwhelming.

"Everybody that I've talked to has immediately got it," says Vogt. "I thought it would just be for anxious people. But everyone who's a human being who's used a computer understood a need for this."

Vogt himself has 1138 unread emails. "It's random people reaching out for advice," he says. "Friends. A lot of times it's after someone says something nice and I felt like I didn't know how to adequately respond."

Once, he struggled to respond to an email from his therapist. "I was like, man, if I can't write this guy back, there's probably no hope for me."

But it's usually not anyone he's likely to see in person. "I don't answer those emails either, but when I see the person I just apologise profusely. I don't know that that satisfies anybody. At least then I feel like I don't have to send the email."

From the voice mails he's gotten from listeners, Vogt has heard dozens of tales of Email Avoidance Anxiety Disorder. "There are some examples where somebody has a very thorny emotional problem and it's hard to write the email, and the person on the other end probably is wondering why they haven't gotten the email," he says. "But most of the stories you hear, a) it's very likely the other person doesn't care and b) the email you have to send doesn't have to be very good."

Which is what I'll remind myself when I eventually get around to writing replies to the many unread emails in my inbox. That will mean digging up and acknowledging a dozen or so neglected messages, some as old as six or eight months. There's the one from an old friend, recounting a concert in detail. Another is from a potential source for a story I wanted to write but couldn't find the news peg for. I'll respond to your note, too. I'm sorry I didn't get to it earlier. I only just saw it...

- Canvas / Newsweek