I'm sure company-internal vs. external email tends to be handled differently but here's one amusing bit of information my boss at Amazon once told me about Bezos.

He said if Jeff forwarded something to him (another email or even a news article) and didn't add anything else to the message then this meant "I expect you to know about this topic/issue, deal with it as needed, and be prepared to talk about it if I ever ask".

However, if he also included a single "?" at the top of the email, then the rules changed and it meant "I expect you to look into this and send me a reply/update as soon as possible".

I'm sure Jeff managed to triage huge chunks of correspondence using only the 'forward' button and the question-mark key.

Andrew Mason, CEO of Groupon, handles all of his own email. One of the most efficient emailers I've ever seen. He uses inbox zero with Omnifocus in a highly efficient manner. In the earlier days we used to try and come up with ways to make this more efficient by setting rules in Mail that filtered emails into different boxes based on how much time they sat. Most were his ideas. Last time I knew his process is it had been simplified to simply starring emails and relying heavily on Omnifocus. He would sometimes email you back in less than a minute. If you ask anyone that has worked with Andrew they'll note his thoughtful responses paired with his incredible response times.

Slightly off topic, but I met Steve Jobs at a Paris Review party for his sister in the 90's (Next era). I followed up via email which started a series of occasional exchanges that lasted a few years. He answered every email. Emails I sent during the day would often take many days to get a response, but if I emailed late at night (past midnight) I got an almost instant response. If I was up and would respond back, he would again respond... like modern chat. Once, I asked him about how he had the time and he said that he liked to get some unfiltered feedback and thought it was important to hear what regular people were saying.

I worked for Microsoft a few years ago and was an Engineer for the Microsoft Exchange hosted Email server environments. We worked on everything from the Office 365 servers, to high end dedicated corporate email servers (for big companies like Kraft, Coca-Cola, American Airlines, etc.), to government agencies, to the Microsoft employee email servers. Occasionally we would get a request for billg which we now know is Mr. Gates himself and almost always it would be a request to add a new mail routing rule. From the requests, we gathered that some of the mail he gets is filtered off into assistant's mailboxes for them to read and respond to and a small amount (possibly people he has already corresponded with) actually arrive in his inbox. We also checked one time and found other people are logging into his account, again probably assistants that have delegated rights to prune his inbox. If something is really important I assume one of his assistants will bring it to his attention and occasionally he will tweak which messages go where by adding a new transport rule (for those of you familiar with Exchange) although I am sure he probably has client side rules to filter certain messages into different folders. Microsoft employee mail has ridiculous volumes because of correspondence between groups, automated emails from Microsoft software, alerts and scripts so most everyone there has found some sort of way to manage the firehose of emails they get everyday.

Having been an executive assistant to executives, my two cents here - we "gate keepers" are a breed who are groomed to protect and prepare executives.. some of us "assistants" have MBAs and other qualifications too, such as Six Sigma, PMP, etc.. many exec. assistants are paid upwards of $85K++ in the US. Mark Zuckerburg's previous assistant made $125K/year. Assistants control all communications directed to the executives, and then re-route them to the appropriate departments to manage/respond as needed. Sometimes, a remote team located in another country filters through the communications and then sends only select ones to the executive assistant for action/response. Essentially, the executive assistant does not see a large percentage of the communications directed to the executive, there's just no time to - most communications are simply filtered out and attended to as needed by a remote support team. The executive doesn't see the majority of communications directed to him/her. The executive assistant only directs a very select few of those communications to the executive.
In summary, when we're talking about chief executives, keep in mind that in almost all cases there is large internal network beyond the executive assistant who filters through and out all the communications coming in from the public... of which very, very few make it to the the executive, and that's a good thing... the executive's primary job is to ensure alignment with the board of directors and to ensure that the organization is on track to making the shareholders rich... and that's the blunt truth, in the majority of cases :)

A good friend of mine who has 20+ years in the global carrier space once told me this email productivity story about the CEO of one of the largest telecom carriers in the world. My friend, who worked for this CEO, said he was always amazed how most, if not all, emails from this telecom CEO were ONE SENTENCE or LESS. Many times the emails were just a few word or a phrase. But all the time, the emails felt complete - also.

My friend - who was a productivity geek himself - was always in awe of this CEO's emailing strength.

One day, he asked him what the secret was. So the CEO simply showed him how he answered the emails - "seeing" was the revelation. The CEO was basically typing with "one finger" one letter at a time. He said I am this bad at typing - that is probably the secret you wanted to know.

The CEO clearly was smart as hell - so his emails though terse were complete, decisive and clear.

I always remember this story and keep it close to my heart and mind - helps to understand that terseness usually brings clarity and is highly efficient for the sender and receiver both.

I have ~600 email filters and I'm just an everyday joe, so it seems to me like a CEO could and would use similar techniques.

Every site gets its own unique email alias (kimberley4quora@...com, kimberley4nytimes@...com, etc.) which is automatically serverside filtered to folders with varying levels of priority. My most personal alias isn't published anywhere publicly and is only given to people via word of mouth if I decide they need to be at top priority. That alias changes periodically.

Various keywords trigger emails to get filtered to lower priority unless they're on a whitelist.

People talk about how long it takes to set up filters and I find that commentary extremely confusing. Gmail's filters are not extensive enough for me, but they're a decent example - it takes maybe 10 minutes to set filters which have a significant impact on your inbox load. Add another 10 minutes with a piece of software that provides more filtering capability and you really won't struggle to attain the bizarre "inbox zero" goal.

From my perspective, people who are drowning in torrents of email are people who can't be bothered to set filter criteria (or ask someone else to do it for
them).

I would like to share my experience here. I worked in amazon local and had a great opportunity to mail him( anybody can do it : jeff@amazon.com). It was regarding an idea sparked on my mind to improve the customer satisfaction and customer UI experience of Amazon. 5 days later I received a mail stated that, Jeff liked your idea and expecting a deep write-up on this. I've got a doubt on this because I sent the ideas detaily with clear strategy. I've had a conversation with my ops manager afterwards and he said a team of 12 people working closer with Jeff and they're the team handling these emails. So if they like any email they'll forward to Jeff, otherwise trash it, use an appreciation blurb to the writer !

I am not sure about how Bill Gates, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey manage their email but I read an article by Jeff Weiner who is CEO of LinkedIn where he tell how he manages his emails.

I'm always struck by the number of people who complain about the amount of email they receive and how much they despise their inbox -- not because their complaints aren't valid but because my own view couldn't be more different.

By design, my inbox has essentially become the central hub of my workflow -- it's the way I routinely communicate and exchange information with our 4,300+ employees operating in 26 cities around the world. That's not to say I've always been a fan of email, or that I haven't had my own Sisyphean inbox experiences.

However, over the years I've developed several practical guidelines that have enabled me to manage my inbox effectively and ensure it's not managing me.

I look forward to hearing your best ideas and hacks for managing email in the comments below.

1. If you want to receive less email, send less email

As ridiculously simple as it sounds for such a pervasive problem, I've found this to be the golden rule of email management: Send less of it.

This rule first occurred to me during my experience at a previous company where two of the people I worked most closely with ended up leaving the organization within the span of several weeks. They were both highly effective communicators, worked long hours, and as it turned out, sent a lot of email. While they were at the company, our email cadence seemed absolutely normal. It wasn't until after they left that I realized my inbox traffic had been reduced by roughly 20-30%.

Turns out, it wasn't just their emails that were generating all of that inbox activity -- it was my responses to their emails, the responses of the people who were added to those threads, the responses of the people those people subsequently copied, and so on.

After recognizing this dynamic, I decided to conduct an experiment where I wouldn't write an email unless absolutely necessary. End result: Materially fewer emails and a far more navigable inbox. I've tried to stick to the same rule ever since.

2. Mark as unread

When hovering over any individual email in your Outlook inbox, a simple right mouse click results in a series of subsequent options you can take. One of those, "Mark as Unread," has fundamentally changed the way I work.

Having the ability to mark an email unread enables me to quickly glance through my inbox, respond to things that are most time pressing, delete the things that are irrelevant, and mark unread those items I'd like to return to once I have the time. This alleviates the pressure of feeling I have to do everything right now for fear if that one important email falls "below the fold" of my screen, it will be lost forever under the looming avalanche of prospective incoming messages. It also essentially serves as a to-do list of items to be addressed later.

I try to end each day with as few items marked unread as possible, with the goal of having none. If I'm unable to get to everything that night, I'll start the next morning by addressing the unread emails received the prior day.

3. Establish a routine

Over the last several years, I've settled into a very specific daily routine during the work week: Wake between 5am and 5:30am; spend roughly an hour on my inbox; catch up on the day's news; have breakfast and play with the kids; workout; go to the office; carve out roughly two hours for buffers each workday; come home; put the girls to bed; have dinner with my wife; and then decompress, typically while watching tv (sporadically cleaning up my inbox via mobile during commercials and the boring parts of whatever we're watching.)

Turns out, my inbox is very manageable when I stick to this schedule. However, every time I've tried experimenting with even the slightest change to this routine, travel for more than a few days at a time, or have a particularly hectic couple of days back-to-back, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly clearing my inbox ends up feeling like this.

In this case, it's the compounding effect that's particularly troublesome, i.e. the rate with which unread emails from the previous day start to mount and the accompanying pressure that generates. It gets so bad for some that they actually go as far as declaring email bankruptcy.

The most compelling way I've found to avoid this state is creating a routine and closely sticking to it. If it worked for Benjamin Franklin, it can work for you.

4. Be precise with your words

Remember the telephone game you played in elementary school where the teacher got the class in a circle, turned to the student sitting next to them, whispered a line like "Do you want to play kickball at lunchtime?" and then asked each subsequent student to whisper what they heard to the child sitting next to them? By the time it came back around to the teacher, it would inevitably be revealed as something akin to "I want to eat a kickball for lunch." While this was laugh out loud funny in third grade, in business it's anything but.

Words matter. Choose them carefully in email to avoid ambiguity and misinterpretation. The more precise you are upfront, the less likely you'll see subsequent emails generating confusion and asking follow up questions seeking additional clarity -- and the more you and your team will be able to focus on the work at hand.

5. Give some thought To: the recipients

It seems like for many people, the To: and Cc: fields in email have become largely synonymous. They're not. Use them to draw a clear distinction between who the email is being sent to and from whom you expect a response from (the To: field); and who is being copied so they have the appropriate context (Cc:).

One of the fastest ways to have an email thread blow up in terms of downstream volume is to be less than clear about who you expect to respond. Six people in the To: line will oftentimes have the unintended consequence of generating six different email responses (and up to six different new threads) when one person's response is all you needed.

6. Acknowledge receipt

Here's an easy one: If the email sender has taken the time to address you in the To: line (and it really was intended for you vs. what should have been a Cc:), take the time to acknowledge you received it. The response doesn't need to be a diatribe. To the contrary, the fewer words the better, e.g. "Thanks," "Got it," "Makes sense," etc. This lets the sender know you received the message, don't need any additional information or context, and thus they can check it off their list.

If you don't respond, they'll have no idea whether or not they've been heard. Not only will this create worry about whether or not you received it, it is likely to generate another email with fundamentally the same content, but this time a number of additional people in the To: line in the hopes they'll respond given you didn't. The more people addressed, the more crowded your inbox is likely to become.

7. Take the combustible stuff offline

Email can be a valuable productivity tool when used properly. It can also be equally destructive when it's not. One of the most egregious examples of the latter is using email to communicate highly nuanced, sensitive subjects that are bound to generate controversy if not a flat out aggressive response.

It never ceases to amaze me what people will convey in an email when they get triggered by something -- words they would never choose to use when in the presence of the same audience. One former colleague of mine described this dynamic as "going strong to the keyboard."

If you find yourself in the throes of what is clearly becoming an antagonistic discussion online, do yourself a favor: Stop. Then either pick up the phone or head over to the person's office to have the discussion in person. Face-to-face interaction will reintroduce all of the important sub-text that will be completely lost in email and help prevent unnecessary arguments or douse heated flame wars before they begin.

It's all about the content of the email that determines how it would be handled.

They are humans, they get notifications of new mail, and assuming they're near their device, they will see it firsthand like the rest of us.

Here are some possibilities for handling:

• Direct communication with other leaders of the company, employees, relevant partner companies, important service providers, and of course financial/banking matters. I'd also assume even government and other national and international matters.
• Basic filters for newsletters, list emails from companies/competitors they're interested in, and other subject matters they follow.
• Pre-written personal responses for some frequent inquiries: Can you attend my conference, talk to me on the phone about my project, mentor me, or some other general ask that... if they weren't so highly desired, they would be likely to want to listen to you. These are replies they can copy/paste from drafts, Evernote, or whatever tool of choice.
• Forward to the appropriate person. Often times, emails are sent to these figures misguidedly. There are plenty of people who work for them who are far more suited to reply, so for a basic example, a legitimate email for some real business development opportunity - would be forwarded without a personal response to the appropriate person.
• Personal Assistant(s). For things like scheduling meetings, phone calls, events, and other things that said recipient wants to actually take part in, they are unlikely to coordinate the logistics personally. This is where they may confirm something by email and then pass off to a PA to handle the details. A PA may also convert verbal responses into email responses for convenience and speed.
• Multiple email addresses. I am less sure of this one, but I'd guess that they have an email address that's easy enough to guess that they do monitor (first.last@whatever.com) that follows the above protocol that receives a bulk of it. Then, they probably have a secondary company email that is strictly private or even perhaps limited to company and authorized sender list only for what I'll call "daily biz". And of course lastly, one or more personal email addresses to communicate with family and others.

In summary, it's all about what the content of the email is and that will determine any number of filters as to how it's handled.

Inspiring how even world famous technology CEOs manage to reply to us ordinary people.

On the flip side, I found this reply to me from a not-so-famous yet obviously much more busy technology CEO quite amusing:

Dear Mr Ratschiller,

Thank you for your message and on behalf of Mr. X, I am happy to assist you with your query. Much as Mr. X wants to personally respond to your email, the sheer volume of incoming communications makes it quite difficult to do so at this time. However, mindful of his commitment to answer all emails in a speedy and efficient manner, he believes it is better for you to be assisted by an equally competent colleague so as to reduce your waiting time in getting the answers you require. Rest assured that all replies are subsequently reviewed by Mr. X and in the remote possibility that any sent correspondence is found to be non-responsive to your queries, he will immediately make contact. Here under is our response which I hope will satisfy you:

I am afraid that Mr. X has chosen to decline this offer.

Kind regards,
Xxx

Having seen how non-technology CEOs handle email (eg by having them printed and writing their reply by hand or dictating it), I did appreciate the speedy and efficient answer from the equally competent colleague.

I actually sent an email to Jeff Bezos (jeff@amazon.com) a couple of days back. It was for a feature suggestion that Amazon can add. I wasn’t expecting any reply. However, I was pleasantly surprised that I got the below reply from their team:

My suggestion might or might not be forwarded to the relevant team. At least somebody took time to reply to my email. Felt really good about this…

I once heard this answer from a senior manager who received a torrent of email each day and night. After he arrived at work, he did the following: deleted every email in his inbox.

This isn't a joke, and after you've stopped laughing, you can then appreciate the genius of his action.

The rationale is that if something is so important, then they will call you. Or - heavens forbid - come over and talk to you about it!

Despite being the ultimate email filter for important issues, people coming and talking to the manager was more desirable, since people have a tendency to be tough on the email, less so on the phone, and all unnecessary confrontation disappears when in person.

The only time you really get a direct response from the big guys on top is really if you have something of interest to them. Otherwise, I can imagine they have a first line of defense via technology, then assistants to manage the influx of emails they must receive. Maybe like the movie "Her" where the computer filters through emails by importance ;)

Otherwise - when dealing with the smaller companies you almost always hear directly from the founder(s).

I almost always reply directly to our @Mailbird customers - and it makes me really happy when they are surprised to hear directly from the CEO of the email client they are using on Windows.

Maybe one day I'll get to that level of email overload...for now I am so happy to be able to talk directly with customers. Who knows, in 4-5 years we may already have AI at work with our email inboxes :D

Larry Page reads e-mails haphazardly. He had this to say when asked about this specifc topic.“When I open up my email, I start at the top and work my way down, and go as far as I feel like. Anything I don't get to will never be read. Some people end up amazed that they get an email response from a founder of Google in just 5 minutes. Others simply get what they expected (no reply).”

The general consensus is that these Fortune 500 CEOs have other methods of reaching out to the people that they want to get in contact with and those people in turn have a way to reach out to them. It’s not much different from the average person who has an e-mail address, but only shares it with individuals in their circles. The only difference here is, they have a different circle. When that circle becomes too large to manage they hire assistants for the job, have a separate e-mail for VIP or answer by random selection, in some cases they employ a combination of all the aforementioned.

I can't speak to how any of the people mentioned in the question handle their email, but I receive hundreds of email messages a day. There are not enough hours in the day for me to personally respond to every message. This has a few consequences:

• If you don't get a quick response, you will never get a response. Once a message falls below the fold, it will never be seen again.
• If you get a response, it will likely be a very short response, such as a link to an article in which I previously answered your question.
• The first few lines of your email message must contain a hook to catch my attention. If you can't get to the point quickly, I will not read the rest of your message.
• I triage my email, picking a small fraction for possible response. If a message is likely to have widespread impact (e.g., a question from a policymaker, reporter or financial aid professional), it gets a quick response.
• If a question from a student or parent is interesting and is likely to be of interest to others, I will save it to a folder of interesting questions. I use spare scraps of time throughout the day to respond to a handful of the interesting questions each day. I save my answers for possible use in future articles and Q&A columns.

At one of my jobs i had a very high level employee have an office close by to me.
He had his communication down to a science when he was in the office.

He never checked his own email. He had set times everyday where his assistant would walk in to his office with print outs of his emails that needed responses.
He would handwrite on each sheet of paper what the response would be and the assistant would then type up and respond.

He also basically rarely met anyone in the office other than the 3 or 4 persons directly under him. Anything you needed from him had to go through these guys. They were trained to have an answer to every possible question he could ask ready before they went up to him.

It was inspiring to see how it all worked. He presented an aura of my time is very valuable when he walked in to the room.

Despite all of the stories and interviews I don't believe that any of them handle the bulk of their incoming mail.

1) Digital filters which send mail to Spam, Trash, or to;

1) the departments they truly belong to
2) executive staff earmarked to handle emails with certain keywords
3) personal staff earmarked to handle emails with certain keywords

I don't think any one of them get more than twenty to thirty messages arriving in their Inbox in one day that they themselves open and manipulate. I've seen this setup in action in law firms and some medium sized corporations and it's a real time saver.

Most likely, these high-profile executives keep thorough spam filters in place to sift through the thousands of emails they receive on a daily basis. They can also set up commands to categorize important emails from recognizable senders into a “priority inbox.” It’s also not uncommon to have multiple email addresses — one for business and one for personal contact.

The main gatekeeper, so to speak, is truly the spam filter. If you’re receiving emails and simply can’t keep up, you should set up a system that enhances your workflow— rather than interrupting it. If you’re sending emails from your own business or personal computer, you’ll want to make sure you have accurate contact information to 1) avoid being marked as spam; and 2) preserve your online reputation.