GrexIt’s InboxWhiz Keeps You From Obsessively Checking Your Gmail (By Hiding It From You)

GrexIt, the company behind the email collaboration tools for Google Apps users, is out with a new product today designed to address our collective email addiction (or OCD, as the company puts it.) The startup is launching an email add-on for Gmail and Google Apps users called InboxWhiz which allows you to schedule when your email arrives in your inbox, thereby quelling your Pavlovian response to the “ding” and alerts that accompany the arrival of new messages.

The idea that you should only check email a few times per day at specific intervals is one of the methods touted for dealing with inbox overload, as well as for reaching the so-called nirvana known as “inbox zero.” But it’s hard to resist reading those new emails when they just keeping showing up.

That’s where the GrexIt InboxWhiz add-on comes in. Once installed, it automatically creates a filter in your Gmail or Google Apps inbox that sends all the incoming emails into a folder labeled “Inboxwhiz.” They’re still there if you absolutely have to find one – you know, after receiving the urgent phone call, where someone shouts: “DID YOU GET MY EMAIL?”

At whichever intervals you configure, InboxWhiz will relocate the emails from the folder back into your inbox, ready to be dealt with. The company tested the extension with around a 100 users before today’s launch, and according to GrexIt founder Niraj Ranjan Rout, they were surprised to find out that even though testers knew about the folder’s existence, it didn’t cause them to keep peeking to see what they were missing. “The tool is effective even with the user knowing this,” Rout says. It seems we really are just conditioned to respond to those alerts, as it turns out.

Rout adds that in the future, the system will add a white-listing feature, so you can make sure not to miss emails from the boss, for example. This puts it in similar territory as AwayFind, though it’s clearly meant to be a simpler system, as AwayFind includes auto-responders, SMS and voice call alerts, mobile apps, and more.

You can try InboxWhiz for yourself, from here.