November 2025 Insights from Actor
After launching this Monthly Insights
We analyze about 2 million emails and calendar events from busy professionals in November 2025. Actor is a work assistant for inbox & calendar management.
Some insights surprised us:
- 📨 promotions again killing inboxes. November had Blackfriday.
- ⏱️ Median reply time: 12h 23m, but fastest was 25 seconds
- 🗓️ Friday has the lowest reply rate. Second month we’ve observed this.
- đź’¬ Longest email thread: 99 replies (maximum in Gmail)
- đź“… Some people joined 92 meetings in a week! (actually not sure if they joined or just skipped)
We built this to understand how real users manage communication overload.
Would love to hear: what’s your biggest time drain — emails or meetings?
Insights from 1,750,000+ emails and calendar events
Every month at Actor, we publish this aggregated and anonymized activity from thousands of connected Gmail and Outlook accounts to understand how busy professionals actually work.
Today we’re releasing the November 2025 Productivity Report, covering emails, replies, follow-ups, and calendar events.
Why do we publish this?
Because professionals, journalists, and content creators consistently search for answers to questions like:
- How much email noise do people receive today?
- A lot of promotions
- What’s a normal reply time at work?
- So many different profiles, however some patters start to be visible
- Do people really have too many meetings—or is it just a feeling?
- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
- Which day of the week gets the most email traffic?
- When are people most likely to respond?
- Not during weekend, that’s for sure.
- What does “email overload” actually look like in numbers?
This report gives data-backed answers, not speculation.
November’s data confirms what every busy professional suspects: the inbox is drowning in noise, mid-week is email chaos, and meeting volume is relentless.
Our latest analysis of over 2M+ anonymized emails and calendar events, powered by ActorDo, highlights the key productivity trends impacting how we work. Automation is no longer a luxury it’s a necessity to reclaim focus. Try ActorDo for free.
1. The Inbox is not the Problem, Noise is: 60.1% of Email is Non-Actionable
The biggest revelation this month is the sheer volume of “noise.”
A staggering 60% of all email volume falls into non-actionable categories: Promotions and Notifications.
- Promotions: 45.7%
- Notifications (System Alerts, Newsletters): 15.0%
This means that for every 10 emails received, 6 do not require any decision-making or action. This constant digital bombardment creates a huge cognitive load, forcing professionals to manually filter their way to the 40% of messages that actually matter (To Respond, Meeting, Needs Action, Read Later).
Key Takeaway: If your team is overwhelmed, the first step isn’t better time management. it’s aggressive noise cancellation.
2. Email Chaos Peaks Mid-Week: Wednesdays and Thursdays Dominate
Our data consistently shows a clear pattern in work-week communication:
- Busiest Email Day: Wednesday
- Runners-Up: Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday follow closely.
- Visible Drop: Volume falls significantly on Friday, and weekends are comparatively quiet.
This mid-week email mountain is where ActorDo saves the most time, categorizing and surfacing urgent tasks when the volume is highest.
3. The Best Time for Follow-Ups: Tuesday and Wednesday
For anyone planning sales outreach, PR pitches, or essential customer follow-ups, the data provides a clear benchmark for response probability:
| Metric | Detail |
| Overall Reply Probability | 66% |
| Best Days to Send | Tuesday and Wednesday |
| Worst Day | Friday |
4. Setting Realistic Reply Expectations: Median Time is 12hours, 23 minutes
Stop expecting instant replies. The data shows that the reality of professional responsiveness is measured in hours, not minutes:
- Median Reply Time: 12 hours, 23 mins (a slight increase from October, suggesting deepening focus blocks).
- Fastest Reply Recorded: 25 seconds (for truly urgent, context-aware messages).
Key Takeaway: If your email isn’t handled by ActorDo’s categorization and surfacing, you should expect a response within a half-day. This confirms that the expectation of “instant communication” is not only unrealistic but counter-productive.
5. Meetings Are Relentless: 4300 Online Events Detected
Calendar events continue to climb, with 4300 online meetings detected in the analyzed events. The platform distribution remains competitive:
- Google Meet: 40.0%
- Microsoft Teams: 37%
- Zoom: 16.4%
The extreme workload benchmark remains high: the busiest calendar recorded 98 participants in one event and 83 events in a single week. (probably not the same, we don’t know for sure)
6. The Real Impact of AI: 747 Days of Time saved
The most compelling statistic for busy professionals is the concrete impact of automation. In November, ActorDo helped users save over two years of human time:
- Estimated Time Saved: 747 human days
- Emails with Labels Applied: 2M+
- Email Tasks Extracted: 243k
By automatically categorizing millions of emails and extracting nearly a quarter-million tasks, ActorDo drastically reduces the time users spend triaging their inboxes, giving them back time for deep, focused work.
Just consider a very minimum $200 / day that Actor saved in total and we get close to $150k in efficiency.
Note: there is ActorDo for businesses/teams/
Final Thoughts
November’s data confirms that communication volume is outpacing human capacity. Professionals need tools that don’t just organize, but filter, prioritize, and act on their behalf. The noise factor alone demonstrates why an AI assistant like ActorDo is essential for maintaining productivity and reducing burnout.