How much time do you spend in your inbox?

A few years ago, I realized I was spending about 15 hours per week on emails. It's crazy to think about how I felt that was normal.

The worst part is many people still do that today.

It might not seem obvious, but if you add up the 15 minutes here and there, the reviewing of an email thread, the crafting of a reply, and the getting sidetracked because of an email notification, time adds up fast.

The truth is, in a weird way, your inbox is just someone else’s to-do list.

It’s essentially someone asking you for your time.

• Angelo, can you send me that website you mentioned?

• Angelo, are you looking for video editors?

• Angelo, are you hiring for this role at WISK?

This doesn't even take into account the vast amount of newsletters, cold emails, billing-related emails, etc.

Before you know it, you might find yourself doing a bunch of things you did not even plan on doing, and your “to-do list” has doubled in size for that day.

Now the part that sucks is even if you become a master at saying no to things, to say no, you still have to read the email, think about it, and craft a reply - which takes time.

So, about three years ago, I hired a virtual assistant—and it’s been one of the best investments I’ve ever made.

I’ll write a separate post about how you can leverage a virtual assistant to do many things for you, but for this post, I want to focus on taking over your email.

So, first things first, can you use ChatGPT or some AI tool? Yes, but at least for now, it still requires time.

Time for you to copy/paste your email, have a good enough prompt to write it in your style, review it, and hit send.

Even if you can streamline some of that, you would still need to take time to read the email and decide where it needs to be classified.

So here is how I trained my virtual assistant.

She checks my emails 2x per day and organizes them into the following 7 labels/folders:

1. ! - Angelo

2. ! - Newsletters

3. ! - Responded

4. ! - To Respond

5. ! - Receipts

6. ! - Review

7. ! - Unsubscribe

Description for reach label/folder:

1. Angelo—> This is my focused inbox. She puts anything that I should answer directly in this inbox. Generally, these are the most important emails.

2. Newsletters—> This is where she drags informational emails that are generally automated. Think KPI reports, niche-specific newsletters, notifications from my condo association, etc. Things that I consider useful but are automated and do not need a reply.

3. Responded —> These are the emails that she responded to for me. In the beginning, she can leave the replies as draft emails so you can review them.

4. To respond —> This is the folder where I will drag emails that she put in “! - Angelo” that I think she could reply to. So the idea is that if I see something in my inbox and I think she could have replied, I will drag it here. Then she will know for next time you can respond to that type of email or person.

5. Receipts —> Simply drag receipts here. Think Amazon, credit cards, bank statements, or anything that is a receipt drag here.

6. Review —> This is where you can drag emails you are not sure where to put. This way, when we have a check-in call, we can review these together and put them in the right folders.

7. Unsubscribe —> This is where I will drag emails that I want to unsubscribe to. Go through the emails, click on the “unsubscribe link” at the bottom, and make sure to unsubscribe.

Tip: A good VA will also set up filters for you. For example, if you have a monthly subscription to a service, it will automatically go to the receipts folder.

One of the key parts to really nail this is to have a daily meeting with your VA to go over your email review and calendar. Before you know it, your VA will be fully independent and manage your entire email and calendar.

I went from spending 15+ hours per week on email to less than 2 hours per week, and so can you.