Mindful Meeting Management: Planning meeting with ADHD

Living with ADHD presents unique challenges, especially when it comes to managing time and commitments. One of the hurdles I face is not being able to be always concious about the amount of time things will take, and how much I can do in a day, making it difficult to balance meetings and tasks. Most of the time, I end up saying yes to too many things and stress over having to call back people and moving meeting, causing me stress and taking more additionnal time to figure out alternative solutions. To navigate this, I've adopted a mindful approach to managing meeting requests, which, I hope, will significantly improved my productivity and well-being.

Hide those Meeting Request I cannot see

So, my main issue is that, when I'm going over all my emails, I have some meeting request in them. And I tend to treat it more through thoses filters:

1. Is it something interesting to do ?
2. Am I free when they request a meeting ?

And that's it. Which is terrible since it doesn't take into account if I already have a bunch of meeting that day (which I try to limit to 3, I'll write on that another time), or if I didn't had a heavy week planned, or sometimes even if I'll be able to attend it because of transportation. Yep. That might sound silly to neurotypical people. I know.

To address this, I've implemented a simple yet effective strategy using Gmail filters. This approach helps me manage meeting requests more mindfully, freeing up mental space to focus on what truly matters.

Here's the filter I use:

1

filename:ics has:attachment -filename:pdf -subject:"Re"

I'll explain why all are importants. All the meeting request have an .ics file attached. But I also get an .ics with a .pdf for my train ticket from Trainline. So, I need to explude emails that has also a PDF. And sometimes, someone answer back directly to the invite, so I need to remove all the answers that re-include the .ics.

Then, I apply those set of actions:

• skip inbox (archive) which is my main goal here to hide those emails
• mark as read so I'll not have unread archived emails
• apply a label so I'll have a neat folder in IMAP with all of thoses invites
• never marked as important this one is more optional if you're not using this Gmail feature

The Benefits: Clarity and Control

Now, all my meeting request invited are hidden from my inbox and I can manage them directly from my calendar software.

I hope this mindful approach has brought a sense of clarity and control to my day-to-day life. With my inbox review should be less chaotic, I'll can better focus on tasks and manage my time more effectively. Viewing all my meetings in the calendar app helps me visualize my day and week, making it easier to plan and prioritize.