Using AI To Be More Selfish (In A Good Way)

Eight prompts and a set-up that protect your attention for the decisions, and the people, that actually need you.

I’m not an AI expert. I’m a leader who got tired of my inbox deciding my day.

I came out of hospital to more than 200 emails, and the number kept growing while I stood there looking at it. My PA had been doing her best to keep on top of them, but it was never really a backlog. It was a volume problem, which meant it would still be there next month whether I cleared it that day or not.

That’s what separates this from every inbox zero article you’ve read. I didn’t need a one-day clear-out. I needed a system that kept working after the day I got home, because a leader who spends his first week back digging out of email isn’t leading anyone.

What I actually built

I connected Claude to my Google Workspace and asked it to sort the lot into three labels. “To be deleted” was for anything I could safely bin, and I checked that pile myself before a single email went anywhere. “To action” was for anything that needed me personally, and “Delegate” was for anything my PA could handle.

This is the prompt I used.

Go through my inbox from [date] to today. Do not delete, send or archive anything. Apply three labels only. "To be deleted" for anything I can safely bin (I will check this before it goes), "To action" for anything that needs me personally, and "Delegate" for anything [PA name] could handle. If you are unsure, label it "To action" and tell me why in one line. Finish with counts and the five emails you think matter most.

Then I kept pushing, and this is where it got interesting. It suggested a regular sweep so the pile never built up again, and it suggested I only look at email twice a day, at 10am and 4pm. I’d never have set that rule for myself, because I’d have felt irresponsible for even trying it. Coming from something that had just read my inbox, it felt like evidence and not a luxury. So I set it up to sweep just before each of those times.

Every weekday at 9:45am and 3:45pm, sweep my inbox. Label new messages To action, Delegate or To be deleted. Draft replies in my voice for anything routine and leave them in drafts. Never send, delete or archive anything. Then give me a five-line summary starting with anything time-sensitive.

It also reads my calendar and adds buffers after heavy meetings or long days, which I’d been promising myself I’d do for years. And it drafts replies in my voice. It gets most of them right, and I edit the rest.

Where it gets things wrong

It isn’t perfect, and you should know that before you try it. It tried to mark emails I that were important but no actions as needing to be deleted and it nearly told people I wasn’t available for a meeting because one other person wasn’t free. That’s why nothing it does is final. It drafts, it never sends, and every email heading for the bin sits under a label until I’ve looked at it.

The point isn’t that it’s flawless. The point is that I’m now checking a short list of its suggestions instead of making hundreds of small decisions of my own, and my PA has her workload back too. My attention goes to what and who matters most, which is the only reason I wanted the system in the first place.

Eight prompts you can use today

These work in Claude or ChatGPT. Where a prompt says “connected”, it assumes you’ve linked your email and calendar. If you haven’t, paste the emails in instead.

1. Teach it your decision rules, not just your voice

Most guides stop at tone, but the bigger win is having AI surface the rules you already use, so you decide once and not forty times.

Read my last 90 days of sent email (connected) or the 30 emails I have pasted below. Work out the unwritten rules I seem to use when I say yes, no, or "not now". Write them as a one-page list of decision rules, each with the evidence from my own emails. Flag any where I have contradicted myself, because those are the decisions I keep making from scratch.

2. Build a commitment ledger

Leaders carry a quiet load of things they said they’d do, and most of it sits in sent mail as “I’ll come back to you on that”.

Search my sent email from the last 60 days for anything I promised to do, send, decide or introduce. List each one with who it was for, the date I said it, and whether there is any sign I have followed up. Sort by how long it has been outstanding. Do not draft anything yet.

3. Audit the calendar before you protect it

Everyone says to block focus time, but few people look at what the calendar actually shows first.

Look at my calendar for the last four weeks. Tell me how many hours were back-to-back with no gap, how many recurring meetings I attend where I probably do not need to be, the longest stretch I had without a meeting, and which three meeting types take the most time for the least decision. Then suggest a standing buffer rule for me. Do not change anything.

4. Delegation briefs from a voice note

This answers the line I hear most, “I know I should delegate more, I just don’t have time to explain it”.

I am going to talk for two minutes about a task I want to hand over. Turn it into a delegation brief with the outcome I want, what good looks like, what is off limits, what decisions they can make without me, and one check-in point. Keep it under 200 words and in my voice. Here is what I would say...

5. Draft the “no”

A drafted no costs far less to send than one you write yourself at 9pm.

Here is a request I want to decline [paste]. Write a reply in my voice that says no clearly in the first sentence, gives one honest reason, and offers one alternative that costs me almost nothing. No apologising more than once.

6. A shutdown brain dump

This one is for the 1am thinking, when tomorrow’s problems are running on a loop.

It is the end of my working day. I am going to dump everything on my mind in no particular order. Sort it into four lists. Decide (needs me and needs a decision), Delegate (who and what to hand over), Drop (safe to ignore), and Park (not before [date]). Then give me the one thing I should do first tomorrow.

7. A blunt chief of staff, weekly

Ask it once a week and don’t let it be polite.

Act as a blunt chief of staff. Review my calendar and sent email for the past week. Tell me three things I did that someone else could have done, one thing I said yes to that I should have refused, and one meeting I should stop attending. Be specific, and do not soften it.

8. Teach it from your edits

This is how you improve the hit rate when drafts miss.

Here is the draft you wrote and here is what I actually sent [paste both]. Tell me what rule or habit of mine explains each change, then add it to my voice guide so you do not repeat the mistake.

Three things I’d tell you before you start

Keep it to a few tools. It’s tempting to pile on every AI tool going, but each one produces output that needs reviewing, and a leader who’s already carrying too much doesn’t need more to check. I’ve seen it add to the load, so I’d rather you used two tools well than six badly.

Check your firm’s policy first. If you work in professional services, your first question will be about client data, and it should be. Before you connect anything to your email or calendar, speak to IT or compliance and find out what’s allowed, because what works for me as a business owner may not be permitted where you work.

Be accurate about what works. I’ve used the Google Workspace connector and it does what I’ve described. It should work with Outlook too, though I’ve only used Google, so test it on something low risk before you trust it. It used to be clunky but it’s improving all the time, and whilst I’d didn’t think it could use folders, I explained that Google does things differently and it understood quickly.

The point

Most leaders use AI to do more, and they end up with a faster version of the same overloaded day. The leaders I’d back use it to look at less, so they’ve got the time and the attention left for the decisions and the people that need them.

That’s not a productivity trick. It’s a choice about where you spend yourself, and you’re the only one who gets to make it.

If this was useful, send it to a colleague who’s still letting their inbox run their day, or drop me a note to tell me which prompt worked best for you.