Latest / ADHD with Confidence | Overcome Anxiety & Self-Doubt, Christian ADHD Coach, ADHD in Women / 138 // ADHD-Friendly Email Inbox Organization

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138 // ADHD-Friendly Email Inbox Organization · ADHD with Confidence | Overcome Anxiety & Self-Doubt, Christian ADHD Coach, ADHD in Women

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  Have you ever looked at your email inbox and just been astonished at how many
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  emails you have, how many unread emails you have, and how hard it is to find
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  anything that you actually need to find?
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  Are you tired of feeling like you don't fit in? Like you're not good enough the way you are?
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  In this podcast, I will give you the strategies to build God-centered confidence
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  so you can know in your heart that you do belong, you are enough,
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  and you are made on purpose and with a purpose.
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  Hey friends, welcome to the ADHD with Confidence podcast. I'm your host,
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  Kelsey, and today we're going to talk about ADHD-friendly email box organization.
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  Now, keep in mind for this, as I often say, is that we want to figure out what works for you.
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  I'm going to give you some examples of what has worked for me just to kind of
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  give you a starting point, but don't feel like that's the only way of doing things.
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  If you have a different approach that works, that is great.
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  Before we get into that, though, don't forget if you are looking for life coaching,
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  ADHD coaching, head to ADHDwithconfidence.com and select the free intake coaching call. All right.
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  First thing I would say, so I am talking about a Gmail account that I have.
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  And within your inbox, if you go to your inbox, on the left hand side,
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  you'll see there's the option of labels.
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  Now we are going to be creating labels that we can organize our emails into.
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  This is going to help us to be able to easily locate an email that we are looking for.
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  You can also use the search, but this helps us to also clean out our inbox so
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  that if you are anything like me, you don't have thousands of emails in your
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  inbox, which can feel discouraging,
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  overwhelming, and difficult to sort through.
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  All right, what I would recommend here is only having a few broad categories
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  of folders or of labels on the side there.
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  So when you create the labels, you can kind of create main labels,
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  and then underneath those, you can create...
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  Sub labels or sub categories. So what I have in mind is I have two main ones.
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  The first one is personal and the second one is professional.
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  So when I get an email in my inbox, it's easy for me to know,
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  oh, this is something that belongs in the personal folder.
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  This is something that belongs in the professional folder.
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  And it keeps it a lot cleaner as opposed to having all of my sub categories
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  showing on the left under those labels.
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  It just keeps it easier for me to organize. If you have a different way that
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  works well for you, that's great. I want you to play around with this.
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  This is simply a starting point.
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  All right. So under those two broad categories, and first of all,
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  maybe I'll just go to this and show you.
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  So if you go to the left there and you click on labels, you're able to create a new label name.
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  Now, what I recommend is that you number them based on what you want to show up at the top.
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  So for example, I will label, you know, the one that I want to show up at the
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  top as number one and the next one is number two,
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  number three, number four like that because I find that it can create a little
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  bit more structure and it can organize things for you a little bit easier just
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  once again to make it easier to look through.
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  I'll explain more about those numbers once we're in the subcategories because
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  with this there's only two categories but I still find it helpful to have them labeled.
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  All right so you create your label, you click on the
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  create button later I will also show you how you can go into
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  settings and you can hide the emails that you put into these so what I mean
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  by that is that in your inbox when you choose some emails that belong in the
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  personal folder the personal label that once they're under that label they no
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  longer show up in your main inbox and that's how we're going to declutter a little bit better.
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  The second part is going to be creating subcategories. So if you go to the categories,
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  you already created some minor personal and professional, and you hover over
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  them, there's the three little vertical dots.
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  So I want you to click on that. And then at the bottom there, it says add sub label.
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  So when you're creating this one, it's going to show up under a drop down menu
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  under that first major label.
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  So for me, for example, I'll just give you my examples. under
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  personal I have nine different categories
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  so quite a few but you can see why I want them under sub categories
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  as opposed to the main categories so under personal and once again I numbered
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  these is number one I have home so anything relating to my home is going to
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  go in there so if I just open this up here for example we are working on a renovation
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  so we've had some emails going back and forth between, you know,
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  different subcontractors and, you know, people supplying different materials
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  for us and the cabinets and things like that. So there's been a lot going on for the renovation.
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  So under my home, I have a category, another subcategory of a renovation.
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  I also have, you know, maybe utility bills or internet bills and things like
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  that, things that have to do with my home.
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  You can be creative with this as well for what works for you.
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  Another one that goes under personal for me has to do with my kids.
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  So once again, I will create even more subcategories under kids because that's what you can do.
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  So when you're under, so I have personal, I have all these sub labels under that.
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  And under those sub labels, I even have more. If this is overwhelming for you,
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  feel free to organize it in a different way.
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  I just find for me, it keeps it a little bit cleaner.
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  And then I can go based off of the topic to find something that I'm looking for.
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  Or to organize it when I do receive emails. So looking at this for me.
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  The under personal and under the category for my kids, I have it organized by,
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  you know, their school, or if I'm talking about,
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  you know, for their school, which kid and what grade they're in so that I know,
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  you know, oh, I wanted to look at something from kindergarten that's going to be in this folder.
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  Another category under personal would be government. So any kind of government
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  related emails like taxes that can be helpful or anything that's going to go
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  towards your taxes the following year.
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  I've talked about this in the last episode, but being, you know,
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  having different supports in place, this is a support and a system that can
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  be incredibly helpful when tax season comes that you have all of the necessary
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  documents under one label, under one folder.
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  Another category I have is health. So if I have any appointments,
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  whether it's for me or the kids, any results that came from those appointments,
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  anything having to do with health is going to go under that subcategory.
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  Another one I have is for the vehicle. Once again, any reports,
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  any checkups, any kind of, you know, coupons or, you know, you're due for an
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  oil change, whatever it is, is going to go underneath that.
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  Number six is media. No, I will admit I had to re-record this part because the
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  way I ended up talking about how people sending photos, it just didn't come across right.
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  And it was not supposed to be inappropriate. So I'm re-recording it to say this
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  folder, this sub-label media is I've had people like my in-laws send photos
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  of their travels while they're out of the country.
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  And maybe they can't send them via text, whatever it is, or maybe there's larger
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  files that are being sent. I have also written and recorded songs that I've
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  sent via email and sometimes I just like having them saved there.
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  Obviously with some of the stuff it's better to then take it out of there and
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  save it to something like Google Drive but for the time being I do have a sub-label
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  called media where I put anything like photos or songs.
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  Another one I put here is food. So what I mean by that is maybe somebody sends
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  you a recipe, or maybe you created a meal plan and you want to organize it under here.
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  And once again, this stuff can be brought into, you know, your Google Drive
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  and stuff like that. But while it's in your email, it's nice for it to have a place to live.
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  Another category I have is for the church. So any volunteering I'm doing,
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  any permission forms, any kids summer camps, anything like that having to do
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  with the church is going to go under one.
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  And then my last category under personal is going to be for travel.
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  So planning trips, the flights, the necessary documentation,
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  all the things that go along with that.
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  The other broad category I have is professional. Now this is going to look different.
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  Maybe you don't need this one at all if you're not working, but if you are.
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  So for me, I have different categories than you might have.
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  Number one would be the podcast.
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  And once again, I can create sub labels beneath that. The second one would be for coaching.
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  The third one is for professional development. So any courses I'm taking,
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  any coaching I'm receiving and things like that. And then the fourth one is for my website.
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  So as you can see here, it just helps to be able to categorize things so that
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  you have some sort of organizational system that's going to help you.
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  And the next tip that I have for you is a really, really important,
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  really big one. So I got this one from,
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  Dr. Ari Tuchman's book, The ADHD Productivity Manual.
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  So thank you. But this in here, a suggestion that was in it was saying that
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  if you have so many emails in your inbox, that it's just overwhelming.
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  I think I had, you know, 1,800 unread emails and thousands of actual emails before this.
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  Start fresh put all of the
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  emails so I did for me right now all of
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  the emails from 2025 and earlier I made
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  another category another label on the left there
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  that is just for those old emails so everything that was from 2025 and earlier
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  I put all into that one label that one category because the chances are as it
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  gets a little bit older you probably don't need it anymore but you can also
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  spend so much time trying to sort through it.
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  So this way, what he had said is that you can still search and find it quite
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  easily, but then it's not cluttering up your inbox.
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  And that way you can kind of start fresh with the last couple months.
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  So like for me right now, it's the last few months that I had to actually organize,
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  which was feasible. That was doable.
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  Another thing I was going to tell you quickly here. So if you are in your email
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  and you have all these labels, you want to make sure that you change the settings
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  so that once you've labeled them into one of these categories,
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  that they don't show up in your inbox anymore.
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  You can still search for them, but they don't show up in your inbox.
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  So if you are in your main inbox here, on the top right, there's like a little,
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  wheel looking thing. And when you hover over it, it says settings.
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  So you're going to click on settings. And then you can go to see all settings.
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  And then on the top there, it says general click beside it says labels.
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  Now under labels, you look here and it says, you know, show hide,
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  show hide, show hide under everything.
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  So you want to select hide for all of those, because that is going to make it
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  so that when you label these things, they're no longer going to show up in your
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  inbox anymore, which is what we want.
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  We want to have a clean inbox that is easy to sort through.
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  All right, I know this is a lot. Hopefully it was helpful, and hopefully I will
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  see you here on the next episode. Until then, God bless.