Why 95% of your inbox is someone else's agenda, not yours

Someone sent Emma Mills a DM that stopped her in her tracks: "I hate email with a passion. How do I get rid of it so I never see another email again?"

This solo episode is the full, honest answer.

Emma — founder of Mi-PA and someone who spent an entire week in Milan training for a marathon without once opening her inbox — shares the exact mindset shifts and practical system that means email no longer runs her day. She covers the four shifts every business owner needs to make, why AI tools only scratch the surface, and the simple three-folder structure that lets her assistant handle everything so Emma only ever sees what genuinely needs her attention.

She also shares the story of a business owner leading a team of 80 — who was still personally managing 5,000 unread emails. The problem isn't the inbox. It's the belief that you need to be in it.

What you'll take away:

• Why 95% of your inbox is someone else's agenda — and how to stop letting it dictate your day
• The 4 mindset shifts that will transform your relationship with email
• Why AI is a small improvement, not the solution
• The three-folder system Emma's assistant uses to manage her inbox entirely
• How to run a business (and a marathon) without looking at your emails
• What to do if you don't have an assistant yet — and why it's the highest-leverage hire you'll make

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Focus on the Fun Stuff, the podcast for business owners who want to build something they actually love. I'm your host, Emma Mills, seven-figure founder of MyPA, the UK's award-winning virtual PA support business. And since 2008, MyPA has helped thousands of business owners buy back their time, get out of the weeds, and focus on what matters most. And every week I'm sharing my own journey and interviewing business owners who've been exactly where you are. I'm bringing you practical tactics, real strategies to help you build a business that works for you, not the other way around. I got a question on Instagram in my DMs the other day, which I thought, gonna record a podcast episode on that. That is a good one. And the question, the the message dead brief, and it said to me, I'm just gonna read it so I get it exactly as it was. It said, I have a question. I hate email with a passion. How can I get rid of it so that I never see another email again? Well, honestly, same. Um, though I'm gonna go through how I do that to help today. And um, I mean, who doesn't feel like that about email? I can't think of many, to be honest. You open your inbox, you know those emails that completely shift the mood for the whole day. The ones that you'd wished you hadn't opened and read. Like I don't know anybody who loves their email inbox. So today's episode is for the person that sent me that message, and it's for everybody that opens their inbox the first thing and just feels their soul leave their body. Today we're gonna do some just a couple of mindset shifts around your inbox and how you how you make it so that you never have to see another email again. Okay, so first off, I think it's important to address a couple of mindset shifts for inbox. I mean, it's quite interesting, like we've only really had in email for 25 years, is it now? 20, 30 years? Oh my god, 30 years. That's longer than I thought. But it's a new thing that we've had to deal with. And I think at first it was a novelty. Um, I think in the middle it was like we can all get more done quicker, we can communicate faster. And I think now the tail end of it, it's just a pain. Um, people like some of our clients, some of the things I've seen on prospect calls or people that have asked for help who have got thousands of unread emails, and just to even start wading through it just feels like way too much. So I think it's really important first to just get a mindset shift around inbox. Yes, stuff will drop into there, that is important. I think for a lot of people, 90% of it isn't any of that, and you end up wasting time via just triaging, deleting, scrolling, just having a look. And I think the thing that really helped me was the first time I ever heard the phrase 95% of what lands in your inbox is somebody else's priority. It is not yours. They it's really interesting. Like anybody can send you anything they like and it will land into your inbox, and now it's on your table, your shoulders to do something with to reply. And so many others, so many business owners, set our own deadlines or thoughts around how quickly that reply has to be, or how how much just because it's landed in, you have to reply to it straight away. And I think as soon as I heard that 95% of what is in my inbox is something that somebody else has decided is important right now, it doesn't mean that it's important in my day right now. And I think the more that we get that mindset shift first, it starts to make the rest of it a lot easier. Because I know most business owners have a real attachment to their inbox in that for a few different reasons. They've never had anybody help them with it before. What if things go missing? How do I know where everything is? It's gonna feel uneasy if it looks empty. Like, what does that mean? Is nothing good happening or is anything bad happening? Why is it empty? Um, and we get so used to superhero syndrome, doing all the things, responding to all the things. Sometimes it's just a mindset, mindset shift to break out of. So I think like point number one, let's just understand that we've now got this piece of technology where people can send you requests, it's important to them. It doesn't mean it has to be important to you, it doesn't mean you have to respond straight away, it doesn't mean you have to drop everything and do it now. There'll be some people listening to this and going, yeah, but actually, in my business, some things are urgent. Believe me, if things are really, really urgent, there will be other ways to find you. There will be phone calls, WhatsApps. If something's truly, truly urgent, people will find another way apart from email. So I think it's really helped me that just to go, it's just an email inbox, it's not the end of the world. There are bigger things that I should be focusing on as the owner of the business. So I'm gonna do, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get some support, I'm gonna put some stuff in place, which is what I'm gonna talk through today, to make sure that it doesn't become a thing in my life ever again. And I at the weekend came back from Milan, I ran the Milan Marathon. Can you believe it? I couldn't believe it. Um, this the afternoon I spent, you'd think that there would just be like this massifylation after running a marathon. Well, actually, I just spent most of the time going to Joe. Can you believe I've run a marathon this morning? Like it was just more of a surreal thing. I can't believe that I spent four hours, 15 minutes on my feet moving forwards. At I was gonna say at pace, maybe at Snell's pace. Um, but yeah, I got it some going. Anyway, where I was going with that is that I spent the weekend away in Milan, and in fact, I spent the all of last week on holiday. I kind of booked it off after Easter, and I didn't, I did not check my emails. I'm not in there doing things. So my assistant Bex takes care of all my emails, and I get to see and know the most important things, but we're gonna go through that. So, just to say it is possible, but I've also been where you are, I've also been with the backed up inbox, the thing you haven't replied to for ten zillion months, the thing that all like also just getting in the loop of constantly checking your emails. So, mindset shift number one, it's just this technological thing that's come about, people send stuff into it, it doesn't mean it's important for you. So let's just kind of let's just kind of lower the urgency level of what the inbox is. Okay, mindset shift number two. One of the biggest impacts when I heard this was that a lot of business owners, the things that they do in the day are dictated by the emails that come in to their inbox, so it might trigger them typing this, replying to that, creating that, actioning that. When actually proactive business owners who know exactly what the most important thing is, know exactly what the needle movers are in their business, their day is planned in advance. At least, at least till 12 pm in my diary, it is free. When I say free, it is protected for me to work on the most important things, which because my responsibility at my PA is lead generation, is what am I doing this morning to generate more leads, to generate attention, to get more people in our sphere who know about my PA. It is protected almost every single day, unless I'm at a mastermind event or I'm doing something that's been pre-planned in, but I know in advance what the most important things are in that session that are protected. I know what the most important things are in that day. A lot of business owners who start the day by checking their email first thing. I mean, imagine what life was like before email when we used to the analog alarm clock would go off, we would wake up, and we wouldn't imagine not having the thing to check. Like, imagine how much less stressed we used to be. But I know we can't we can't get in a time machine and go back there, so we do have it, but still picking up the re the picking up your phone, checking emails first thing in the morning is a surefire way to set any business owner off, either mentally on the wrong path or physically doing the wrong things. You when you wake up in the morning, your diary should be planned to know exactly that I am doing these things. This is the outcomes that I need to achieve today. I've got my time protected, I'm gonna make sure this project moves forward or this thing's happened. That that is how a day should be planned for really a proactive founder who knows what the most important things are. But if we check email first thing or throughout the day, almost business owners become super reactive to that. Oh, this thing's coming now, I need to reply. Oh, they've asked for this, I must send it straight away. That's not how meaningful progress is made in the business, and this is not about not replying to people or being um not speedy with replies or that kind of responsive person. It's not about that. Like there's time planned in to do all of these things, but it shouldn't be all consuming and totally dictating what you are doing day to day. So honestly, if you are the only person looking at your emails, which we're going to talk about, before you open that inbox, you should know what your three things are: one thing, two things, the things that you're definitely gonna get done, the most important priority tasks, and you should be working on those before you let whatever's in that inbox completely either take you off path, make you distracted, make you less focused. You should be doing those things before you open your inbox. And the other way to look at it is if you are opening your emails first thing, if you are looking at them before you go to bed, when you're when you're in bed, like ready for sleep, you are handing over the best hours of the day, which is the morning, when to be fair, most of us are our most creative, most impactful, we can make better decisions. You're handing them over to completely random reactive stuff at the end of the day when you should be letting your brain process the day, looking for solutions to the problems that you might have overnight, you're clogging your brain again with emails. So, again, and end and start of the day, it's no good for any business owner. And just two more mindset shifts that I've really helped me. Number three, um, and a mentor of mine, Martin Norbrit, always said to me that if a problem is big enough in your business, it will find you. Like it will find its way to you. You don't have to go looking for it. Still something I have to work on because I do go looking for things, but it will go looking for you. So email is not if the building is on fire, people aren't emailing you about it. They're phoning you, they're whatsapping you, they're text messaging you. There can't be anything in there that needs a response within the next five minutes, within the next hour, within the next couple of hours. It is not an urgent communication channel, so let's just take a deep breath, take it for what it is, and know that we're gonna put some um we're gonna put some measures and folders and systems in place to make sure you don't have to look at your email again. But honestly, it take it took away the anxiety for me of constantly having to open the open the email app, refresh it. Like it took away that anxiety of if something's truly urgent, it's gonna find me anyway. And mindset shift number four is just around AI and your inbox. There is so many adverts on Instagram and everywhere I look now for AI inbox tools that profess to change your life and win you 10 hours a week back. And honestly, I mean, from experience, we have lots of clients that come to us that have either put that in place and found it has made it messier, um, has found it's not really won them anytime back. And this is not to slag off AI inbox tools, it's not about that at all because they can help, but just to be super realistic about the fact that if you do plug an AI inbox tool in, it is not going to get you out of your inbox. Yes, it will do some triaging of emails into folders and maybe make it a little bit lighter on the volume in there. Yes, it's going to draft replies. Will they all sound like you and will they need tweaking? Probably. Will it know all the judgment calls to make? Definitely not. Will it know, uh, will it be able to actually triage and make things happen in emails without you having to look at them at all? Definitely not. So I do think like AI is a small improvement. I know these things are going to get better, but right now, small improvement is a kind term for it. It does not get a business owner out of their inbox and it does not get them out of the most important thing, which is the I don't want to use the word emotional because it sounds dramatic, but it is the um the mindset, the mood change of the email can be if you should be working on something important and you open the app and you see a cancellation or a complaint or a new fire that's come in, a new problem to solve, or something unexpected, it can so easily shift your mood, get you distracted from working on the most important stuff. So, just mindset shift number four is AI can make a small help. It is definitely, though, not doing the most important thing, which is getting any business owner out of their inbox because the inbox is just admin drain at the end of the day. Okay, so this is how I make sure that when I'm on holiday in Milan running the marathon, I don't have to look at emails and that I know that my assistant Bex has got it on lock. So in my inbox, I don't, every single email goes to my assistant first. She triages them, she replies, she makes sure that the most important stuff is escalated and highlighted to me. And I think that's really important that you have someone that takes that first sweep triage of your inbox. And a lot of business owners get scared that, well, yeah, but that how can anybody possibly understand what needs to happen with X or Y? Honestly, 80% of emails that come into everybody's inbox are the same kind of email, the same people, the same clients, suppliers, requests, queries. It there's a it's I always call it the window to the soul of any business for a founder that you understand what what are the key things that are happening in the business at that moment. And it is so possible for any good executive assistant to take hold of your inbox and make sure that you don't ever have to go in it again. And the way that we make that really simple at my PA, and we do it in my inbox, we do it in every client's inbox, is that we have a really simple three-folder structure. So we have emails that are being dealt with, so emails that get moved into there that the assistants dealt with, they're already done and dusted, something's happened, they've been booked in. We have a folder for dealing with, so that's in the middle of we're in the kind of back and forth of questions, meeting arrangements, whatever it might be. And we have a third folder which is to deal with, and the assistants moved an email into there because they know that's for me, I can do that, I can move it forwards, and they're gonna get to it that day. But they've like taken it out and triaged it out. So we have three simple folders to deal with, dealing with, and dealt with. And in the inbox, the same system that we use with all of our clients and with me is that any emails that then need query, question, guidance, we leave in the main inbox because for our clients, they they feel better being able to just open the inbox and see what's left rather than having to look at another another folder if that makes sense. Not that we're encouraging them or asking them to look at the inbox, but old habits die hard. And then in those emails that are left inside the inbox, Bex at the end of every single day gives me a WhatsApp summary in my case. Some some clients it's a summary on Teams or Slack or a voice note. WhatsApp works really well for us. We get I get a WhatsApp summary with exactly what's in there in terms of um this needs a decision, um, this question's come in. I'm I'm gonna say this, but I just wanted to check like if your assistant's got any queries on it, and anything that's coming that you should be aware of that they've dealt with. But um, so for example, Bex might send me a voice note to say, and also um a request came in for a podcast. It's with you're all it's like Stephen Bartler. I've said yes, it's a no-brainer, and I'm booking it in. Do you know, like where they've already progressed, progressed the decision making, manifesting that slot on Direver CEO. Um, so that is the flow daily of how I know that anything that I do need to know or look at comes up in the end-of-day WhatsApp summary. Obviously, if something was more urgent, Bex would send a note about it, say, Oh, just to just to know that this is coming and I'm gonna do this, and but yeah, I don't look at my emails. If I do, it's at the end of the day when Bex has sent a summary and I can if I just want to like check something or look at it, but I am not the first person in there dealing with it. And the fourth folder that we do implement, um, and we'll in my inbox and in our clients' inboxes, we'll just put rules on it. So, you know, as a business owner, you sign up to all of the newsletters, all of the marketing tips, and whether it's Gary Vee, Stephen Bartlett, Daniel Priestley, Nigel Botrell, you know, all those guys, all of those kind of marketing emails that that business owners just want to read, have a look at, see what they're doing, see what they're selling. Is that for me? We just put them into a marketing folder or an emer to read folder. And most often we'll just put rules on, so they all just go in there automatically. And when you've on a Friday afternoon having a glass of wine, you might just want to have a look through what kind of marketing emails have come in. So we'll always have like a marketing folder to read because definitely every business owner has hundreds of emails that come through to everything they've subscribed up to. And the first step prior to that is we will always work through an inbox whenever we get started with a client to see everything we need to unsubscribe from, and we'll just have a conversation with the business owner to say, Are you still interested in Gary V's emails? And we'll just kind of do that tidy up, but as much as possible, we'll put those rules on, and then the the meaty stuff that is left, the assistant is dealing with or asking questions about. And so the big difference for me has been rather than dipping into my inbox daily, we've replaced lots of distraction and dipping in and time wasted by looking at stuff that I didn't need to look at has ruined my mood, I didn't need to look at at all with one standard update, and that is a massive change in my week when we first started doing that. Like I was just clear to keep my head focused on what's most important rather than all of the noise. And so rather than all of the back and forth in my inbox, I just have one structured update at the end of the day where I can have the conversation with my assistant to ask questions, will decide how something will be handled, so much nicer, so much nicer than constantly checking your emails. I think one of the most important parts of this getting out of your own inbox is managing expectations with the person that is managing it with you and potentially with the outside world. So I've we've had clients that have had autoresponders on there to say, thanks, your email. Um, I like to work on the most important things or many variations of the message, and I will respond in 24 hours or 48 hours. I don't, I haven't chosen to do that. I feel like the autoresponder on can kind of get quite annoying on the other side. Some people like to manage expectation outwardly. However, if you've got an assistant in there, it's then just really key to manage expectation between you and your assistant. So with me and Bex, my expectation is that every email that comes in is replied to within 24 hours. And it is quite loose there or thereabouts. I still don't think anybody, if it's two days later, three days later, there are some exceptions and some things we want to progress quicker. But in the main, 24 hours, that's our internal agreement between us. So I know that Bex is going to handle everything and handle it within 24 hours, and then you are super clear that everybody's getting a timely response. You know that you're gonna get an update on what's for you, and you're able to have that conversation with your assistant. And some of it you might be just like, actually, I'll reply to that. You go into the inbox, you see the one email, and you reply to it. I will also say that there's an element of when people know that you've got an assistant handling your emails, because that so another thing that I should just put on there, nobody ever pretends to be me in my inbox. Bex will say that, oh, it's Bex here, I'm just jumping in to help him out with this task, or I'm just jumping in because I can I can progress it quicker. We never encourage pretending that the founder is replying, but when people know that Bex is handling my inbox, I think there's an element as well that they just know that it's not the place to send urgent things. If urgent things need to find me, they will find me in a different way. So to answer the original DM that I got, can I actually have a world where I never need to see another email again? Yes, you can. A really shithot assistant is part of that solution. And if you don't have an assistant yet, here's where to start. Tomorrow, don't start the day by opening your emails, decide on the most important things, spend the time doing those, and then look at your emails. And if you don't have an assistant, then you know a lady you can talk to about it. I hope today's episode has been helpful because it is honestly, even in the world of AI and all of the technology and automations, it is still the number one time drain of most founders. I was literally at a networking lunch just before I recorded this episode. I had a glass of uh white wine, so hopefully this podcast episode's held together. But the guy that I was sat next to, he's got a team of 80s, he's still handing his handling his own emails. He showed me his inbox, it had like 5,000 emails in it. He's actually also really implemented a lot of I have a lot of AI, very tech heavy, but still his inbox drains his time. And so, no matter whether you are a small business or a large business, it plagues all of us. And getting an assistant in there with a simple system. Expectations managed and one update for you gets you out of that email inbox forever. I will see you next week where I'll be interviewing another founder who has created a business where they can focus on the fun stuff.