My ADHD Brain - Single Stream Email

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in this video I'll talk about using Gmail as a single stream funnel for the electronic information that enters my world.  This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization.

If you've watched the overview video of my organizational apps, you know that I use Gmail as the central funnel through which all electronic data enters my world. Kind of like having one single inbox to check and work through. I just wasn't keeping up well when I had four different inboxes to deal with. Let's walk through what that looks like for each kind of information:

• Landline voicemail - okay -- this is archaic and I know a bunch of people who never check their landline voice mail. But I have a couple of old school relatives in my life who would be none too pleased if I never responded to their urgent voicemails. Verizon is the provider for my landline service and they offer something called visual voicemail which for a small monthly fee allows you to have voicemails sent as an audio file to an email address of your choice.  Totally worth it to stay in the good graces of said relatives. 
• Cell phone voicemail - I use Google Voice to get my cell phone voicemail messages sent to my email.  I like this service even better than the one for my landline, since they attempt to translate the message into text, which saves me a little time since I don't have to find an opportunity to listen to the audio. I'll do a video on how to do this later on. 
• Conversations and things that pop into my head - unfortunately, there is no way to automate this, so I write emails to myself, or use Siri to send myself email reminders.  Like this, "Hey, Siri -- send me an email about remember to take the chicken out to thaw."
• Texts - texts are totally wreaking havoc with my system. It drives me crazy that you can't mark a message unread after you've read it -- you know, to remind yourself to go back and do it!  Because I can't figure out how to do this without jail breaking my phones, if I get a text I need to act on, I forward it to my email address. Here's how you do that on an iPhone: press down on the text bubble that you want to forward until you get additional option, choose More..., then choose the forward arrow and type in your email address. If you have your email address set up to receive iMessages, it will boomerang right back to you on text, so turn that off in Settings, Messages, Send and Receive. Then your text message should arrive in your inbox as a weird little text attachment. 

Two other important things:

• Synchronized email - I have no patience for deleting or filing emails on multiple platforms. If I delete it on my iPad, I want it deleted on my computer and my iPhone. The only way to do this is to use an IMAP email service like gmail, which synchronizes between devices. If you are using a service that only uses POP3 protocol -- ditch it immediately and switch to an IMAP service.  Otherwise, you'll waste a lot of time deleting emails in multiple places. You can keep your current email address just as long as your email service has a forwarding option -- most do. 
• Divert Unwanted Emails - this is a problem everyone deals with. In order to do anything on the Internet now, it seems you need to create an account. And in order to create an account, you need to put in an email address. Some people handle this by filtering out unwanted emails after they get to their inbox. The way I do it is by having a separate email address that I use solely for this purpose. My main Gmail address is sacred.  But I have a Yahoo account that I use for online shopping sites, reward card programs and other stuff that I know will send me a bunch of spam.  I can access my Yahoo inbox online for email coupons or to find tracking numbers, but it saves my main Gmail account from that torrent of unwanted email. 

Okay -- so all that is how email gets into my inbox.  What happens next?  I commit to getting my inbox to zero every three days or so. I can hear the gasping. Yes, it's possible.  In order to start the process, you may have to declare email bankruptcy by deleting all emails before a certain date and letting your friends and coworkers know to reach back out to you if they are waiting on a response.  But it CAN be done. I do this so things don't fall through the cracks.  I need the discipline of going through each email to ensure that I have handled it. 

The three options for emails are: delete, file, or act. Delete is easy. Let's talk about filing for a second. I use Gmail, but I don't always file on my computer. Sometimes I file on my mobile devices. You can't create new Gmail save folders from the iPhone or iPad app (as far as I know), so I make them on the computer and, because of IMAP, they appear magically on the other devices. The world is turning slowly away from the Windows file management "folder nested in folder" organizational concept and towards a more dynamic tagging and keyword approach to document retrieval.  In other words, it used to be important for you to remember where you put something, now you just have to be able to locate it through search terms. So, I try to use a fairly flat file system (not many nested folders and not too granular) and make sure that my emails are searchable by subject or content. Sometimes I forward an email to myself just to improve the subject line, but Gmail's search ability is pretty good.  Is it Google, after all. 

Okay -- that is delete and file. For emails I have to act on - my rule of thumb is that if I can read, respond to, or act on an email in less than around 5 minutes, then I do that as I'm going through my inbox. Otherwise the email gets moved. For non-required, lengthy reading, I put emails in a 2Read folder, which I presumably go through at my leisure. Everything else gets moved to an appropriate file and turned into a task like "figure out carpool schedule for field hockey" or "respond back to Jennifer about 5k registration" or "read article for group meeting".  Tasks have dates associated with them, so I can schedule them in the future if that makes more sense. Look for explainer videos for the systems I use for task management, lists, and reminders. 

Follow up system - if I'm writing an email for which I'm expecting a response -- anything from "can you guys do dinner on this date or this date?" to "what is your progress on x, y, and z?" to "what is your advice about   . . ." -- I always blind copy or bcc myself.  So, once I've sent it, I get a copy of the email back in my inbox. I then file that email in a folder called "+Outstanding Items". The plus sign is so it is higher on the list of alphabetized folders. Then once a week I have a task to follow up on my Outstanding Items. I also blind copy myself on the follow ups until I get an answer at which point I can delete the whole email trail.  This helps me stay on top of things I've asked and prevents me from shooting out of bed in the middle of the night thinking -- I never heard back from so and so!

That is it for my single stream email system.  It's not for everyone, but it keeps me from missing events, failing to respond, and falling down on my responsibilities.  I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments section. And thanks for watching!