The Yesterbox Revolution: Zappos CEO Shows How to Finally Reach Inbox Zero

Picture your ideal workday. You‘re in flow, making progress on meaningful work, free from distraction. You end the day with a satisfied stretch, excited to unplug and recharge.

Now picture your actual typical workday. If you‘re like most knowledge workers, a huge chunk is likely consumed by email. A quick check first thing spirals into an hour and by 5pm, you have even more unread messages than you started with—all while trying to juggle the rest of your responsibilities.

It‘s an exhausting hamster wheel…but what if there was a better way? What if you could process your entire inbox to zero every single day, often before lunch? And what if it was as simple as changing when you check your email?

That‘s the promise of Yesterbox, the email management system created by Tony Hsieh, the visionary CEO who built Zappos into a $1 billion company renowned for its stellar customer service—all while reading every single customer email himself.

The Myth of Inbox Zero

Inbox zero—the state of having no unread emails—has long been held up as the holy grail of digital productivity. The idea is that an empty inbox means you‘re on top of your work, responsive, and not letting anything slip through the cracks.

There are countless articles with tricks for getting to inbox zero, from religiously archiving to using military-precision folders. But for most of us, the standard approach of checking and responding to email as it comes in throughout the day is a losing battle.

A McKinsey study found the average professional spends 28% of the workday reading and answering emails, around 2.6 hours. Another study from Atlassian suggests its even higher at 3.1 hours. And a survey from Adobe found millennials spend even longer at 6.3 hours per day.

Perhaps you can relate. You check email continuously from wake-up to bedtime, trying valiantly to keep up with the influx. Yet often by 5pm, the unread count is even higher than it was at 9am. It‘s like playing a futile game of whack-a-mole.

This constant context-switching exacts a toll. Researchers at UC Irvine found that after getting interrupted, it takes people an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to their original task. Over a day, those interruptions really add up.

Not only is inbox zero a myth for most, it‘s actually counterproductive. Constantly monitoring email splinters our attention and shatters our ability to do focused deep work. We mistake being busy for being productive. But there‘s a better way.

The Yesterbox Approach

As CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh received 1,000-2,000 emails per day. His solution? Yesterbox—a system where "your to-do list each day is simply yesterday‘s email inbox."

Here‘s how it works:

1. Schedule 2-3 hours first thing each morning for processing email
2. Use filters/searches to view only emails from yesterday and before (not today)
3. Process all of yesterday‘s emails until you reach inbox zero
4. Respond to emails that will take less than 10 minutes first
5. Set aside longer emails and tackle those last
6. Don‘t check email again until tomorrow morning

Seem too simple to be effective? Let‘s unpack why this approach is so transformational.

The Power of Constraints

Yesterbox works by introducing constraints—both time constraints and filtering what you allow yourself to see. Like a 30-day fitness challenge or an MIT Challenge, having clearly defined parameters eliminates decision fatigue and channels your energy.

Parkinson‘s Law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." We‘ve all had the experience of a task magically taking the entire 2 hours we budgeted for it when realistically we could have finished in 30 focused minutes.

By scheduling a 2-3 hour block each morning for email, you ensure it won‘t eat up more of your day than that. It creates a hard constraint that forces you to maximize efficiency. There‘s no room for mindless scrolling and dawdling.

Progress and Completion

The bigger mental shift of Yesterbox is treating yesterday‘s emails as a concrete to-do list, separate from the neverending influx of today‘s messages. Rather than experiencing your inbox as this amorphous, anxiety-producing entity, you have a clearly defined set of tasks to check off.

This leverages the Zeigarnik effect, our brain‘s craving for closure. We get tremendous satisfaction from completely finishing a collection of tasks. Psychologically, it feels very different to chip away at an endlessly refilling inbox versus powering through a static list.

Hsieh describes it as immensely freeing and motivating:

There‘s a sense of progress as I process each email and a sense of completion when I‘m done. It‘s almost a challenge to see how quickly I can get through the previous day‘s inbox each day. Then the rest of the day is gravy.

Imagine confidently marking "Clear yesterday‘s inbox" on your to-do list each day before moving onto focused project work and meetings. It creates a flywheel of momentum.

Training Responsiveness

A common objection is that Yesterbox would frustrate people who need a faster response. But as Hsieh explains, "If it‘s an emergency that can‘t wait 24-48 hours…they‘ll find other ways to contact me."

Counterintuitively, Yesterbox can actually improve your reputation for responsiveness because it forces clarity and intentionality. By checking email at clearly defined times, you train people to send you more thoughtful, complete requests.

Compare that to someone who sporadically checks email all day, alternatively delaying and reacting. You never quite know when you‘ll hear back so you ping them over and over. It‘s like the difference between calling a restaurant during the lunch rush versus placing an online order for a designated pickup window.

With Yesterbox, you can still flag VIP contacts like your boss, CEO or best customers for faster responses as needed. The key is being proactive in communicating and training expectations. An auto-responder message along the lines of "Thanks for your email. To be most responsive and productive, I check emails once a day and aim to reply to all messages within 24 hours. If your request is more urgent, please call or text" can be surprisingly effective.

At Zappos, Hsieh‘s Yesterbox approach powered an average email response time of just 4 hours despite receiving 1,000+ emails per day, with 80% of replies sent within 1-2 hours. The company still won numerous awards for world-class customer service, from the Customer Service Hall of Fame to the top 10 of Fortune‘s Best Companies to Work For.

Achieving Yesterbox

Ready to implement Yesterbox and reclaim your focus? Here‘s how to set it up in 3 steps.

Step 1: Schedule Your Email Time Blocks

Based on the sheer volume of email you receive, budget 2-3 hours per day to process yesterday‘s messages to zero. Schedule these at clearly defined times, ideally first thing in the morning, and protect them like any other important meeting.

Resist the temptation to check your inbox outside these windows. Turn off email notifications on your computer and phone. Log out of your inbox tab if needed. If you absolutely must do a quick scan for urgent items, do it purposefully without engaging in any back-and-forth.

Step 2: Filter for Yesterday‘s Emails

Most email clients have an easy way to show only messages from a certain timeframe:

• In Gmail, use the advanced search "before:YYYY/MM/DD"
• In Outlook, click "Filter Email" and select "Yesterday"
• In Apple Mail, click the chevron next to the folder and select "All Messages" with a date range
• Superhuman has a default "Yesterday" toggle
• Hey has a "Previously Seen" view

If your client doesn‘t have this feature, you can simply create a folder or tag called "To Process" and drag all of yesterday‘s emails left at the end of each day into it for your morning Yesterbox session.

To make it even easier, set up a recurring filter to automatically surface only messages before today. In Gmail, you could create a bookmark with the URL:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/before%3A2023%2F04%2F19

Just remember to change the date string each day.

Step 3: Process to Zero

With your 2-hour Yesterbox block scheduled and yesterday‘s emails filtered, now it‘s time to process. Your goal is always the same: get through all messages by the end of that time block so you can mentally check it off and move on.

I recommend starting with the emails you can dispatch most quickly, like 1-line replies, to build momentum. Flag anything that will take longer than 10 minutes with a star or move it to a "Long Replies" folder and save those for the end so they don‘t derail you.

Use the Email Game approach of setting a timer and not allowing yourself to exceed 2-5 minutes per message at first pass. You can always circle back to the longer, more complex ones.

If you know you‘ll need to take action on an email later in the week, snooze it to return to your Yesterbox list for that day. The key is getting it scheduled and out of your mental RAM.

Hsieh advises immediately archiving anything you‘ve opened so you‘re only looking at unread messages. The Mailbox/Superhuman approach of using keyboard shortcuts and swiping to quickly archive, snooze or reply can shave off significant time.

Staying on Track

Sticking with Yesterbox takes some discipline and adjustment, especially at first. Some tips:

• Proactively communicate your new email schedule to colleagues. Provide alternative ways to reach you for true emergencies, like a phone call or SMS.
• Be intentional about crafting effective email subject lines since people will now be reading them 24 hours later. A vague "Quick question" won‘t cut it; "Agenda for 10am meeting tomorrow" will elicit more thoughtful replies.
• Liberally unsubscribe, filter, mute conversations and aggressively curate what makes it into your inbox in the first place. Use SaneBox or Gmail tabs to divert newsletters and other non-essential items into designated folders for processing later.
• If something can be resolved in less than 2 minutes, just do it right then instead of deferring. Getting things off your plate will feel great and those completions add up.
• To tackle an email you‘ve been avoiding, set a 5-minute timer and just start. Commit to making some progress and you‘ll usually find it‘s not as painful as you thought.
• If you get derailed and miss a day, don‘t beat yourself up. Yesterbox is about progress, not perfection. Just resolve to get back on track tomorrow.

Beyond Email

While incredibly effective for email, at its core, Yesterbox is about being more intentional with how you spend your time and attention:

• Schedule focused sprints for important activities, protect that time, and train others‘ expectations for your responsiveness
• Theme your days/weeks to work more efficiently by context instead of scattering your effort
• Embrace the power of discrete to-do lists you can complete over never-ending streams of stimuli
• Default to asynchronous communication to safeguard undisrupted deep work

With just 2-3 hours per day, you can achieve true inbox zero while still managing thousands of emails. You‘ll be less stressed, distracted, and reactive. Most importantly, you‘ll free up massive space for the meaningful work that moves the needle.

Give Yesterbox an honest try for just 2 weeks and see how it feels. You might just find your ideal workday is within reach.