How to Delegate Your Inbox to an Assistant
You're wasting time managing your inbox. Here's how to reclaim your time and position yourself to become even more valuable in the future.
Your inbox is arguably the most important communication tool you have. Even more important than social media.
It tells you the important things you actually need to know: when your next credit card bill is due, whether or not you got the job you’ve been pining for, and when the next happy hour is scheduled for.
Your inbox is the source for much of the information that guides your daily life. And yet, it is also one of the biggest sources of productivity drain in your workday.
According to one survey, the average worker receives 74 emails per day and sends around 26.1 If it takes you around five minutes2 to write an email, that means you’re spending more than two hours per day – 25% of the total workday – in your inbox.
Whether you realize it or not, those emails don’t just cost you time but they sap your attention. If you’re not spending time writing an email, your mind is constantly scanning your inbox to see whether or not the latest ping is important.
The constant buzz of your inbox means you’re not getting as much work done as you think you are. You’re only able to give a task a few minutes of attention here and a few minutes of attention there. Something that should take a couple of hours to complete winds up taking weeks – if not months – to actually finish.
Your inbox is an important tool for productivity but if you don’t manage it properly, it can be a source of distraction and drain.
One way to bring your inbox under control is to outsource. Simply put: if you’re not constantly checking your inbox, it can’t distract you.
By outsourcing email management, you force yourself to create protocols that govern how and when you address emails. These protocols can help you become more efficient by giving you a better process to allocate your time.
Rather than responding to emails as they come in, you’ll develop the discipline to check your inbox on your terms while learning how to delegate low-value administrative work that often gets in the way of higher value, more productive work.
This article will dive into how you can outsource your email. It will recommend developing processes that you can train a virtual assistant to perform. Over time as you refine your processes – and become better at delegation – to build fully automated solutions.
Develop a system to process your inbox.
To get your inbox under control you first need to develop a system to manage it. These are rules that you will need to follow to process your emails.
These rules should be action-oriented so that you can turn your emails into action items. You can learn more about how to turn your inbox into an “action” box here.
Every email management process should start by reducing the amount of emails you need to process in a given day so that you can sort your emails more efficiently.
Reduce the amount of emails you receive.
There’s a good chance you’re getting more emails than you care to receive. Some of these emails might be company-wide blasts while others might be marketing emails sent from companies you follow.
The first thing you’re going to want to do is unsubscribe from as many emails as possible. The fewer emails you receive on a daily basis, the less time you’ll need to spend in your inbox.
Start with emails that want you to purchase something or emails that are notifying you of something that is irrelevant to you.
Here’s an example. I graduated from Syracuse University and am a big fan of Syracuse basketball. I no longer live in Syracuse which means I’m not going to be attending a game anytime soon. This email from Ticketmaster has no business being in my inbox.
Eliminate these emails to prevent them from even getting into your inbox in the first place.
If there are emails you want to keep – like newsletters – you can also bypass your inbox entirely. I do this with my Substack subscriptions.
I forward all of my newsletters to Readwise. This is an external reading app that is a hub for all of my digital reading content.
I check Reader once a week. This allows me to subscribe to things I want to read without cluttering my inbox.
Sort emails into action-oriented folders.
Once you have fewer emails to sort through you can begin processing them. I like to do this based on action and attention.
Anything that requires me to take action – paying a bill – goes into one folder and anything that requires me to pay attention – notification of an upcoming subscription renewal – goes into the attention folder.
This process allows me to quickly check my inbox during the day and sort my emails as I go. I schedule administrative time throughout the week to actually process the emails in the action and attention folders.
As you go through this process, you’ll notice patterns that will allow you to create a tailored system that works for you.
For example, I work from a lot of coffee shops and because I work for myself, my coffee is technically a business expense. I had a special action folder titled ‘Add to Quickbooks’ where I keep my receipts. Once a month I go through this folder and upload my receipts to Quickbooks.
By using action-oriented folders, you create a process where you turn emails into tasks that you – or an assistant – can accomplish. By accomplishing these tasks, you get more work done, freeing up your mental bandwidth to work on more important things.
Delegate your email management system to a virtual assistant.
Once you have a system in place that you understand and can follow, you can teach that system to someone else.
Virtual assistants are professionals that provide administrative support. You can hire someone locally or you can work with a VA based in India or the Philippines.
Working with a VA allows you to reduce the amount of time and energy you spend on low-value work – sorting emails – so you can focus on higher value work – completing projects or winning new business.
Document your process.
To get started, document your process. The easiest way to do this is to record yourself sorting your inbox and following your own process using a tool like Loom.
Here’s an example of how I use Loom to record my email process:
Process Email With Me - September 9, 2024 - Watch Video
Pull the transcript from the recording and feed it into ChatGPT. Tell ChatGPT you need help with process documentation. Ask it to review the transcript and extract information from it to help you document your process.
If you don’t already have a process documentation library, this might be a good time to set one up. I use Notion to store all of my processes, including email management. That way if you need to retrieve a process in the future to revise or share, you know exactly where it’s at.
Here’s what my email process documentation looks like in Notion:
Repeat this process of recording yourself, processing your inbox, pulling the transcript, and having ChatGPT synthesize it a few times. After a couple rounds, you should have enough information to create a succinct process for how you want yourself – and a VA – to manage your inbox.
Hire a virtual assistant.
Once you have a process that you can train someone else to follow, it’s time to look for an assistant. Go to a talent platform to begin your search. These are the most popular ones:
Upwork is a good option for short-term email management while onlinejobs.ph is good if you’re ready to hire someone for a longer period of time.
You can also work with an agency like Athena. This is a good option if you’ve worked with a VA before and are considering bringing on a VA to support a business or personal brand. For the average 9to5 office worker who just wants to outsource email management, this might be more than you need or can justifiably afford.
When you’re ready, post a job description for an email management assistant to the talent platform of your choice. There are two easy ways to do this:
Peruse existing job descriptions and find one to use as a template
Ask ChatGPT to create a job description for you
When you create a job description for a virtual assistant, be as specific as possible. Identify which email management tools you use and your expectations for the position.
The last VA I worked with, I needed help organizing files on Google Drive. To share my login and password with other people I use LastPass. I forgot to add that in my job description. When I assigned the work to the VA, she didn’t know how to use LastPass. She had problems with the tool and wasn’t able to complete the task I had assigned her.
The more specific you are up front, the less opportunities there’ll be for errors later on.
Once your job description is live you’ll get flooded with candidates. Ideally, it shouldn’t take more than a day or two to find a solid assistant.
Evaluating candidates might feel daunting but there are some things you can look for to find the right person:
Do they have experience?
Are they knowledgeable with the software and tools you’ll need them to use?
Did they follow any instructions you provided in the job description?
Can they speak your language proficiently?
There are a lot of people who are willing and capable to be virtual assistants but not all candidates who apply to your role will be a good match. Some might be young in their careers and need extra training support while others might want to manage your inbox their way instead of following your instructions.
In the past I’ve created a survey where I ask applicants to rate themselves on their proficiency using specific tools. I paired this with an assessment of their resume and a review of their portfolio.
I’m going to be honest, I don’t think there’s an easy, one size fits all way to hire a virtual assistant. You have to go through the hiring process, though, to figure out what you don’t know. The more you work with assistants, the more opportunities you’ll have to figure out what works for you.
Onboard your assistant.
After you’ve completed the hiring process and identified an assistant you’d like to work with, it’s time to onboard them. This is where you’ll outline the scope of the project and any expectations you have.
I recommend drafting a work agreement. In this agreement spell out what you’d like the assistant to do, how you’d like their work delivered, and when a project has come to an end.
When you’re just getting started, create 30- or 60-day work agreements. This gives you an opportunity to evaluate your virtual assistant’s performance as well as your performance as a manager. It creates a natural point where you can part ways if you decide to.
Once you and your assistant are on the same page about how you’ll work together, give them access to any accounts you’d like them to manage as well as your process documents. I use LastPass to manage account access but you can also use another password manager or share your password directly with them.
When you hire a virtual assistant you’re going to be inclined to hand everything off to them right from the get go. But with any new employee, it takes time to learn the ropes.
Budget some time in your calendar to train them. This might entail scheduling a Zoom call to answer questions or being available on WhatsApp so they can pin you when they need something. I found my worst experiences working with virtual assistants were those in which I failed to schedule enough time to address issues they had completing my assignments.
Put your assistant to work.
When your assistant is ready to take the reins, let them. You hired them to take email management off your plate, get out of their way and let them do their job.
This is going to look different depending on your needs and their experience.
When I worked with a VA to help me manage my inbox, I had her scan my inbox on my behalf. She flagged important emails for me by sending me a message on WhatsApp and unsubscribing from emails I no longer wanted to receive. She also RSVPed to events and made sure the details were added to my calendar.
Delegating my email to her made me see where my processes worked and where they could improve. I saw patterns I hadn’t seen before which made it easier to create rules to automate some of my emails. I discovered repetitive emails that prompted me to create templates for future use.
The key to delegating administrative work isn’t just to offload work you don’t want to do to someone else. It’s to create a sandbox for you to refine your processes.
The more refined – and simplified – your processes become the easier it will be to maintain. You might continue working with a virtual assistant for the foreseeable future or you might build automations that you can delegate to an AI agent. The better your processes are, the better your workflow and performance will be.
By doing less, you free yourself up to do more over the long-run. How you allocate your time and leverage your intellectual capital are the two assets that you need to harness now to set yourself up for success in the future.
Final takeaway.
If you aren’t delegating some of your work, you need to start doing so ASAP.
For one, it frees up your time. The less time you’re wasting on managing your inbox, the more time you can spend doing more important things: pitching new clients, learning a new skill, or spending time with family.
More important though, virtual assistants can help prepare you to eventually work with AI agents.
In the not-so-distant future, you’re going to be able to outsource most of your non-essential administrative work to a digital assistant. These assistants will use artificial intelligence to complete tasks on your behalf.
To be able to effectively use AI agents, you need to know how to train them to do your work. If you don’t have any of your current processes written down to train a human virtual assistant how on earth will you be able to train an AI agent?
You want to work with a virtual assistant right now because unlike an AI-powered tool, a human is going to give you immediate feedback. They will tell you whether or not your instructions were clear and through working with them you’ll gain invaluable insights to refine your processes making them even more clear.
Email management is a good place to start. It allows you to develop processes, learn how to document them and delegate tasks to an assistant. These are critical skills that you need to practice now so you can be prepared to leverage them in the future.
For Productivity Stack Subscribers
Want to dive deeper into how to work with a VA to manage your inbox?
Watch this workshop on how to set up systems and processes to manage your email.
Then watch this workshop to learn how to hire a virtual assistant.
Each workshop goes through a step-by-step process that you can use for yourself. Become a subscriber to access these workshops.
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https://resources.freeagentcrm.com/work-email-statistics/
https://missiveapp.com/blog/time-spent-on-email#:~:text=hours%20each%20week-,What%20is%20the%20average%20time%20to%20write%20an%20email%3F,also%20influence%20the%20time%20taken