Over recent weeks, I've facilitated my email productivity workshops with four different leadership teams in the UK and US, and I've noticed something important: the Executive Assistants in the room are often nodding along knowingly before their executives even finish describing their frustrations.

You've seen it all, haven't you? The relentless flood of emails, the calendar that looks like a game of Tetris gone horribly wrong, and your executive caught in the middle, increasingly frazzled.

Does that sound familiar? (I'm guessing that's a resounding yes.)

Here's the thing: as an EA, you're uniquely positioned to help solve this problem. You manage the calendar, you see the email patterns, and you understand the workflow better than almost anyone. That means you have both the insight and the influence to suggest meaningful changes.

The Paradox Your Executive Is Living

Here's what makes this challenge so insidious: your executive is caught in a productivity paradox that would make even the most patient person want to throw their laptop out the window.

Email overwhelms them with constant interruptions and fragmented conversations, so they schedule meetings to "sort things out properly." But then those meetings consume the calendar, leaving them scrambling to catch up on email in the gaps between calls.

It's an endless cycle that leaves them exhausted, frustrated, and wondering if they accidentally signed up for some bizarre corporate version of hamster wheel Olympics.

In my recent workshops, senior leaders described feeling like they're drowning - spending their days reacting rather than leading, managing communication rather than doing meaningful work.

One executive put it bluntly: "I spend more time scheduling conversations about work than actually working." Another confessed to colour-coding their calendar just to find the gaps where they might actually, you know, do their job.

Sound like anyone you work with?

Understanding the Real Problem (so you can explain it)

Computer Scientist and best-selling author Cal Newport offers a helpful framework that can help you articulate what's happening and why your suggestions will work. In his article 'Should This Meeting Have Been an Email?', he identifies two fundamental communication modes in knowledge work:

1. Asynchronous communication (email, messages, memos) allows people to send and receive information on their own schedules. The appeal is obvious—no coordination required, just fire off that message whenever you think of it. Brilliant!

Except... this convenience becomes a trap faster than you can say "reply all." When every question, update, and decision happens through endless email threads, people end up checking their inboxes every few minutes, fragmenting their attention and exhausting their cognitive resources.

Research shows we're checking email every six minutes on average. Six minutes! That's barely enough time to remember what we were doing before the last email arrived.

2. Synchronous communication (meetings, calls, real-time conversations) is incredibly efficient for information transfer. A five-minute conversation can resolve what might take dozens of emails.

But here's the catch: because of the structure of our electronic calendars, that five-minute conversation gets scheduled as a fifteen or thirty-minute Zoom meeting. Before you know it, the calendar is a solid block of meetings, and your executive is left wondering when they're supposed to do actual work. (Answer: apparently between 7-8am and after 6pm, which you know is neither sustainable nor healthy.)

Neither mode is inherently bad - but the way they're being used is making everyone miserable. And possibly driving your executive to drink more caffeine (in its various forms) than is medically advisable.

Two Strategies You Can Suggest (and help to implement)

The good news? Once you understand the specific strengths and weaknesses of each communication mode, some practical solutions emerge. Even better? As an EA, you're perfectly positioned to suggest these strategies and make them work. Revolutionary, hey?

Strategy 1: Suggest 'Office Hours' (And Offer to Manage Them)

This is an idea I've been talking about for many years. Cal Newport uses the phrase 'Office Hours' for what I describe as SRT (Strategic Reserve Time) and one of my clients calls GAM time (Got A Minute).

Here's the concept: Instead of scheduling a separate meeting for every discussion that needs to happen, your executive designates specific blocks of time when they're available for quick synchronous conversations - no appointment needed.

How to pitch it to your executive: "I've been noticing that a lot of your meetings are really just quick conversations that get scheduled for 15 or 30 minutes. What if we tried something different? We could block out specific times each week - say Tuesday and Thursday, 2-3pm - as open 'office hours' where people can drop in for quick discussions without booking separate meetings. I'd manage the communications about it and redirect people when appropriate. It could free up several hours on your calendar each week."

How you can make it work:

Add the office hours blocks to the calendar as recurring appointments (mark them as "tentative" or "available" so the time is visible but not completely blocked)
Create a standard email template (or Outlook Quick Step) your executive can use to redirect people: "Great question - let's discuss this during my office hours on Thursday. Just drop in anytime between 2-3pm."
Send a team announcement explaining the new system: "To make better use of everyone's time, [Executive Name] is now holding office hours every Tuesday and Thursday, 2-3pm. Feel free to drop in for quick discussions - no appointment needed. For longer, more strategic conversations, please continue to book dedicated time."
When you see email threads getting long and circuitous (you know the ones - they start innocently enough and suddenly they're seventeen replies deep with no resolution in sight), proactively suggest to your executive: "This looks like it could be resolved in 5 minutes during office hours rather than 15 more emails?"

The beauty of this approach is efficiency through aggregation. Because the same office hours timeslot can handle multiple different conversations, the overhead per interaction becomes minimal. It's like batch cooking for communication - prep once, benefit multiple times (always a good productivity hack).

Strategy 2: Propose Standing Team Meetings with a Shared Agenda

Here's the concept: Instead of unstructured and random ad-hoc meetings that mysteriously appear on the calendar like unwanted party guests, establish several short standing meetings each week - perhaps three 20-minute sessions. The key is maintaining a shared document where anyone can add items that need discussion between meetings.

How to pitch it to your executive: "I've been tracking our team meetings, and we're averaging [X] hours per week across [Y] different meetings, many of them ad-hoc. What if we tried consolidating these into three standing 20-minute check-ins each week? We'd keep a shared agenda document where people add items as they come up, then work through them systematically. It could cut our meeting time significantly while actually improving communication."

How you can make it work:

Set up the standing meetings in the calendar (e.g., Monday/Wednesday/Friday at 9am for 20 minutes)
Create and maintain the shared agenda document (Google Doc, Teams, whatever your organisation uses)
Include the agenda link in the calendar invitation
Send a team announcement: "We're streamlining our team meetings. Please add any items for discussion to [agenda link] and we'll work through them at our standing check-ins. This will help us reduce ad-hoc meetings and manage our time more effectively."
Before each standing meeting, quickly review the agenda with your executive so they're prepared
During the meeting, keep time and help move things along (if you're present)
After the meeting, remove completed items and keep the document tidy

You'll be amazed at how many issues can be resolved quickly when everyone is together in real-time. You'll also be amazed how many issues resolve themselves with a bit of delayed gratification and don't have to be discussed at all. (Turns out, not everything is as urgent as it feels at the time it pops up.)

This approach can eliminate hundreds of distracting messages per week while adding only a small number of fixed appointments to the calendar. One executive I worked with adopted this strategy and saved 6 hours a week while reporting that they actually communicated more effectively.

The Mindset Shift (and how to communicate it)

When you're suggesting these changes, frame them around this principle: The goal isn't to turn every meeting into an email or every email into a meeting. Instead, it's about being intentional with communication modes, using each one for what it does best.

One business leader in a recent workshop put it perfectly:

"Email is for confirmation, not conversation"

Brilliant, right? Let that sink in for a moment. This is a powerful line to share with your executive and their team. It captures the whole strategy in just six words.

Your talking points when suggesting these changes:

"This isn't about adding more structure - it's about reducing chaos and giving you back control of your time."
"We're not eliminating meetings or emails, just being smarter about when we use each one."
"I can manage the logistics and communications to make this work smoothly. You just need to commit to trying it for a month."

Stop letting everything default to email. Stop letting meetings expand to fill whatever time is available.

Instead, help your executive create a structure that balances the information density of real-time conversation while avoiding the logistical overhead that's currently overloading their calendar (and possibly their blood pressure).

How to Introduce These Ideas

Timing and approach matter. Here's how to bring this up:

Choose the right moment: After a particularly overwhelming week or when your executive comments on their calendar being impossible, that's your opening: "I've actually been looking into some strategies that might help with this..."
Come prepared: Have specific data if possible. "Looking at your calendar from last month, you had 47 meetings. I think we could consolidate at least 15 of those using a different approach."
Make it easy: Don't just present the problem - present the solution with you as the implementation partner. "I can set this up and manage it. You'd just need to commit to trying it for four weeks."
Suggest a trial period: "Let's try this for a month and see if it helps. If it doesn't work, we can adjust or go back to the old system."
Frame it as protecting their strategic time: "My job is to help you work more effectively. Right now, the calendar and email are working against you, and I think I can help fix that."

Moving Forward

Over the years that I have been discussing these strategies, I've seen executives who've started implementing these approaches report a noticeable shift - not just in their calendars, but in their sense of control. They're spending less time managing communication and more time on strategic thinking and meaningful work. Imagine that - actually having time to think!

And behind many of these successful implementations? An EA who saw the problem, learned about the solutions, and took the initiative to suggest them.

The email-meeting spiral isn't inevitable. It's not a law of nature, despite how it might feel some days. With a clearer understanding of how different communication modes work and some practical systems to support better habits, you can help your executive break free from the reactive cycle and reclaim their time (and headspace) for what matters most.

So... what's one change you could suggest this week? Here are some suggested action steps:

Observe the patterns in your executive's calendar and email for the next few days
Calculate roughly how much time is spent in meetings vs. actual work time
Choose one of these strategies to suggest
Prepare your pitch with specific examples and offer to manage the implementation
Pick your moment and make the suggestion

Your executive's calendar and sanity will thank you. Your team might even throw you a parade, because they're also struggling with email volumes and cluttered calendars. (Okay, maybe not a parade, but definitely some very grateful looks and quite possibly a glowing performance review.)

Want to learn more about these productivity strategies? My workshops help leadership teams break free from information, data and communication overload—and I always make sure to include the EAs because you're the ones who make these systems actually work. Reach out for a chat about how a customised workshop can help your organisation.

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Could This Meeting Have Been an Email (or vice versa): A Guide for Executive Assistants