Tom Patterson, founder of men's underwear apparel company, has a trick to his overwhelmed inbox. Stop answering them. As his business grew, his day emails surged from 150 to close to 300 to 400 a day and there wasn't enough time in the day to answer them. So he set up an auto responder explaining that he only responds outside of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m business hours and to call or text if it is urgent. It worked. Patterson had more time to focus on the operations of his company and he learned to empower others to respond.