Ah yes, the daily deluge of emails.

They flow in at all hours of the day, fester in our inboxes and end up stressing us out.

So much so that a 2014 study suggested the average professional gets upwards of 120 business emails each day, with that number expected to swell to 140 by 2018.

Like the autumn’s leaves falling into your eaves troughs, those little emails pile up and turn into a huge headache.

Or a heartache for that matter. One California-based study found that constant email checking even leads to a higher heart rate.

Even scarier is coming back to work after vacation only to be weighed down by hundreds of unread messages, all demanding a little slice of your mental energy.

So how does one deal with the growing menace of email glut? 

It all adds up to Inbox Zero

With the rise of email has come dozens of management approaches, apps and so-called hacks.

Perhaps most famous is one from productivity wizard Merlin Mann, who coined the rigorous “Inbox Zero” approach.

"It's not how many messages are in your inbox – It’s how much of your own brain is in that inbox."

“It’s about how to reclaim your email, your atten­tion, and your life. That ‘zero?’ It’s not how many messages are in your inbox–it’s how much of your own brain is in that inbox,” says Mann.

But Mann’s approach requires checking your email several times per day along with a system of folders. If wielded improperly, it can be a major multi-tasking headache for those of us who aren’t hyper organized.

Besides, does anyone still think multi-tasking is a good idea? (Think texting and driving.)

These days, studies suggest that moving between tasks interrupts workflow, with the average person requiring about 23 minutes to refocus after getting distracted.

So, better to deal with all the email in one fell swoop, right?

Welcome to Yesterbox - perhaps the email management system of the future.

Popularized by Tony Hsieh, the flashy CEO of Las Vegas-based Zappos, this approach is novel because it automatically puts a finite cap on the amount of daily emails you have to sift through.

Whatever works?

Essentially, you only have to look at yesterday’s emails, meaning you start each day knowing exactly how many you have to deal with.

For the Vegas-based Hsieh, the approach echoes his city’s famous slogan: Whatever happens in today’s email stays in today’s email—at least until tomorrow.

“There is actually a sense of completion when you're done, which is amazing,” says Hsieh on his website. 

“I would say that on half the days, I'm actually completely done with all my email obligations by noon, which has been an incredibly freeing feeling.”

However, while an email from the boss or a big client is important, not all emails were created equally. 

Enter the concept of Inbox Whatever.

Less a technique than a mindset, the “Whatever” method sounds lazy but is still firmly based in evidence: research suggests that up to 80% of the emails we get are essentially useless. They quite literally are not worth the paper they aren’t even printed on.

Plus, we all know that if something is truly pressing, the sender will follow up with either call you directly or send another email.

Great, more email. Kind of makes you miss your fax machine, doesn’t it?