I can live up to my blue china. But my inbox…?
Exploring ADHD has been quite the eye-opener for me. It’s already changed my relationship with To-Do Lists; but as I’ve gone on, I have been looking at everything in my life through new filters.
Take for example, my inbox. Just looking at what’s come in today I see:
- A long thread from the Accomplishment Coaching registration team, any given e-mail from which is likely to take 2-3 minutes to read and delete, not to mention the emotional/cognitive load of processing the discussion
- A paid promotional e-mail from LinkedIn
- A small editing project for a friend, who asked me to help them with a job application cover letter
- An e-mail from Meetup.com telling me about a newly-forming ADD support group that it will probably take me at least 15-30 minutes to look into and decide if it’s worth further exploration
- An e-mail from one of my credit cards informing me of YET ANOTHER DATA BREACH that I have to look into and decide what, if anything, there is to be done about it
- Another e-mail from LinkedIn reminding me that I haven’t answered somebody’s request for connection and don’t you feel guilty about that?
- Yet another e-mail from LinkedIn telling me about coaching, writing, and editing jobs that I am surely the perfect candidate for
- Same, from Glassdoor
- An e-mail from my wife, who wants to gush over Good Omens with me by way of a Pinterest board
- Some feedback from my writing group about the story piece I submitted for critique at our last meeting
- Oh, and look, one from my backup service telling me that my files haven’t been backed up in over 20 days, that just came in while I was making this list
Any one of these bullets could send me down a rabbit-hole for the better part of a day. Which ones are important? Which ones can I safely ignore? Which ones will I regret ignoring? Why do I feel so guilty about having so many ignored e-mails?
And that doesn’t even begin to take into account the goals I am already trying to achieve, things that were on my list before I looked at my e-mail. How is anyone supposed to get anything done in a world like this, much less somebody a brain that struggles to not chase shiny things?
There’s no one right answer, of course; the technique I am trying today is putting these things into categories, and then giving each category a priority and block of time.
E-mails from actual people come first. So in a 15-30 minute sprint, my friend’s cover letter edits, my wife’s Pinterest invite, and the writing group feedback all get acknowledgement at the very least, and resolution if possible. Luckily, the cover letter edits are small and I can bang them out quickly. I already know that Pinterest is a minefield, so all I do is click the “Accept Invite” button and immediately close the window before I can become interested. That’s a thing I can go back to any time I want— and “Browse Pinterest for 15 minutes” is one of my go-to self rewards. Finally, the writing group feedback is too big to fit into a sprint unless I make the entire sprint about that, so I send a thank-you e-mail and put “Writing group feedback revisions” as a new “Can Do” item in my Bullet Journal for later.
The rest of the e-mails can be grouped similarly. Most of the jobs/networking stuff can either be ignored safely or put into a separate “Networking Time” sprint. The data breach e-mail is something that is either junk, or a serious issue, so I’m going to have to set it as its own sprint in a block of time carved out for the worst-case scenario. If it then does turn out to be junk that gets resolved in 5 minutes of research, Score! I have a free sprint I can dedicate to something else. Backups, same.
An hour later, more or less, and the e-mails themselves are dealt with, even if the long-term things they’re connected to may not be. An important strategy for this, however, is don’t leave my e-mail app open! More e-mails are probably coming in even as I’m dealing with the ones already sitting there; so “Reading E-mail” is its own activity that I’m only allowed to do once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once at night— otherwise, I’m never not dealing with it.
The other strategy is to constantly look for things I can unsubscribe from. This is particularly important in the world of social media. Even the best social media companies want to take advantage of my Shiny Thing Chaser Brain to drive “engagement” (i.e., ad views) and will send me tons of e-mails if I let them. The worst of them will re-subscribe you to things you’ve unsubscribed from after a while, under the guise of “new terms of service” or “a new announcements feature (that you have to opt-out of)” or whatever.
So thank you for watching out for me, LinkedIn and Glassdoor, but I don’t need any more e-mails from you telling me about all the new job postings in my area. When I’m doing my next “Look for a job” sprint? I know where to find you.
