My ADHD Brain: How to Single Stream Your Email
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.
Please subscribe and leave comments below!
**** A truncated transcript follows. A full transcript can be found at https://www.marblejar.net/blog/2017/6/24/my-adhd-brain-single-stream-gmail. ****
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. . .
**** Read a full transcript at www.marblejar.net. ****
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.
Please subscribe and leave comments below!
**** A truncated transcript follows. A full transcript can be found at https://www.marblejar.net/blog/2017/6/24/my-adhd-brain-single-stream-gmail. ****
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. . .
**** Read a full transcript at www.marblejar.net. ****
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Hi Lara, please allow me a question about the part about synchronized email. Do I understand it right, that you collect all of your different email-accounts in one place: gmail? I tried it for several accounts, that are no gmail-accounts. Gmail gives you the opportunity to add an email adress you own. But I can only add a POP3-email-account. Unfortunately. So I cannot use all of the advantages of an imap-account. How did you solve this problem? Best regards Michael