If there’s one thing that can cause instant overwhelm, it’s a cluttered inbox. And for us ADHD entrepreneurs, dealing with an overflowing inbox can quickly feel like drowning in emails! Email overwhelm is a huge struggle for ADHD women business owners who are already managing so many day-to-day tasks. Today’s goal is to automate your inbox, organize it to cut down on time spent managing emails and reduce your mental clutter.
You’re about to take that inbox from cluttered and crazy to organized and having an inbox zero. Let’s jump in!
Why Email Overwhelm Hits Hard for ADHD Entrepreneurs
ADHD business owners often struggle with an overflowing inbox, leading to decision fatigue and difficulty prioritizing emails. They’re like little distractions that pop up all day long, pulling us away from important work. For ADHD brains, it’s even harder to sort through them all, decide which ones need attention and figure out how to respond – cue the overwhelm!
A cluttered inbox leads to missed opportunities, slow response times and a general feeling of being out of control. When your inbox is a mess, it’s easy to miss important messages or feel like you’re constantly putting out fires, which only adds to the stress of running your business.
Step 1: Set Up Email Filters to Automatically Organize Incoming Messages
Filters are essential for ADHD entrepreneurs. Setting up filters in Gmail can automatically organize incoming messages, reducing the number of emails in your inbox and helping you focus on what’s important. They’re literally life savers! Filters sort emails into different categories so you’re not overwhelmed by everything landing in your main inbox at once.
Setting up email filters in both my shared support and personal business inboxes saved my bacon! It’s super easy, too. Go to your Gmail settings, click on “Filters and Blocked Addresses” and create a new filter. You can filter emails by sender, subject line, keywords or email list, and have them automatically skip your inbox, label them or archive them. If you’re managing a shared inbox, create filters for specific clients or types of requests, so you can delegate tasks to team members or categorize emails by priority automatically.
Here are some examples of filters to set up:
Client Emails: Automatically send client-related emails to a specific label for easy access.
Newsletters: Have newsletters skip your inbox and go straight to a “Reading Later” label.
Receipts/Invoices: Filter receipts and invoices into a finance label for easy tracking.
Support Requests: In shared inboxes, use filters to send certain types of support emails directly to the relevant team members.
You can customize filters to suit your specific needs, whether it’s sorting emails by project, client or urgency.
Step 2: Use Gmail Labels and Stars for Priority Management
Visual systems like Gmail’s labels and stars help our ADHD brains prioritize emails by importance and category. Using labels and stars to categorize and prioritize emails lets you see at a glance what needs your immediate attention versus what can wait.
Labels are like folders, but better because a single email can have more than one label. They’re super easy to set up, too! Create labels for different clients, projects or categories like “Urgent,” “Respond Later” or “Follow-Up.” Color-code them so you can instantly recognize what’s important. In shared inboxes, labels can help you quickly see which team member is responsible for a task. Set up labels like “In Progress,” “Needs Response” or “Waiting on Client” to keep everyone on track.
You can color code your labels to highlight high-priority emails or tasks. I like to use red for urgent emails (like client emails), teal for my business-related emails, purple for education and green for operations. Once you get used to the colors you’ve set up, it becomes a visual system that ADHD brains can instantly understand and act on without having to sift through every email.
How I Saved 5 Hours a Week with Gmail Labels and Filters Guide
I want to help you automate your inbox so much that I created a free pdf guide over how I saved 5 hours a week with Gmail labels and filters! I take you step-by-step through how to set up labels and filters, giving you screenshots along the way. You do NOT want to miss this! It has changed my life so much and I want to help you achieve the freedom that an inbox zero has given me!
Step 3: Use Canned Responses to Save Time on Repetitive Emails
I. hate. repetitive. tasks. There, I said it! They’re boring, annoying, mentally draining, yet still need to be done. That’s why I love a canned response! They allow you to respond quickly to common questions or send the same email when you need to. We often get stuck on repetitive emails – whether it’s answering the same client questions or sending out onboarding details. Canned responses are like little productivity boosts – they let you respond without having to think through the same thing again and again.
All you have to do is enable Templates in Gmail, save your most common emails, then be ready to send them in just a few seconds’ time when you need to! First, go to your Gmail settings, click on “Advanced” and enable Templates. Then, create and save email templates for the types of responses you send frequently – like “Thanks for your message, I’ll get back to you soon,” or onboarding instructions for new clients.
Here are a few examples of canned responses to create:
Client Onboarding Emails: Quickly send out next steps after a client signs on.
Follow-up Emails: Use a template for following up with leads or after meetings.
Support Requests: For shared inboxes, create standard responses to common support inquiries.
Meeting Confirmations or Scheduling: Got a calendar link ready to send? Set it up in a template and you can fire it off without typing a thing.
Templates give you more time to focus on the emails that actually need your attention, and it helps you stay on top of communication without feeling overwhelmed.
Step 4: Batch Process Your Inbox and Schedule Emails to Control Email Time
Emails can pull your focus away at any moment. Instead of dealing with them constantly, you can batch process your inbox – meaning, set specific times of the day to check and respond to emails. And with Gmail’s scheduling feature, you can even write emails in advance and have them send out at a later time. This puts YOU in control of how often you deal with emails, reducing your sense of overwhelm.
The scheduling feature has been great for my team because we don’t all work in the same time zone. Our client business hours are Monday through Thursday, 9-3 pm CST, and we only send client communications during that time. The scheduling feature allows us to write an email early in the morning or after business hours, but schedule it to send during the correct time. In Gmail, after you’ve composed your email, click the arrow next to the send button and choose “Schedule Send.” You can pick a date and time for the email to go out – even if you’re offline or not working at that moment!
I also highly recommend setting designated times during the day to check and respond to emails. Instead of checking your inbox every 10 minutes, schedule two or three times a day where you focus solely on emails. This way, you can get through everything in one go without letting your inbox constantly interrupt your flow. I like to check it first thing in the morning, then about an hour before I’m done working. If it’s a busy season, I’ll also add a mid-day check so the last check doesn’t take as long.
You can also use the “Snooze” option in Gmail to temporarily remove non-urgent emails from your inbox, and they’ll come back at a time that’s better for you to deal with them. It helps you remove the urge to read all of your emails when you simply don’t have the time.
Step 5: Automate Routine Tasks with Email Integrations
Email automations can take care of a lot of the repetitive stuff for you – like sending reminders, logging tasks in Asana or even triggering workflows in Zapier. That way, you’re not wasting brainpower on the little things. Automate your inbox and let it do the work for you!
Tools like Zapier can connect Gmail with other business apps to streamline workflows. Zapier lets you set up “zaps” that connect Gmail to other tools. For example, you can create a zap that automatically logs certain types of emails as tasks in Asana or sends a follow-up email after a certain amount of time.
Here are a few examples of automations to set up:
Client Onboarding: Automatically send welcome emails and add client info to a CRM.
Task Management: Turn emails into tasks in Asana without lifting a finger.
Follow-Ups: Set up automated reminders or follow-ups for clients who haven’t responded within a certain timeframe.
Automate Your Inbox and Reap the Rewards
By automating your inbox, you can finally stop feeling like you’re drowning in emails and get back to focusing on the work that matters most to your business. You’ll reduce decision fatigue, save time and stay organized. You’ll be so glad you did!
Want more ADHD-friendly business tips? Grab my free guide on How I Saved 5 Hours a Week with Gmail Labels & Filters or follow me on Instagram for more ways to streamline and simplify your entrepreneurial journey!
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