Happy Monday 🌞

Is your inbox calm or chaotic? For me, it’s been the latter recently.

If you joined recently, hi 👋 I’m Hailley. I’ve always built systems to help me stay calm and organized — at work (as a marketing leader at Buffer) and at home (as a mom of two).

This week, I’m sharing my email system that aims to reduce how much time I spend in my inbox while still being responsive.

As someone who thrives with inbox zero, seeing my personal inbox hit 400+ emails last week forced me to rethink my systems.

I’ve done a lot of internal work these last few years to stop seeing email as a task list — because for me, it isn’t. At Buffer, we primarily use other tools for communication, and there’s rarely anything truly urgent in my personal inbox.

Email is like laundry or dishes — it’s never “done.” Instead of trying to complete it, I focus on being intentional about how much time I let it consume.

Here’s the twice-daily email system that I aim for:

• Mid-morning check: After my focused work in the morning, I quickly scan for anything urgent and clear out emails I don’t need to respond to. If something needs immediate attention, I handle it. Otherwise, it waits.
• End-of-day check: This is when I aim for Inbox Zero. With my creative energy already spent, I put on some music (usually Brain.fm) and respond to everything remaining that day.

While replying to email, I keep a few things in mind:

• I don’t need to reply to every email. I get a lot of cold outreach and pitches. While I would like to reply to all of them, I simply can’t at that volume. So I aim to reply when possible — especially when it seems like someone has spent a lot of time on their outreach.
• Create snippets or templates to move faster. Since I get a lot of the same email requests, I have several drafts of responses that I can quickly tweak to make it easier to get back to people. If I’m writing an email and it feels like I’ve written something similar before, I’ll go ahead and create a snippet. I save mine in Notion, but you could save these anywhere.
• Aim to unsubscribe whenever possible. When I have more time, I try to spend a few minutes unsubscribing from emails since I get added to a lot of lists. The extra two clicks is sometimes beyond what I can invest during a quick email check, so I flag these for another time if I’m just quickly deleting email.

Though I let this email system slip recently, when I practice it with dedication, it works really smoothly for me.

Ultimately, email is a way for someone else to get your attention — unless it is explicitly your job — spending too much time responding to emails means letting others control your time.

By batching my email time and setting clear boundaries, I’ve reclaimed hours of my week for the work that truly matters to me: strategic thinking, creating content, and being present with my family.

➡️ I wrote more about my email system in this blog post.

What’s your email like? Are you an inbox zero person, or do you have thousands of unread messages? I’d love to hear about your systems (or lack thereof)!

I hope you find your own version of email peace this week! ✨

As always, feel free to reply if this sparks any thoughts or questions.

See you next Monday,

Hailley

P.S. If you replied to me in the last few weeks and received a strange forwarding message, I apologize! The issue has been fixed, and I think I’ve replied to everyone now. Keep the replies coming. 🙂

• Two weeks ago I was with Buffer’s Marketing team in Türkiye for our annual company retreat. Here’s the agenda I put together for our team if you’re curious how we spend our time.
• Speaking of email, my colleague Tamilore Oladipo has 98,000 (you read that number right) unread emails! But, she has a smart system for still finding what she needs using a recent Claude feature. She shares more in this video if you’ve been keen to have AI help with your email!
• I am still slowly listening to the audiobook version of 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think by Brianna Wiest. Highly recommend listening to just a few of them a day, or even just one. They have been really thought-provoking.

That's all for this newsletter! Thank you so much for subscribing. Reply anytime you want to chat. ✨

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