12 ADHD Email Management Tips To Master Your Inbox

Is your ADHD brain completely overwhelmed by your inbox? Do you fall into the trap of marking emails as “unread” when you just can’t think about them anymore?

Then you’re in the right place.

On episode 237 of the I’m Busy Being Awesome podcast, I share some of my favorite email management tips designed to simplify and streamline your inbox.

Tune in today to learn a powerful framework to manage your emails, as well as simple, actionable strategies to increase your efficiency.

https://youtu.be/9hJy7STSOfc

You can listen to the episode above or stream it on your favorite podcasting app here.   

Prefer to read? No problem! Keep scrolling for the entire podcast transcript. 

In This Episode, You Will Discover

• A powerful framework to manage your emails 
• Simple strategies to increase your inbox efficiency
• How to implement these action steps in your life today

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Episode #237: 12 ADHD Email Management Tips To Master Your Inbox (Transcript) 

This is part two of managing your inbox with ADHD. You can check out part one here… How To Categorize & Manage Your Inbox To Reduce Stress.

So with that, let’s dive into a few of my favorite email management tips that I think can be quite supportive for ADHD brains.

My Top 2 Favorite Email Management Tips

1. Approach Your Inbox as 3 Separate Activities

The first tip I suggest implementing is approaching your inbox not only with the different categories in mind, but also thinking about them as separate activities.

In other words, we’re not just visually separating the informational emails from the emails that require a response or action. Instead, we are thinking about these as three separate activities that we do at different times.

I love to use this strategy for a handful of different reasons.

When we focus on one of the activities at a time, we minimize unnecessary task switching, which allows us to more easily step into a flow state.

Similarly, it allows us to prepare ourselves for what we actually need in that moment to complete the task.

If we are simply responding to questions from students or customers, maybe we need to set our browser to full screen, put on some focus music, set a timer, and start responding.

On the other hand, if you’re reading informational content that you want to remember, you may have a note-taking system that you want to pull up so you can easily make notes and capture important information at that moment. This way you only have to read the email once before archiving or deleting it. That way you don’t fall into the trap of saving the e-mail in your inbox for reference, because you’ve already taken the notes and gathered what you needed.

These are the 3 separate activities to focus on:

• Emails that require a response
• Emails that require you to take action outside of your inbox
• Informational emails

This can help us navigate that feeling of overwhelm more easily.

Rather than thinking yourself, “Argh! I have to get to all of this right now!” It’s a much narrower focus. We’ve zoomed in and reminded the brain, “all we are doing right now is responding to these emails.” We don’t have to worry about anything else. Or “all we’re doing right now is reading the informational emails for the next hour and taking notes on the key points. That’s it.”

In other words, thinking about these categories as separate activities helps us reduce our overwhelm by:

• Providing a structured approach
• Reducing decision fatigue of where to start
• Minimizing task switching

All of this help us stay focused more easily on the specific activity at hand.

2. Set Specific Times For Each Activity

The final reason why I like to think about these categories as separate activities brings me to my next tip, which is to set specific times for tending to each of these activities.  In other words, we want to batch these separate categories of emails together for the greatest efficiency.

When you think about these 3 categories as separate activities within your inbox, it allows you to be more strategic about the time you are reading vs. responding to vs. acting on emails.

Plus, you might even be able to align those separate activities to the specific time of day that works best for your brain or your schedule.

For Example:

In the morning perhaps your brain needs a bit of warm-up time to transition into your focused work. So you schedule a 30-minute work block at the beginning of your day, which allows for that transition to happen. Within that 30-minute block you:

• First sort through emails that need to be moved to their proper categories. For example, moving emails from your primary folder to your informational folder.
• Then you spend the rest of your time responding to emails as your brain makes that transition into work mode for the day.
• Then when the timer goes off and you shift into your first focused block for the day.

As always, my main philosophy is to honor what works best for your brain. The way that we can figure this out is by creating a plan, trying it out, evaluating what worked and what didn’t, and making adjustments. The same is true for finding your best times for reading and responding to emails.

I personally have a quick block in the mid morning to make sure there aren’t any urgent emails that need a response immediately, and a slightly longer block in the afternoon set aside for responding to emails. My afternoon block is a little bit longer because I also BEGIN the process I have for my category of action emails. But that’s it.

I have two times a day that I have set aside for responding to emails. Then on Tuesdays, during my body double call and a short window on Thursday afternoons, I set aside time to read my informational emails, newsletters, updates from platforms I use in my business, take notes, etc.

By deciding when you will tend to each activity ahead of time, you save yourself so much time because you’re sidestepping the allure and inevitable distraction that is constant email checking and task switching throughout the day.

When you set aside specific times for these individual activities, don’t just label it in your planner or your calendar “check email.” instead, give your brain greater direction.

• Are you responding to emails?
• Doing the action emails?
• Reading for knowledge?

For the brains out there who don’t want so much rigid structure, rather than writing what type of email you’re checking in your schedule or your calendar, perhaps check in with yourself and make an intentional decision before you open your inbox. Where do you want to focus in this email block?

That way, you have the choice in the moment if that feels supportive for you.

👉 If you want help really working through this and finding new ways to think about your inbox or any other area of your life where you’re feeling overwhelmed, let’s talk. Diving in and working through the mindset and how we’re thinking about these areas of our lives is one of my favorite things to explore with my clients, with 1:1 coaching and in my group program, We’re Busy Being Awesome. I’ve got you.

3 Management Tips for Informational Emails

All right, now let’s talk more specifically about key tips for these three separate activities, starting with the informational emails and newsletters.

1. Do An Audit

First and foremost, I highly encourage you to do an audit on the newsletters and subscriptions that you have landing in your inbox every day. The number of emails can be quite astounding, so I encourage you to go through your inbox and review those subscriptions.

Do you want to keep them all in your inbox?

If not, no problem. You can just open up the e-mail, scroll down to the bottom and click unsubscribe. Or maybe, you just want to update the subscription settings.

Once you’ve done your email audit and you’re free of the obvious emails you no longer want filling up your inbox, you may also be left with a few that you’re unsure about.

Do you want to stay on the list? In situations like this, you might also ask yourself, why am I on this list in the first place? If you like your reasons, then stay subscribed.

2. Get The Info You Need & Then Delete/Archive

This brings me to the next tip with newsletters and informational emails. Get what you need from them, and then let them go.

Sometimes I hear from people that they are reluctant to delete or even archive emails because they’re afraid they might forget a key detail. I promise you, most of the time you will not need to refer back to the email.

This is especially true if you set up some type of notetaking system to capture those key points. So do yourself a favor and clarify what you want to get from the e-mail, then once you get it, let the e-mail go.

3. Have a Regular Review/Clean Up

Finally, I encourage you to set a regular review and clean up for this category of emails. Please remember, this means nothing about you. You’re not falling behind. This is not a problem. You’re not “bad” at email management. You simply are subscribed to several different emails.

As long as you want to keep getting them and they’re not preventing you from seeing the emails that need a response or action, it’s no problem at all.

With that being said, I encourage you to set some sort of regular check-in for yourself. Maybe once every two weeks, you go in and either delete or archive everything that is older than a month, knowing that you’re probably just not going to get to it, and that’s okay.

6 Management Tips For Responding To Emails

Now let’s talk about some of my favorite tips for responding to emails. This is certainly one of my biggest obstacles, as it’s really taxing for my brain to quickly process what I’m thinking about and put it into clear sentences – especially when starting from a blank page.

So, I’m going to share several different strategies, and I hope that a few of them will resonate with you to make responding to messages a little bit easier.

1. Respond To Emails from the Bottom of Your Inbox First

The first key tip is to practice responding to emails from the bottom of your inbox and move your way up. It’s so easy to get stuck at the top of our inbox, going back and forth with the newest messages and focusing on the latest fire.

Not surprisingly, this is not always the best strategy since important emails can easily get buried. So as often as possible, practice responding from the bottom up.

2. Set Expectations for Response Time

Next up, set expectations for response time, and please give yourself realistic time frames.

We are time blind. We over-promise far too often. Give yourself some breathing room.

Here are a few ways you can set expectations.

Email Autoresponder

If you have ever emailed me, you know that I have a ridiculous response time.

My autoresponder says something like,

Hey! Thanks so much for your email; it’s safely in my inbox. I try to respond within 48 hours, and I’m in the office Tuesday through Friday.

I know myself, and I know that processing emails is draining on my brain, so I set up my inbox and the response time expectations accordingly.

Even if it’s not industry practice, I’m okay with that because it allows me to show up better for my clients and to put more thought into creating all this content for you each week.

Quick Response + Set a Deadline

Coming from a slightly different angle, let’s say somebody emailed you with a big request that will take quite a bit of time to respond.

Rather than waiting for the stars to align so you can craft the perfect response, you could also respond with quick sentence or two like, “Hey, thanks so much for your e-mail. I wanted to let you know I got it, and I’ll have a response for you by Friday.”

That way, the other person is not waiting, wondering if you received the e-mail. And you’ve successfully set expectations and a deadline for yourself of when you’ll get back to them. (Make sure that it is a reasonable expectation and give yourself more than enough time.)

3. Create Email Templates

My next tip is to create e-mail templates, especially if you write a lot of emails that are quite similar.

When I was teaching, I had a handful of e-mail templates that I would use for answering student questions and providing feedback.

Essentially, these templates made it so much easier because I wasn’t starting with a blank page. So think about your scenario and the types of emails you find yourself writing over and over.

What might you turn into a template?

4. Determine Your Response Style

What is the easiest way for you to craft an e-mail response?

Some examples of different response styles:

• Sitting down and literally typing out the response.
• Crafting the response in bullet points to ensure that you’re answering each question, and then you go back in and fill in additional details as needed.
• Using talk-to-text, and then you go in and edit the punctuation, and correct the words talk-to-text got wrong.

Let ChatGPT Help Out

If you’re often spinning in finding the right words, perhaps you pop over to ChatGPT, and ask it to help you draft a response.

For example, perhaps you’re trying to say no to participating in some event for your kid’s school this spring.

You could go to ChatGPT and say: “Please draft a 4-5 sentence e-mail in a casual, friendly tone saying that I appreciate the opportunity but cannot participate in organizing the spring carnival, but I hope it all goes great!”

Then let ChatGPT draft the e-mail, and you can edit it to your tone of voice and include the details that it may have missed. Again, for many of us, having to work with rather than starting from a blank page makes it so much easier.

5. Suggest Another Form of Response (Phone/Zoom)

My next tip is to suggest a phone call, a Zoom call, or a quick in-person chat when that would be more efficient.

Sometimes people send an e-mail with a seemingly “quick question,” but it’s not actually quick, and responding via e-mail is simply not the most effective way.

If you notice yourself spinning and unable to get the e-mail written, check in with yourself.

Would it be easier to have a quick phone call or Zoom call?

Do you want to just pop over to their office and chat?

Not only would these alternatives likely save time, but they’d probably be clearer for everyone involved.

6. Clarify The Questions You Want to Answer – Ahead of Time

The last tip I will offer for responding to emails and writing emails is to clarify the questions you need to answer or the points you need to make ahead of time.

If you have an ADHD brain like mine, you may find it challenging to clarify the most important points from everything else since everything seems equally important. Because of this, my unedited emails can get long and confusing, and the important points get buried.

To help increase clarity, I love to think through all the things I want to share, and then I say to myself, “Long story short…” or “in other words…” And then I fill in the blank.

• What is the “long story short”?
• What is the thing you’re really trying to say?
• What is the main question?

Once you clarify that point, then you can start building backward and adding in additional detail as needed to give that main point context. I have found this to be one of the most effective ways to efficiently streamline communication.

My Top Tip for Emails That Require Action

And finally we reach the last category of emails, which are emails that require some sort of action.

Last week I grouped this category of emails with emails that require a response since both of them are technically actions. If you recall from last week, I also mentioned that I approach these action-based emails a little bit differently than ones that simply require a written response.

So I’m going to share what I do here just in case it’s helpful for any of you as well.

Emails that require action, are things that require me to leave my inbox to do something. Maybe I need to pay a bill, maybe I need to schedule a vet appointment, maybe I need to download some tax forms to send to my accountant, you get the idea.

These are actions that require more than a written reply.

Turn the Email Into A Task & Schedule It in Calendar

What I like to do with these emails is to literally turn them into a task and schedule them in my calendar for the day or the week ahead.

A lot of e-mail management systems have something built in to do this. Microsoft Outlook uses OneNote, in Gmail I can add it to my Google Tasks. Many project management systems also integrate with your inbox; whether you use ToDoist or Notion or Monday.com, or Asana. You can set up your inbox to work with your task management system and turn the e-mail into a task.

For example, I literally did get an e-mail from my accountant the other day asking for the payroll information for Q4 of 2023. I turned that email into a task and scheduled it in my calendar. That way, rather than planning to get to it at some point when I’m in my inbox, I know specifically that I’ll get to it on Wednesday at noon before I make lunch.

I love using this practice with emails that require action because I know I’ve captured the task, I know what to do with the task, AND I know WHEN I’m going to do it.

Bonus: Because I captured all that information, I can now clear it out of my inbox. This way it’s not creating visual clutter and distracting me from the important information I need to tend to.

Next Steps & Recap

I encourage you to take one or two tips that I offered and try implementing them in your life. You can always come back and listen again for the next tip and build upon your inbox management strategy, so it works best for your brain.

As a quick recap, I encourage you to approach your inbox management as three separate activities:

• Responding to emails,
• Emails that require outside action
• Reading and processing informational emails

From there, set specific times when you will tend to these activities.

When you’re navigating informational emails, I encourage you to…

• Do an audit to declutter the inbox and ensure that you’re only keeping what you want to have in there.
• Get clear on what you are keeping and why you’re choosing to keep it.
• Get what you need and then delete or archive the rest.

When you’re responding to emails…

• Read from the bottom up
• Set realistic expectations for response times
• Use e-mail templates
• Determine your response style
• Try another form of response (phone/Zoom)
• Clarify the most important points before adding in the details.

And finally, if you have a lot of emails that require outside action…

Consider turning them into tasks. Then assign those tasks specific times in your calendar, your planner, or your task management system. This will help reduce visual clutter in your inbox while ensuring you’ve dedicated enough time to actually get it done.

If you have anything else that you would add to the list, I would love to hear about it. Let’s connect over on Instagram. I am @imbusybeingawesome. You can leave your comment on the post for this episode or send me your favorite inbox tips directly in the DMs. I can’t wait to hear from you!