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Questions & Answers

Mati Roy

Tips on getting assistance on your email inbox

If you have a Google Workspace with a domain name:

One way to do it is to create a Google Group of the type

operations@your_organization.com⁠

(i.e.: for an organization) or

assistant@your_name.com⁠

(i.e.: for your personal emails). Allow anyone to post in those groups, but only members of those groups (presumably you and your assistant) to read and reply to messages. For this, you need to turn on

those parameters first in the admin console⁠

and then in the specific

Google Group⁠

under “Group settings”.

If you don’t have a Google Workspace with a domain name:

You can create an email address of the form

your_name.assistant@gmail.com⁠

. Then connect to that email address from your main email address through SMTP.

You can use the

alias functionality of Gmail⁠

to subscribe to relevant websites / newsletters / etc. as

your_name+assistant@gmail.com⁠

, and then have

emails sent to that address automatically forwarded⁠

your_name.assistant@gmail.com⁠

. (Or you can just directly subscribe with

your_name.assistant@gmail.com⁠

You can also

create filters⁠

for certain types of emails you always want forwarded to your assistant (ex.: all emails coming from a certain email address). On top of having those emails automatically forwarded, you can also automatically tag them as “assistant”. When searching your Inbox for only assistant emails, you can search “label:inbox label:assistant”, and when searching for only non-assistant emails, you can search “label:inbox -label:assistant”. Any emails not automatically forwarded to your assistant which you want them to address, you can manually forward and cc

your_name.assistant@gmail.com⁠

You can have them prepare a bunch of draft email replies, and go through them for review before sending while you gain more confidence in your assistant / while your assistant develops a better model of you.

Tips on account management

If you’re going to share passwords with an assistant, it’s particularly relevant to use unique passwords. I recommend using

https://password.new/⁠

to generate secure passwords.

If you’re going to be sharing multiple passwords and/or share with multiple people, you might want to use a password manager to keep track of who has which passwords, and to make it easier for the assistant to safely store (avoids them noting the password somewhere less safe). Two tools I’ve used for that are

https://www.lastpass.com/⁠

and

https://bitwarden.com/⁠

Task management tools

If you’re the only project manager and have only one assistant, you can use something simple such as:

docs:

Google Doc: I like the version history and the possibility to make edit suggestions

Coda, Notion: I like the ability to have checkboxes, collapsible lists (i.e. that can be hidden), and subpages (which are very fast to load)

spreadsheet:

AirTable: I like the ability to create views with hidden columns, have one-to-many table relations, have some metadata automatically tracked, and be able to create multiple forms associated with a table

Google Sheet: I like the formulas and flexibility on formatting

Kanban board:

Trello: I like how it looks (simple, motivating, intuitive)

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