A full inbox can make other people’s priorities feel like the natural order of your day.

An inbox is a list of what other people want, arranged by when they happened to want it. Open it first and the day arrives pre-sorted, with someone else’s urgency at the top and your own work nowhere in the order. Nothing has been decided, yet it feels decided, because the queue already looks like a plan.

Before you open the mail tomorrow, write down the one thing you would be glad to have finished by evening. Then read the inbox knowing what it has to compete with. Some of it will still win, and that is fine, but it will have won a comparison rather than a default.