A modern fairy tale: the Inbox of Horrors

Once there was a princess.

The princess lived in a beautiful castle with many rooms, and lots of interesting things to see and do.

Life in the castle was happy.

Except...

...that in a tiny room at the top of the tallest tower, the princess had an Inbox of Horrors.

The princess tried as hard as she could to keep the Inbox of Horrors under control. She kept popping up to the tower to keep an eye on it, even though this meant that she couldn't properly concentrate on any of the other things she was trying to do.

She tried methodically opening, reading, and replying to every Horror - but this seemed to just attract more Horrors to the Inbox.

She tried many ways of ordering the Horrors - but the Horrors just would not keep in order.

She tried allocating particular times of the day to look at the Horrors - but leaving them unattended for any period of time just seemed to give them time to multiply, and they were ever so noisy when she opened the box.

Eventually, the only room the princess ever visited was that tiny room at the top of the tower. She spent all her time trying to keep the Horrors under control - but they still weren't happy. And she wasn't doing any of the interesting things that she wanted to do.

She asked her wise fairy godmother what she should do. The Horrors weren't happy; she wasn't happy; she couldn't work out what to do.

The wise fairy godmother thought for a few minutes.

She suggested that the princess reread the Productivity Ninja book which she was so excited about a few months ago. The princess agreed that this might be a good idea, but that it was hard to concentrate on reading whilst sitting on top of the Inbox to keep the noisy Horrors inside.

She reassured the princess that almost everyone had an Inbox of Horrors at the top of their tallest tower, and that almost everyone felt the same way about it.

The princess felt a bit better, but thought it was ridiculous that everyone was spending their time worrying about keeping an Inbox of Horrors under control. She asked the fairy godmother why we couldn't all just stop sending Horrors.

The wise fairy godmother thought for a bit longer.

Sadly, even the fairy godmother wasn't wise enough to answer that question.

But she did at least wave her wand and say a few magic words, which was enough to neatly order, file and flag all the Horrors in the inbox...which kept them happy for the rest of the day.