For eight straight weeks, my inbox was empty. At least, it might as well have been; I wasn’t checking it. I was on sabbatical.
Having been back from sabbatical a few weeks, I’m watching my inbox get clogged with those difficult to answer e-mails, those large tasks, and just some plain junk.
Inbox Zero is a method of handling an inbox so that it never gets very full, in fact, it can be empty.
43 Folders has a series of posts on the concept.