This week on The Distractables podcast, Marie and I talk with Ari Scott, who you may know as “The ADHD Entrepreneur.” We talk about RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) and its connection with emotion dysregulation. It’s a super fun conversation filled with some interesting tangents about the nature of how emotions affect our lives with ADHD.

Check it out here:

• The Distractables — RSD and Relationships with special guest Ari Scott

Paid subscribers of Extra Focus get early access to new episodes of The Distractables via the Unfocused podcast feed at extrafocus.com/podcast.

It used to be so exciting to receive mail when I was a kid.

Maybe it was a letter from a grandparent that contained a $5 birthday check, or maybe the latest Disney Adventures magazine, or even a reply from the pen pal I wrote to last month. It was always some sort mystery box I couldn’t wait to open and see what was inside.

But as I got older, the joy of mail faded and was replaced by piles of “stuff I should act on” which accumulated on the kitchen counter. Piles that only grew as I knew I would never get to it all.

It all got to be much more “important” and much less “fun.”

Email was the same way. In the 90’s, email was so exciting that you would get an audible “You’ve got mail!” alert every time a message showed up—can you imagine if that happened today? My computer would never shut up.

Once email moved from fun to important, we tried to replace email with messaging apps. In the early days we used messaging apps that all seemed to have 3-letter acronyms (AIM, MSN, and ICQ), and now we’ve shoved most of our messaging into social media apps and texting which we can now access directly from the device in our pockets.

Somehow, thanks to tech revolutions in communication to “solve” mail, I now have more mailboxes and inboxes than I know what to do with.

I’ve got overflowing inboxes in Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Slack, Discord, Work Email, Personal Email, Side Hustle Project Email, and whatever else I’ve signed up for that I thought was maybe going to be a solution for managing all of this… stuff.

And my kitchen counter is still piled high with that important mail that keeps showing up.

Every day I get 17 months further behind.

I’m starting to think that the solution for this might need to be mandatory clean sweeps.

Once I’ve ignored an email for 2 weeks, what is the likelihood that I’m ever going to respond to it? Near zero? Absolute zero? Instead, it just continually fills me with guilt and shame whenever I think about it for months and months and months.

So that’s going to be my experiment. I’m going to start wiping out my primary email inbox at the end of every week, no matter what.

What have you done to try and manage your inboxes?

Stay curious,
Jesse J. Anderson

P.S. As a Halloween treat for paid supporters of Extra Focus, I recorded a fun episode for the Unfocused podcast reviewing and ranking the very best Halloween candy: Unfocused Candy Bracket 2024

Unfocused Candy Bracket 2024

Jesse J. Anderson and Trina Haynes · Oct 27

Today we’re doing a fun little episode for paid supporters, ranking Halloween candy in a 32-piece elimination bracket! I invited my friends Trina and Ron to debate and decide on the winners of each bracket, ultimately crowning a winner as the best of all Halloween candy!

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