Ever noticed how some emails fly in and out of your inbox while others linger in the dark depths of, ‘I’ll deal with that later’?
For those with dyslexia or ADHD, this email avoidance might not just be procrastination—it could be your brain trying to tell you something! I mean maybe it’s just me, but some emails I can process and work through super quickly, other emails seem to hang around. I avoid them like the plague. So as the self reflective, trying to understand the why, I’ve done a bit of analysis on this!
Emails that relate to what I do on a day-to-day basis I can respond to and clear really quickly. Emails that are related to something that is slightly different from my norm, are more than three lines long and require me to take some sort of action I am not used to taking, are emails that generally get pushed to the bottom of the pile.
The flip side is these longer emails often end up being the important emails that I end up being chased for responses over and also often have a deadline attached to them (I can’t lie I often miss!)
But why does this happen and why do I do that?
My theory… different equals more working memory, more processing more thinking, and sometimes more action, more exhausting work. Emails aren’t the main bulk of any job but a way of communicating and when you look at these in between your big main tasks and work you don’t want to process a load of language! It’s genuinely exhausting!
I’ve learnt that I need to build in TIME early on in the day if I want to actually clear my emails properly! It isn’t something I can do in between other tasks!
So I wondered, what is your experience of dyslexia and emails…What types of emails do you leave lurking in your inbox for later? I’d love to know.