Hello. My name is Renee, and I have an inbox problem. I am unable to maintain a zero inbox at the end of every day.

I used to be a zero inbox kind of girl. I have three email addresses, and every night, each of them used to be empty. Then I started the job I have now. I used to be a traditional classroom teachers, teaching 7th and 8th grade language arts. I had a typical teacher workload. But five years ago, I transitioned to being my school district’s instructional technology resource teacher and my work load changed. In some respects, it got easier — no daily lesson plans to write, no stacks of papers to grade. But my work didn’t get easier, just different. I still had lessons to plan, usually at a teacher’s request to integrate a new technology-based learning tool in their class. I had research to do to be able to share trends and tools with teachers. I had tech support duties to perform. I had meetings to attend. And I got LOTS more email. Instead of being on one email distribution list at my home building, I was put on the email distribution list for all 4 buildings in my district as well as the email list for our district office. Instead of occasional emails from teachers outside my building, I started getting them regularly from teachers all over the district.

And that is where the trouble started. I started getting a LOT of emails. From within the district and from outside as well since I had subscribed to some email newsletters that would help me keep up with all the trends I needed to keep up with to help our teachers.

Now, zero inbox is a thing of the past. Here is what my inboxes look like tonight, and this is typical:

• Work email: 128 unread emails; 410 emails total.
• Personal email: 329 unread emails; no other emails.
• Personal email I use for shopping: 7407 unread emails; no clue how many other emails there are.