How to work with a remote assistant without living in Slack
This article is a submission by DonnaPro, a virtual assistant agency based in Slovenia. It places EU-based executive assistants exclusively with CEOs and founders, covering inbox and calendar management, travel planning, research, and operations support across 110+ industries worldwide.
At a glance
- A remote assistant should reduce the number of messages a founder deals with, not add a new stream of them. If you are in Slack all day with your assistant, the setup is working against you.
- One fully remote executive assistant agency runs its own team of more than 25 people across eight EU countries on two simple rules: acknowledge every internal message within 24 hours, and keep notifications switched off. Founders can borrow the same principle.
- Research from Microsoft shows workers are interrupted every two minutes during core hours. A 2008 University of California study found that people compensate for interruptions by working faster, at the cost of more stress, frustration and time pressure.
- The tool matters far less than the rhythm. One agreed channel, one daily summary and one weekly call cover almost everything.
The assistant who made the founder busier
Here is a pattern that plays out in a lot of founder offices. The founder hires a remote assistant to take work off their plate.
Within a month, they are messaging that assistant forty times a day. Quick questions, small approvals, “did you see this?”, “can you check that?”. The inbox is lighter, but Slack never stops.
The founder has not delegated the work. They have moved it into a chat window.
This matters because constant messaging is exactly the problem most founders hired help to solve.
Microsoft’s analysis of Microsoft 365 data found that workers are interrupted every two minutes during core working hours, 275 times a day.
A 2008 study by Gloria Mark and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, found that people cope with interruptions by working faster, but report significantly more stress, frustration, time pressure and effort as a result.
A good assistant should sit between the founder and that noise. That only works if the relationship itself is not another source of it.
Three rules that keep remote support calm
The founders who get the most from a remote assistant agree a few simple rules early and stick to them. None of these needs special software.
1. Agree a reply window, not instant replies
Most messages between a founder and an assistant do not need an answer in five minutes. They need an answer today. Saying so out loud removes a surprising amount of pressure on both sides.
One fully remote executive assistant agency uses a version of this inside its own team. Filip Pesek, its founder and CEO, explains the rule:
“If we email you, Slack you, or send you any internal message, you need to reply within 24 hours. That doesn’t mean you have to do the task in 24 hours. It just means you acknowledge it.”
The point, he says, is “clarity and rhythm, not speed”. For a founder working with an assistant, the window might be shorter, perhaps the same working day.
What matters is that both people know what to expect, and that genuinely urgent matters have a separate route, such as a phone call.
2. Turn the notifications off
This one feels risky, which is why so few people do it. The same agency asks its team to keep notifications off for internal communication and check messages once or twice a day instead.
As Pesek puts it, “We don’t want people living in Slack or email all day, reacting nonstop. That’s not sustainable.”
For founders, the equivalent is simple: if your assistant is doing their job, you do not need to see every message as it arrives. You need to see the few that need you, at a time you choose.
3. Use one channel for everything that needs you
The fastest way to undo a good assistant is to let work reach the founder through five different routes. Email, Slack, WhatsApp, comments in shared documents and the occasional voice note all compete for attention.
Pick one route for anything that needs a decision. For many founders, that is a short daily summary from the assistant: what was handled, what is waiting, and what needs a yes or no.
Everything else can wait for the weekly call.
Pro tip: For one week, count how many times you message your assistant with something that could have waited until the daily summary.
Most founders are surprised by the number, and it is usually the founder, not the assistant, who is creating the noise.
Why the weekly call matters more than the tool
Founders often spend more time choosing tools than agreeing how to use them. Notion or Asana, Slack or WhatsApp, Loom or email.
In practice, almost any of them works, as long as it fits how the founder already operates.
What does not work is a relationship that happens only in writing. Pesek has seen this across his agency’s client relationships:
“You can exchange hundreds of messages, but without real face to face communication, the relationship never reaches that deeper level of trust.”
Without a regular call, he says, it starts to feel like the two people are “just sending letters to each other, like old school pen pals”.
A weekly call of 30 minutes does three things that messages cannot:
- It gives the assistant context. They hear what is worrying the founder, what has changed, and which priorities have moved, before those changes show up as urgent messages.
- It catches small misunderstandings early. A slightly wrong assumption about a client or a preference costs nothing to fix on a call, and a great deal to fix after three weeks of emails.
- It builds the trust that lets the founder stop checking. The more the founder hears how the assistant thinks, the less they feel the need to watch every message.
The call also gives the many small questions somewhere to go. Instead of interrupting the founder on Tuesday, the assistant adds the question to Friday’s list, unless it truly cannot wait.
What a calm working rhythm looks like
A good rhythm gives the founder a handful of predictable touchpoints each week and leaves the rest of the time free. Here is a simple version that works for most founders and their assistants.
| When | What happens | Channel | Founder’s time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Every morning | Assistant sends a short summary: handled, waiting, needs a decision | One agreed channel | 5 to 10 minutes |
| During the day | Assistant works through the inbox, calendar and follow ups alone | None, unless urgent | None |
| Anything urgent | Assistant calls or uses the agreed urgent route | Phone | Only when needed |
| Once a week | Call to review priorities, decisions and the week ahead | Video call | 30 minutes |
| Once a quarter | Review of what is working and what to hand over next | Video call | 60 minutes |
The exact times will vary. Some founders prefer the summary at the end of the day, and some want two calls a week during a busy period such as a fundraise.
What matters is that both sides know the rhythm and trust it enough to stop checking in between.
It is also worth agreeing what “urgent” means, in writing. A useful test: would the founder want to be interrupted in a board meeting for this? If not, it goes in the summary.
Signs the setup is working
After a month, the founder should notice that they are messaging their assistant less, not more. They check the summary rather than the inbox. They walk into meetings already briefed.
And they can spend a full morning on deep work without wondering what they are missing.
Pesek frames the bigger goal this way: “Being constantly available doesn’t equal being productive.” A good remote executive assistant is what lets a founder act on that.
Sources
- Breaking down the infinite workday, Microsoft WorkLab, June 2025: interruptions every two minutes, 275 a day, based on Microsoft 365 data to February 2025
- The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress, Gloria Mark, Daniela Gudith and Ulrich Klocke, CHI 2008: interrupted work done faster but with more stress, frustration, time pressure and effort
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