Best Email Management Tips from an ENFP with ADHD
If you randomly check email, you’re trying to procrastinate something more important you should do throughout the day.
In the video above I’m answering a question from a fellow ENFP, one of my Free Freelancer clients who is also an ENFP with ADHD.
ENFP ADHD or ADD usually means that when we are fighting our own fight, when we are running our own race, we can be absolutely unstoppable.
When ENFPs or INFPs with ADHD are let loose, we can do what we do best – we are amazing!
But…when it comes to ADHD and organizational skills, when we get caught up in things like email clutter – one of our ultimate kryptonites, or some kind of organization that we really don’t enjoy, we can go from this superhero to the character in the back of the scene that no one even notices because we’re not doing anything important.
So it’s really, really important to learn how to organize your email, because when you have your own business, when you’re dealing with clients or other important communication, if you don’t respond for six days…
Well, it doesn’t necessarily go over very well.
So in the video above I’m sharing three email inbox management strategies that lead me, an ENFP with ADHD, to be an email superstar to the point where I can even get to Inbox Zero, meaning there are no emails in my inbox – I completely clear it out!
How To Manage Your Email – ENFP and INFP Organizational Blocks
What happens often to us ENFP and INFP personality types is that we don’t open an email, read it and then just say: “I’ll respond later.”
When you do the -I’ll respond later- thing, you do two things.
One, you really increase the odds that you forget about it and never respond to the email.
And two, you are filing up your brain with these questions which just drains your brainpower.
So say you’re in the lineup at the supermarket for three minutes and you make the mistake of opening your inbox and now you’re reading an email.
It asks you a question.
You don’t know how to respond or you don’t have time because now you’re at the front of the line. You’re going to be thinking about that question for the next 10 minutes when, really, you could be thinking about bigger things, important things, not how to respond to this one email!
If you randomly check email, you’re trying to procrastinate something more important you should do throughout the day and I say this as someone who is guilty as charged on this more times than I would like to admit publicly here.
If you do that, you’re always going to be checking, scrolling through, and your inbox will be an absolute mess.
While I can get myself to Inbox Zero by responding to most things most of the time, I realized that I have some lingering messages and a few other inbox kryptonites that really mess with me.
And I recently figured out why.
It’s because I don’t know what to do with those emails.
What I mean is there are certain questions you’re being asked that you don’t know how to respond.
When I get some ENFP or INFP emails, in particular, I want to provide as much value as possible and then may end up overthinking the situation and whether that person is a good fit for working together in a coaching capacity.
This is not the best ENFP time management on my side either and the email also just ends up sitting there.
Once you have this situation with your inbox, it’s kind of like that broken window theory – once one window on the street breaks, the likelihood of more windows breaking goes up and up and up.
I think our inboxes are like that as well.
If we leave a few emails just sitting there for weeks or months, and we don’t take action on them, we get more and more pile up and decluttering your inbox becomes way harder.
When you’re getting emails you don’t know how to deal with, when you don’t know really what the next step is, it’s natural you’re going to let them build up and then your inbox will go to hell. It will massively reduce your ENFP productivity, trust me – this is one of our kryptonites, especially if you’re an ENFP – or a fellow INFP – with ADHD. The email productivity tips I’m sharing in the video above will prevent this.
ENFP and INFP Email Kryptonite
There is also another phenomenon when it comes to ENFP and INFP organization, in this case related to email inbox management.
When I first read someone’s email, it may happen it’s not that interesting to me. But being an ENFP, I have trouble saying no to opportunities, so I kind of leave it there or worse!
I’ll start engaging with them and asking questions, even though really my gut instinct is telling me this isn’t worth my time.
And so that ends up creating this whole back and forth with the person when, really, from the beginning, I didn’t want to do the thing they were asking me to do from the start.
If you’re an ENFP or INFP (Campaigner or Mediator personality), I’m sure you must have experienced something similar.
The last email management advice I’m sharing in the video is if your inbox is past the point of no return – if you have 8942 emails and you think this is absolutely hopeless – what the heck should you do?!
Watch the video above for my best tips for email management.
Whether or not you’re an ENFP or INFP with ADHD, these email management tips will boost your productivity, giving you a lot more mental energy to devote somewhere important.
Make sure to share this post with anyone who you think might benefit from these email organization strategies as well!
Prefer listening? Check Dreams Around The World Podcast for the audio version of this and some more Podcast episodes on ENFP and ADHD.
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