Productivity

01 Jul How to Use AI for Email Processing – Not Email Decisions

Last week I worked with a client who had just received a well-deserved promotion. His new manager voiced one concern: she was worried he might miss something important in his email. He was smart, capable, and willing to work hard. But years of accumulated email made it difficult to distinguish what actually required his attention.

For years, my recommendation would have been straightforward: reduce the noise first. Archive older email that no longer requires action. Remove newsletters, completed projects, duplicate conversations, and information that belongs in a reference folder. Then work through what’s left and decide whether each email should be filed, deleted, or kept as an action item.

That process still works. But something has changed. Today, AI can help with routine sorting and review. Instead of manually combing through thousands of messages, AI can identify newsletters, group similar conversations, summarize long email threads, highlight messages that appear to require a response, and even suggest rules or filters to keep your inbox cleaner going forward.

Notice what AI isn’t doing. It isn’t deciding what matters. You are.

AI Changes the Work, Not the Principles.

I still believe the biggest reason people feel controlled by email, rather than in control of it, is that they keep too much in their inbox. The result? Stress increases, important emails get buried, and managers begin to worry that something important will slip through the cracks.

Here’s the core methodology: every email should fall into one of three classifications.

 Step 1: Clear obsolete emails from your inbox.

• Email search has improved dramatically. You can usually find an old message when you need it, but keeping every searchable email in your inbox creates clutter and makes the inbox harder to manage. Instead, create one folder or label for older emails and move them there. The name does not matter; the goal is to give yourself one place to search later.
  • What to call it? It doesn’t matter. Call it what works for your brain: Old Inbox, Past Inbox, Past Emails, Reference…
  • How many old emails to move? For most people, anything more than a month or two old is no longer actionable. If two months feels safer to you, that’s perfectly fine. The goal isn’t to be perfect, it’s to get your inbox back to a manageable size. You’ll want to move a block of emails from your inbox into your Reference folder.
• The goal is to clear the clutter as quickly as possible to give yourself a fighting chance to get your inbox under control. The more emails you leave in your inbox the more decisions you’ll have to make. Remember, you’re just moving where you search, it’s a waste of time to worry about processing them – we’re moving forward!
• Move old emails in blocks. If you try to move too many at once, your computer may slow down or freeze, so try 100 or 200 at a time. To select a group, click one email, hold Shift, click another email, and then drag the selected block into your new Reference folder.
• Sometimes Gmail may leave messages in your inbox if they still have the Inbox label. If that happens, ask AI how to remove the Inbox label after moving or archiving messages. The point is to clear your inbox, not just copy messages somewhere else.

Can AI help with this? Not much. This part is mostly mechanical: selecting older emails and moving them into one reference folder. The good news is that there is very little thinking involved. Put something not too compelling on TV, move emails in manageable batches, and remember: this is a once-and-done task.

Step 2: Processing what’s left in your inbox

Before AI:

• Sort by sender and file or delete what’s no longer actionable.
• Sort by subject and clean up duplicate or outdated threads.
• Set up rules for recurring emails you need to keep but don’t need to see regularly, such as newsletters, shipping notifications, and receipts.
• Organize what remains by priority.

With AI: Let AI become your assistant.  These AI prompts do not ask AI to make decisions for you. They ask AI to show you the landscape so you can decide faster.

• Show me every newsletter I’ve never opened (then you decide: do you unsubscribe or make a rule to move it automatically out of your inbox into a folder.)
• Group similar emails – instead of having to read and process 50 emails you can read 2 or 3 and decide on the action.
• Find emails that require responses – let AI help you identify what’s actionable
• Identify duplicate threads
• Summarize long conversations
• Suggest rules
• Find commitments
• Identify emails I’ve already answered that no longer require any action.
• What kind of emails do I have left in my inbox? A few minutes later it returns this:
  • 212 newsletters
  • 43 receipts
  • 18 travel confirmations
  • 5 legal documents
  • 9 unanswered client emails
  • 7 commitments
  • 11 invoices awaiting payment

Instead of spending 90 minutes figuring out what’s in your inbox, you can spend those 90 minutes deciding what actually deserves your attention. Now you’re talking about priorities. That’s a huge shift.

Step 3: Respond in a timely manner

Stay on top of your emails daily and respond promptly to emails that need to be addressed today.

Before AI:

• • We’re going to sort your emails by priority (I love using categories for this, more details here, and if you love this idea, buy my book and read chapter 12) so you are working on the most important emails first.
  • Then you are going to take it one email at a time and respond… and respond…and respond

With AI:

• • I still love sorting by categories, so I know what to do first
  • Let AI help you draft a response. Instead of reading, thinking, and writing from scratch, give AI three key points you want to communicate and ask it to “write a concise response.”

Things I would never let AI do:

• • I would never let AI permanently decide about Delete – File – Action. Those are judgment decisions. You could, however, ask for recommendations.
    • AI suggests
    • Human decides

Other Things to consider:

• • When should you trust AI? Always verify.
  • How do you avoid becoming lazy? Let AI be your collaborator and editor.
  • Don’t ask it to think for you, ask it to think with you.
  • How do you keep your authentic voice? Over time AI will learn your style, however if something is important discipline yourself to write from scratch. Allow it to help you think… but then start a fresh document and start writing.

Connecting AI to your email

• ChatGPT can now connect directly to supported email accounts for eligible plans. Claude is moving in this direction as well, and there are also dedicated AI email assistants. But whether someone can connect depends heavily on whether it’s a personal account or a company-managed account.
• Personal Gmail or Outlook
  • This is the easiest.
  • A user goes into ChatGPT Settings → Connectors (or Apps, depending on the interface), signs into Gmail or Outlook, grants permission, and then ChatGPT can search, summarize, and reference their mailbox when asked. It can also work with calendars and contacts if those connectors are enabled.
  • For example, someone could ask:
    • “What emails require a reply?”
    • “Summarize everything from Susan over the last two weeks.”
    • “Find invoices I haven’t responded to.”
    • “What commitments did I make yesterday?”
  • That’s a very different experience than copying and pasting emails into ChatGPT.
• Corporate Accounts
  • Many companies don’t allow employees to simply connect AI to corporate email. But those companies do have corporate AI tools that are integrated and approved. If your company uses ChatGPT Enterprise, you can connect through that. If your company uses Microsoft Copilot, you can connect through that. If your company uses Google Gemini, you can connect through that.  Ask your IT department which AI tools are approved in your organization, then ask that AI assistant how to connect to your email.

AI is changing how we work, but it isn’t changing the fundamentals of productivity.

Your inbox still needs a trusted system. Your priorities still require judgment. Your relationships still deserve thoughtful responses.

Let AI handle more of the organizing so you can spend more time making good decisions.