100 CEOs and top execs told us their email hacks — here are the top 7

Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI We analyzed 100 Power Hours interviews to find the email habits CEOs and founders use to stay focused.

Most of them use time blocks, short replies, AI tools, delegation, and firm after-hours cutoffs.

Mark Cuban, who receives hundreds of emails a day, doesn't avoid email — he makes it work for him.

Email is a necessary part of most workdays, but for a busy CEO or founder, it can also become a major distraction.

That's a theme we've heard repeatedly in interviews for Power Hours , Business Insider's series about how CEOs, founders, investors, and public figures spend their days.

Some of the people we've talked to wake up to hundreds of messages and tackle them right away.

Others avoid email for part of the day or have systems to decide what actually needs their attention.

A few, like John Paul DeJoria , don't even have an email address.

We asked ChatGPT to analyze all 100 Power Hours interviews published as of this writing and identify the most useful strategies our sources use to manage their inboxes.

Here are seven email habits and rules that stood out.

1.

They decide what needs to get done before opening their inbox Carter Reum , the cofounder of venture-capital firm M13, writes down a few tactical tasks and one or two bigger priorities while drinking his morning coffee — all before opening his inbox.

Reum said that once he starts reading email, he's reacting to what everyone else wants from him.

It's why he follows a rule he learned years ago: "Don't let your inbox be your to-do list." Once he does get to email, Reum uses Superhuman and starts with messages flagged as important.