this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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ADHD

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I don't know about you, but I really struggle with emails. These sentences were really helpful!

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Always happy to help!

No I'm not <.<

Could you do (time)?

I will never be able to pick a time :-\

It'd be easier to discuss in person

NOOOOPE

(Being assertive)

Not a chance :'D
This stuff is all bad for me πŸ˜…

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Let me guess... ADHD and social anxiety?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh, very social anxiety πŸ™€Probably some 'the spectrum' funs too.

... I can barely leave my bedroom <.< hides under pillow

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Solidarity. I shall stay in this house as my tomb.

I also can't recognize why some of these sentences are better or worse than others.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You poor thing - please read me saying that with tons of compassion as I have social anxiety myself. Technically generalized anxiety disorder, but definitely with a social flavor to it. I hope you can find things that work to make life better!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I prefer my favorite one: "as per my previous email"

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] SouthernOcean 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah the β€œas” is totally unnecessary.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Business speak for "bitch, can you fucking read?"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

What. Utter. Bullshit. Next you gonna tell people to post "Please do the needful"?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Bit of a tangent, not just emails, not just professionaly, but one thing I find saves me a lot of stress is that I ask less unnecessary questions.

Not: Would you like to join me / go with me and do x? You can't go on day x? What about day y?

Instead: I'm going to do X at date, location, time. If you want you can join me, let me know.

Not: Can you do X?

Instead: I would like you to do X.

Not: When will it be ready?

Instead: I'm assuming it'll be ready by X. Let me know if this is correct.

Not: What's the deadline?

Instead: I can have this done by X. Let me know if this is acceptable.

TLDR: don't ask people permission or assume they won't be ok with what you want to do. Tell them what you're doing/planning/expecting, offer them the opportunity to help/join/give input.

Bonus: makes you come across as less uncertain and saves a lot of back and forth.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've found that some people don't respond if you ask for confirmation "will that be finished by tomorrow?". Asking in the negative allows for you to assume everything is fine unless they respond "the due date is tomorrow, please let me know if you need help to finish that on time".

Perhaps it's less polite, but if you're dealing with people who rarely reply, it puts the burden on them and doesn't leave you waiting for their reply.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Good catch. Yeah. "I'm assuming X. Let me know if this is not the case."

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is great! I found this sorting by New and these tips are applicable for anyone (not only those suffering from ADHD) to have a more authoritative and confident tone to your digital communications.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Definitely agree. I posted it to YSK to reach more people.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I can’t wait to forget all of these.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Jesus, I fit like half of those. Some of those are gonne hard to get rid of...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Could you elaborate on how ADHD affects writing e-mails, if you do not mind? I expected writing e-mails would be more comfortable for someone with ADHD because they can take their time with the e-mail. But then again, the time is limited and maybe this freedom to write in your own time means that you write a single e-mail way too long, rewriting it, … I do not know much about it. I would welcome some insights on the topic.

Nevertheless, I like some of these suggestions very much. I might try and see if I can improve some phrases in my e-mails with these as well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One of the major reasons this applies to ADHD for me is the fact that I can fall behind on projects and emails and then feel the need to over-apologize and over-extend myself to fix the problem. Several of these tips address it. It's more about boundaries than emails per se, if that makes sense.... I mean, let me know if you have any questions :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It makes perfect sense. Thank you for sharing. I can relate a bit with my own problems, so I know what you are talking about and can extrapolate further if I do not. Have you managed to create some mechanisms how to mitigate these issues? Something like forcing yourself to set hard limits on how much time you can allocate to any project in addition to the normal amount of time you would allocate for the task, limiting how many times you can use 'sorry' in a single e-mail, etc.?

This is an interesting and enlightening discussion under this post. I learned new things. For that, I am grateful.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can't speak for everyone, but the issues I have relate to writing way too much information. Sometimes if I get in the zone I write beautiful emails, but most of the time it is a rough experience, full of deleting and rewriting. This happens when the response can be easily condensed into a couple sentences. Anyway, that's just my experience.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I see. That can be exhausting, I imagine. Thank you for sharing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have the same problem. I started using AI to rewrite my emails to make them more concise and to avoid long-winded responses.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That might actually be a great help. You give a few bullet points and the AI can generate them into sentences. Then we get into the joke that the recipient will use AI to summarize the e-mail into bullet points again, but in general, I think it could help with these types of problems in e-mail writing. Thank you for sharing.