Let’s face it—most of us have dealt with the annoyance of a cluttered inbox. From work emails to personal messages, staying on top of everything can feel like a never-ending task. Even top business leaders aren’t immune to the struggle. Apple CEO Tim Cook is one of them, and he’s found an AI-powered solution that he says has transformed his daily routine.
Cook typically starts his day around 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. The first thing he does? Check his iPhone for emails and Apple’s overnight sales reports. Until recently, he used to read every message in his inbox, including feedback directly from Apple customers. That’s a big commitment, especially since he receives around 800 emails each day.
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But things changed with the arrival of Apple Intelligence, Apple’s AI offering. There is an Apple Intelligence tool that provides short summaries of emails directly within the Mail app. Now, instead of going through each message in detail, Cook can glance through concise AI-generated summaries and decide what needs his attention. This simple shift has saved him valuable time, which, according to him, adds up over days, weeks, and months. “If I can save time here and there, it adds up to something significant across a day, a week, a month,” he told the Wall Street Journal Magazine.
For Cook, the impact has been profound. “It’s changed my life,” he shared. “It really has.”
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Other business leaders are also turning to AI for inbox management. Mark Cuban, a billionaire entrepreneur and investor, uses Google’s Gemini, a generative AI assistant, to handle his own mountain of emails. At an event announcing his AI partnership with Google, Cuban told CNBC that he receives thousands of emails daily, many of them repetitive. He now uses Gemini’s suggested reply feature in Gmail, which allows him to respond quickly with AI-generated replies. This saves him significant time, enabling him to focus on strategic tasks. “It’s reduced the need for me to write out routine replies,” Cuban said. “I can spend 30 seconds evaluating its response and hit ‘send’ versus typing it all out myself.”
AI tools like Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini are helping leaders reclaim valuable time.