Mailbox

The first thing I did after becoming a smartphone owner in late 2009 was check my email. There were no new messages when I checked that morning, but that didn't matter: After years of using feature phones, nothing seemed more exciting to me than just having the option to check my email on the go. Over time, though, this proved to be more of a curse than a blessing to my email inbox.

I've never considered myself the most digitally organized person, but even I noticed my inbox spiral out of control after getting a smartphone as my friends and I started sending each other more messages and I forwarded myself more articles, tweets and reminders for work.

Within a few months, I went from having hundreds of unread messages at any given time to thousands. Even the best email apps on the market only made it easier to check and send messages, not to organize them.

That's why my ears perked up a couple months ago when I first heard about Mailbox, an as yet unreleased iPhone app from Orchestra — the startup behind the popular to-do list app of the same name — which promised to help users keep their inbox at zero by introducing a scheduling option for when to read and respond to incoming messages.

So for instance, you can opt to have a message resent to your inbox later that night when you get home from work or over the weekend when you have more time to respond.