Adult ADHD and Preventing Impulsive Emails

Hello, dear friends with adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I had a conversation with a fellow the other day and he brought up something I had never considered doing before: setting up my email system so that when I'm sending emails I have to go through an extra step to actually have them sent. There are different ways to do this in email systems and they just might be able to help with our impulsive email sending habits.My best pal always says she can tell that it's me sending her a text message, because she gets six of them in a row. Usually, it goes like this:

• Hye, Ashley, guess what! SEND
• Hey* SEND
• I did XXX tod SEND
• ay SEND
• Isn't that awesome? SEND
• I'm so excite SEND
• d SEND

Yeah, she can always tell it's me. This pattern of pushing "send" too early can extend beyond texting and into emails. How many times I have sent an email with a typo? How many times have I forgotten to ask a final question, so I need to write a follow up that makes it look like I didn't forget the question to begin with?

Too many.

Here comes the solution: email delay sending. Here's how you do it.

Preventing Impulsive Emails on Gmail

Click on the gear button in the upper right. Next, settings. Then, labs. Then, enable "undo send." You now have the ability to unsend an email. You only have a few seconds to do so, but those few seconds might just mean the difference between oops and wahoo.

Preventing Impulsive Emails in Outlook

Microsoft office offers a good amount of help for using Outlook's delay feature. For Outlook 2010:

1. At Home menu, select Rules.
2. Select Manage Rules & Alerts.
3. Select New Rule.
4. Select Apply Rule on Messages I send from the list of rule templates.
5. Click Next.
6. Ignore the Select Conditions and click Next.
7. On Select Actions, Check the defer delivery by a number of minutes.
8. In the lower box, click a number of minutes and enter the number of minutes of delay you desire.
9. Click OK, Next.
10. Ignore the Select Exceptions. Click Next.
11. Give the rule a name, possibly Delay Sending.
12. Click Finish.

Preventing Impulsive Emails on Other Platforms

I'm sure there are easy rules to follow for other email platforms, though I've never used the others and feel I can't fairly speak to them. For those of us with adult ADHD, though, this email delay might really be super helpful.

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