I recently discovered Yesterbox (a way to handle your email) via The Verge.
The premise is straightforward: Only work with yesterday’s email when checking and processing your Inbox. It may sound unusual, but after trying it, I know it’s simple, effective, and works.
Why?
The number of emails I’ll receive today is unknown (three more emails probably arrived in my inbox as you read this), but yesterday’s email is finite. Knowing how many emails to process, I schedule my time accordingly and can allot time for those more complex email replies. No ever-growing inbox, no endless email feeling. Instead, progress and accomplishment. And yes, I might peek at today’s email, especially if I expect something important, but most things can wait 24 hours.
If you’re swamped by your email, give Yesterbox a go.
To see only yesterday’s email in your Inbox type this into the search bar:
before: yyyy-mm-dd after:yyyy-mm-dd is:inbox
For example, if today is the 1st of August the search query for yesterday’s email will look like this:
before: 2024-08-01 after:2024-07-30 is:inbox