Ep 87: Simplifying Your Digital Life with Shawn Lemon

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In this deep-dive episode with digital organization expert Shawn Lemon, we explore how to tame your digital chaos with brain-friendly systems that work especially well for those with ADHD and executive function challenges.

📌 Key Topics:

• Why digital organization is a modern problem requiring new solutions
• The four pillars of digital organization: email, files, passwords, and project management
• How scattered digital storage creates mental overwhelm and inefficiency
• Breaking the "perfect system" trap that leads to burnout
• Implementing the "one thing at a time" approach for digital tasks
• Building trust that important ideas will resurface when needed

🗣️ Featured Quote: "If we were to take your digital workspace and make it a physical space... what would that look like? So often we're using Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive... we have all these trailers in one park, but there's no path between them."

💡 Strategy Breakdown:

• Create a single digital home for all your files instead of using multiple platforms
• Use the "snooze" feature to manage email without constant monitoring
• Implement a "back burner list" to capture ideas without cluttering your task manager
• Break digital organization projects into manageable chunks to avoid burnout
• Use simple tools like Text Expander to reduce repetitive typing tasks
• Maintain a "deep freeze" archive for old files you're not ready to delete

🎯 Coming Up Next: Join us for an upcoming episode where we'll continue exploring brain-friendly productivity strategies that work with your unique thinking style.

🔑 Key Takeaway: Digital organization isn't about creating the perfect system—it's about simplifying your digital experience so you can find what you need in seconds and focus on what truly matters.

Connect with Mande: 

Learn more about private coaching: https://learntothrivewithadhd.com/services/

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Website: https://www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/ 

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/learntothrivewithadhd/

Connect with Shaun: 

Website: https://thedigitalorganizer.com/thrive 

Email Guide: https://thedigitalorganizer.com/thrive 

Social Media: @thedigitalorganizer

#digitalorganization #emailmanagement #adhd #digitalclutter #brainfriendly #fileorganization #projectmanagement #executivefunctions #digitalpeace #onething

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CLICK HERE for more resources. We're on this journey together!

Transcript

And then I was listening to the podcast and I heard Shaun on there, and Shaun is going to tell you exactly what he does. But for me to simplify it, he does digital organization and I was thinking this morning when I was thinking of having you, you know, we were going to record this today that your job wouldn't have existed, like not too far in the past.

And so it's actually kind of a new problem that we're dealing with, especially as we have all the drives and all the cloud storage and all of the everything everywhere on our phones and our computers and all of that. So he's going to talk to us about several things. He's got a good little agenda here. But when I was listening to that podcast, I also heard that Shaun has ADHD.

And not only did I have to have him on the podcast, I also had a consultation with his company and I'll be working with him in May to get myself digitally organized. But can you tell people what you do? Exactly?

Yeah. So I love to start this out with, I guess a metaphor or an analogy and say if we were to take your digital workspace and make it a physical space.

Of what would that look like? And in streamlining, that is what I do, because so often we're using Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive. We have all these email accounts, different places, apps that we're trying out, especially those of us with ADHD. It's, you know, it's we're looking for the next thing to solve the problem because the attention span is a little bit shorter.

And so what we've got are a bunch of trailers all in one park, but there's no path between them. They're not connected and you don't know where you've stored anything. And so it's just not efficient at all. And what we're trying to do is simplify everything and bring it all into one space or a couple of different spaces, because we have rooms in our house for a reason, but get things connected, know where it goes so that you can find what you're looking for in seconds.

And we just stick to four primary areas because if you master these four, you've really got control of your digital life. And from that point on it's optimization and that's organizing email files, passwords and project management. So that's those are the primary things. Get that nailed down and you're cookin.

I was looking forward to May this morning when I'm taking a positive psychology class to get a certification. It's specifically for ADHD and I needed to do a case study, present a case study to class today, and I'm searching for my client notes for a specific client because I wanted to do the case study on this client and I could not find these notes anywhere.

And what had happened is it was two or three emails ago. And actually what was happening is I would put these files on a completely different drive because I didn't want anyone else to have access to these clients private notes. And so there's better ways to do that. I know that if I'm hearing what you do and meeting with you, so I know that you had some directions you wanted to go in.

And I just thought this was such an important topic to bring to my audience because they are professionals and entrepreneurs. They have all the emails and all the files and it can be a job in itself, just trying to keep track of that. So I'm just I'm going to let you lead the way.

Okay, So let's start with the email, because most people have an email problem and their email problem isn't just an email problem because the thing is, email has well, it started as a correspondence tool and now it's a marketing platform. It's a place to store notes, it's a place to store files, it's a to do list and it's a to do list that anyone can populate.

So the reason why people's inboxes get crazy is because you're trying to organize all this and you're trying to just work with what's coming in instead of creating separate spaces to be able to put things. So, you know, when it comes to email, I don't organize email because if I get a file, it needs to be downloaded and put in my filing system where I can name it appropriately and I can put it right where it's supposed to go so that I can find it in seconds.

If I get a To-Do item that is part of a project or something that is isn't really time sensitive or anything like that, then I need to put that item in my task manager or project manager I is assigned currently, so I need to put that over there. Or perhaps I just want to snooze it till the end of the day or for Friday morning because, because I know I'm going to deal with that.

And so we're trying to get stuff out of our view and, and then we also need to be completely ruthless with subscriptions. It's like you can always subscribe again later. You can get that deal later, they're going to offer it again. Or if you know you're about to go shopping for some new clothing, you can go and sign back up, you know, and you know something along those lines.

But let's like let's completely cut this stuff out because especially if you're listening with ADHD, I mean, it's it's kind of hard not to not to think about all these things and add one more thing to our to do list and then just keep skipping back and forth between tasks. Focus is critical. So that's that's a great starting place.

And so anything step and stand out that you want to dive in a little bit deeper on.

You know, it makes me think and I think we talked about this in the consultation that I had with you, but I have an email that I very much protects. Yes. And nothing really lands there, right. Except what? What is? Absolutely. You know what I want there. And then I have another one that I used as kind of a junk email and I would anything I'd subscribe to, I'd go and just do it there.

And I thought that that was a perfect system. And now I'm finding that junk email is out of control. Totally. And one thing that I, I want to be careful not to do is spend a whole lot of time going in there and unsubscribing, like, what do you suggest for something like that?

Yeah. So I'm really into this new tool called the Clean Dot email. I'm working on an affiliate relationship and start promoting the crap out of them, but they are. I love this tool because first off, I looked at their privacy policy and and just ran that through chat CBT and kind of scanned it through. Tell me all that I need to know about privacy.

What are their practices where there's who are they sharing data with if they are stuff like that. It all came back really clean. And so not only is it a cleaning tool, their business practices seem really clean from all of their privacy policies that I reviewed. So what's cool about this app is it's really a service, not something that you download.

You connect your email account to it, and you can very quickly clean up your email. And it also has a feature where it will show you all of your subscription so you can go in and unsubscribe from them. now this is not a perfect tool, but this will give you a good head start. A lot of people have used unroll dot me before for varying degrees of success.

Did you ever use a tool?

I've never heard of it now.

Okay, so the whole idea is you connect your account to it just like I'm talking about. It shows you all of your subscriptions and then you can decide what to do with it, keep it, add it to a roll up where it gives you a summary of all of those subscriptions or actually unsubscribe. And it works for a while, and then all of a sudden it just doesn't.

But also there's like all this ads happening in there, I'm pretty sure that they're they're being paid to actually let people in and prioritize them. So there's just like a lot of kind of shady stuff happening with it. And I don't really like that service clean email. However, it doesn't do that. So these types of tools will let you get a huge jump start on unsubscribing and clearing things out of your email that you don't want in such a quick way.

And then from there you're just going to attack those subscriptions when they come in. I got one today that hit my inbox and like I did not sign up for that unsubscribe. And it's just that that little feature and I was like to think of it as, no, you know, I'm giving them a finger. It's just like I did not sign up for this, not allowed, bye bye.

And so I hit unsubscribe and it's just a little, little dopamine head for me and fake to see. And it just keeps my inbox clean because I got a 20 year old Gmail account that is absolutely perfectly usable because it stayed on top of it.

That's awesome. I love hearing that. That's very helpful.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So one thing that I'm finding is, okay, so we have things downloaded and screenshotted in my phone. I'm using Google Keep, I'm using Trello, I've got files, all the places like how do we I hear this a lot from clients where they have all these ideas, are all these to use or all this information and it's really a matter of like, how do we pull it all together?

Is that part of your work?

Sometimes, yes, it depends on what it is. And and I love to have this conversation with people and all of my coaches do as well. Of of do we really need this and where should it go? Because what I'm finding is if I add it to my task list or my project manager, even if it's like a back burner, a To-Do, or a some day list that weighs on me, I know that it's there.

And so then I have to resist that. And it's also a place where I could easily procrastinate and move myself into you know, go into and check out if there's anything important instead of finishing what I'm supposed to be doing. So I have just drilled this down to be is simple as possible, and however I can get it to myself, I add it to a document that I call the back burner list, and it's anything that I'm interested in doing, whether it's upgrading to my business or things like that.

And so everything goes in there so that I can go to that list when it's time to approach a new project and or I have some space and then I can specifically review that list and choose what's next. And that's what gets put into my project manager. so I don't love screen shotting things because unless I'm going to delete it later because they just pile up and it's something that I have to do routinely and I don't like routine, I like routine, but I don't like doing routine things that I don't want to do.

And so that's something that I could easily, like feel productive by cleaning up my pictures and screenshots when, you know, in the end it's just avoiding something else again. So if anything, I just want to add it to a list. I'll pull up the back burner list so I've got a link to that email or to that document on my phone.

It's a Google doc, so I can just open it up and add it there or I can usually what I'll do though is I'll say, remind me tomorrow at 10 a.m. or it, you know, or at 1:30 p.m. to add this to the list or to do something like that. So I'm going to leave it as an open web page on my phone if I feel like I need to get back to it.

But I'm going to tell my phone to remind me at a specific time that I can do something with it. And since I'm using an iPhone, that that To-Do item is going to persist until I intentionally dismiss it. So, you know, that's that helps me to just really simplify. So I'm not, you know, trying to save things in a bunch of different places.

I got it. So many ideas and they feel really important when I have them. And in the end, a lot of them are not. And so I've just gotten to the point it's like, if this is important, I'm gonna I'm going to come back to it again. I'm going to let that go. So and that's something that I just really had to work my way through, you know, personally.

And so, you know, you may be able to do that if you're listening right now, right now, or that may be something that you work up to and you'll realize later, yeah, I don't have time to do all this stuff.

I talk to clients about building that trust, that those ideas will come again. And not to say that I don't capture a lot of that, I do. I have a Trello board called Mandy's Brain and that is where everything I want to learn. Just like you were saying, ideas that are coming up in my business, just all that kind of stuff will just go there.

So it's out of my brain. But you call it a back burner list. I call it a not analyst gone. It's a tool that I use with clients where it's we have our now list and we have our not now list. And the not now list is put away. It's it's you can get to it quickly, but it's put away where you cannot see it because otherwise it's going to stress you or you're going to think that you have to do all the things on the list.

So I love that you called it a back burner list.

Just because it's like it's not shut down. It still gives me the option, you know, And and so sometimes that terminology can help. And I think it's just name it, whatever works for you, but it's just one of those things that you can put it in your Trello, you know, and that's that's your area. I just I can't have it there that I learned from experience of myself that if I have a big dump in a list, then I feel like I have I have to sort it and I have to schedule it and you know, and do something with it, or I'll just go and look at that list and then I start seeing

all of the things when it's not time. Like that needs to be a project. So that's where I realized my project manager, my to do list has to be so focused on what needs to be done right now.

Yeah.

In or in the upcoming future that I actually can plan for and set due dates and all of the things, and then I can accomplish it and then go back to the list because that gives me satisfaction every time I get to go back to that list and pull out something new. It means I've just accomplished something and I'm ready to do it again.

And so brain dump all you want, but consider brain dumping somewhere else that you can close and it's totally out of sight until you're ready for it later on. And just don't don't put that pressure on yourself if you feel it that you need to do it.

Yeah, I love hearing that. I think of it because I love books and I like to think of projects and ideas like books in a library. You're never going to read all the books and there's always more coming. And and at some point you just have to settle in life and girl and I don't mean subtle in a negative way, but I mean settle yourself down that you're not going to ever read all the books and that's okay.

And we're not ever going to get to all the ideas and projects. And some of them, you know, you just will look at them. You know, maybe we get to your back burner list and you're like, That actually doesn't even matter to me anymore. And you can just delete things that way. So I love that idea.

Yeah. And that's actually really satisfying as well, saying, I actually did that without even coming back to the list or, or it's just like, Wow, that wasn't important. And the more I do that and then realize it wasn't important, the more it just builds that trust with myself to let it go and, you know, put it on the list of so or trust myself that it's going to come back later on.

Yeah, that trust is so important. Building that trust, if you guys aren't already doing that building that trust, that important stuff will come back around or you'll get to it can reduce your anxiety so much it's so helpful. But a good.

System like you have to have a good system like especially at the beginning because your brain won't let it go if if it doesn't and it just keeps coming back. And so if it does, added to the list.

There you go. There you go. Okay. What would be your next you talked about for different areas. What area are we on now?

Files, passwords and project management. So let's talk let's still Stan email for another minute or two. I said I don't organize my email because I'm like, snooze it to later put it in my to do list. Download the file, you know, respond to the email, you know, unsubscribe. There are some cases where we do want to organize emails like if you, you know, have projects.

Real estate agents often need to have folders because they need to have all of the, you know, or at least like to have all of the conversations related to that transaction in one place or for that buyer, you know, or you're part of a project, you're never going to remember these people. What aspect of the project you just know is this electrician?

But he was part of this project, you know, then you can get back to it that way. It makes sense to have folders sometimes. Sometimes I will create or I have a travel folder that lays dormant, usually unless I have a trip planned. And when I have the trip planned, I put the emails that I will actually need when I'm standing at the counter of the of the rental place or of the hotel.

And because there's a bunch of emails all part of that trip, but I only put the folders or the emails that I will need at the counter that I will reference in that trip in the travel. Otherwise all those emails are there and I'm going to search for it. And it's like, what is it, Patagonia? And I'm going to type in Patagonia in that any of those emails are going to show up.

So you know, you're not standing in the middle of the airport trying to find your tickets or whatever on your phone.

Yeah, Gmail searches so good. The Apple Mail app search is getting better. It's not great, but that's why I like the Gmail app as a really good search tool and go to gmail.com to search you know, I use an email app called Spark and gosh, I could talk all day about spark but sometimes the search isn't perfect and so I just go to gmail.com and then I'll search it from there and that isn't a big deal.

It's easier for me to do that than to try and file everything away consistently all the time and have that pressure. That's all. I just want to release from you is the need to have to organize when it's done. Archive If you might reference it again, if it's done, you're never going to look at it again. Delete it, otherwise snooze it for when you can attend to that that thing and maybe put some time in the calendar for when you're actually going to reply to that email or take care of something.

I use my Gmail search every day for sure. I love it. It's so helpful if you're in the right Gmail and I'm getting more and more over to one, and I'm sure that's the work that I'll do with either yourself or your coaches is get to get down to one. So I'm not looking multiple places, but I had a client mentioned Spark, I believe.

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

So Spark is an email app. They call them clients. There are so many different apps that you can use to check your email and you can sign in to all of your accounts and it'll pull in all of the emails and show you all the folders you know, and it's syncs across everything. So each app has its own set of features and it exists because they're solving a problem that in some other app doesn't solve.

You can really go down a rabbit hole of trying different ones. I use Spark for a number of reasons. It's extremely customizable. I'm a keyboard shortcut guy. I mean, I've been a power user for ever and so I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts and I like to set up systems to make things really fast for myself. So snoozing is something that actually one of my coaches taught me years ago and he came in and he's like, you know, stop doing that, just snooze it.

And Nancy is teaching her clients like, Tell Me more. So the idea is, you know, I want to have a few times a day that I check my email and instead of having it open all day long, and to be honest, that is a phase. Sometimes I'm able to do that. I'm in a phase of my business that I can do that.

In some areas I am operating more out of it, but that's the goal. So at the end of the day, at 430 is typically when I like to check my email as I'm wrapping up because I don't like to, to just leave things hanging. And so I just, I feel the need to check so that I, I don't have to check once I'm done at five.

So that means I get to snooze, I get to custom ize this snooze feature to say I want you to snooze emails for at 9 a.m. the next morning or 1:00 in the afternoon or for 30. And when I say next week, I mean Monday at nine. And when I say later this week, I mean two days from now.

And so I get to customize this so that things just show up on the days that I need them. And so, you know, next week, Monday at nine, like I'm not actually looking at my email Monday at nine, but it's going to be there when I'm ready to look at my email at the start of the week. So that just allows me to empty it out.

This is how people actually achieve Inbox Zero. It's not because they're replying to everything, it's because they're being put away somewhere. Now, for those of us with ADHD, we don't need 15 different inboxes to check. So having like the getting things done method of now, you know, urgent someday soon, like, you know, later, whatever. I can't remember. It's been so long since I use those.

There's just a bunch different inboxes that we have to manage and move emails in between all the time. And we don't like to keep up with that sort of thing. Some people do, but the majority of us don't. And so out of sight, out of mind, and then it just kind of goes away and then it becomes I'm managing email and that's a huge part of my life or huge part of my job.

And I don't want that to be a big part of my job. Snooze it for when it's time. And and so it's just how quickly can I get through this to do the important work of the day? Yeah.

Okay. And you mentioned something about A.I. and how that was helping you.

Yeah, totally. you know, there's a whole bunch of other stuff about Spark. I can. I can go into that, or, you know, if you sign up for the. I've got an email guide that I'll give you a thing at the end so you can sign up with this and it'll give you videos on how I approach email and organizing all this stuff.

And so the basic framework that we take our clients through. So if you're interested in that, look in the show notes and you'll have that guide and then just reply to any of those emails that I send you kind of saying like, Hey, this is a little bit about us. And, and I can send you a video kind of with a demo of what I love about Spark because there's a whole bunch of cool stuff.

So a I. Yes. Are you using it much?

my gosh. Ridiculously. Well, my husband is saying the AI is my new boyfriend. So everything my personal trainer, my like all kinds of things for like my writing. I will put my writing into it. And I have to be careful though, and it's like, don't just fix my grammar first, Don't take my words away. But it's been just so beneficial in so many different areas.

I'm also a massive air user, so as my wife and so many of our family members, it's just I think everyone's kind of getting tired of it, but it's just so incredibly helpful. But you're right, it can totally suck you down into all, especially if it's like starting to change and optimize it. Like, yeah, let's just keep going.

Let's finish out this whole thing that way. You know, the whole sequence is done, you know, or all of this. And then I use up all my time making things better and better and better instead of actually using the time that I had set aside for this, not only writing it, but also implementing it. And so it is very important to me at this point in my life to implement things and to finish them.

So I am recently diagnosed with ADHD and so I have been trying to fit into the box of all the productivity people in so many things for a long time and adapting it as best I can to get there and just, you know, feeling like, you know, why can't I get this and, and, you know, feeling pretty bad about myself in some areas.

And the worst place for me is project management. You know, my emails on lock, you know, files, passwords, I know where everything is, but prioritizing projects because everything feels important, setting due dates. And at this point I've missed so many of my personal due dates. I prioritize my clients and, you know, and always hit on time and everything like that.

But I sacrifice my own personal agenda and then my business like important, but not urgent things for whatever is urgent, especially client stuff, and then anything else that might come up. So I have like, you know, some some scarring around that I'm working through with my therapist of the things that it's just like I've let myself down so many times that I'm scared to set goals now.

And so project management is a hotspot. So what I realized is with time, I can go very deep quickly and then I can end up not implementing again and all the time is wasted. So I've just realized, no, I'm not going there. Let's wait and come back to this later. So I'm often renaming the conversation in a way that I can easily identify it in the list, or I'll add it to what's called a project and in CBT.

So it's a folder that you can group together certain things. So that helps think to organize them and to be able to pick up where I left off when I have time and I'm ready to take this to phase two. So that's a big thing. And then the other one, I've got some ideas. I actually had a coaching call with Tracy earlier with, you know, talking about some things of of, you know, reframing how I think about getting distracted, getting distracted and getting like, pulled off track.

And so I've got some other things and I'm an implement, but I have this conversation going, which is my project planner. It's I told it, you're a project planner, you're an ADHD coach, like you understand executive function and all this stuff, and you're here to help me to prioritize and realize what's important in my life and what's important in my business, and to talk through and and basically create a whole project plan for me and to hold on to some of these main ideas.

Yeah. So if you put too much in the conversation, it'll forget it. So, so you can, you only have to get you can only give it so much information at once and that has been massively helpful.

I have work, I have a workaround with that with it for getting I have a document that I run off of. Yeah. For each thing and where it's my personal trainer and nutritionist and all of that. I have a Google doc for that that I update each time we make a new plan or there's new information or maybe there's new supplementation.

And so when I go in to plan my next day, I give it that document and a PDF form seems to be the way it accepts it. Easiest. Yes. And so that really helps with that memory problem. But I'm with you on the folders and I do ask it. I'm like, this is these conversations are not well-organized. Do you have a way for me to organize this better?

And it doesn't have a good answer yet, but I think that's coming. But the project files are very helpful. Something and I don't know if you have information on this, like for my positive psychology class, for example, I have a project file and my books are uploaded to that, and any other materials that I get for that class are uploaded to that section.

And so that is so helpful. Tell me more about your renaming. I think that's where I want to go with this. What are you renaming it? How are you making that better to search? Because I notice that that's something I don't do well is go back and rename it and the search feature doesn't seem to be as good as it could be.

Isn't very good. Yeah. So I don't always do it right away unless I know I'm going to come back to this. And then I. There's only so much room in the sidebar so I don't have my big long naming convention that I use for files. That gives a lot of detail. So it's just, you know, I should let me just pull up the list right now and I can read off the ones that I'm saving.

So I have disco call question updates. So that's something that I'm reworking some of those questions. I have Quiz Funnel Automation System. So that's one that I'm working on Lead call framework and ADHD meds. So like supplementation and different ideas of, you know, and kind of tracking what's working for me and what's not like samey and, you know, stuff like that.

And then there's my project one. So it's, it's the current project that I'm working on in there. And then I have some folders and so I'll have folders and those are called projects. And then you can right click on one of the, the chats and then hit and a project and then you can add it to another folder.

And so that kind of helps to group things together. So I've got my red light therapy. There's stuff specifically for my wife, there's things for my business, and then technical things that I do in chat. You can modify files for you like spreadsheets and CVS and break up things for you. And so but it takes it takes a lot of work to like, get it to figure out exactly what I want and then I need that saved.

And so I'll have I have the framework kind of saved in there in lieu of a Google doc.

Yeah, it's a very interesting world. I'm I think we're going to be shocked where we're at in ten years with this.

My gosh, in one year I yeah. And it's it's going to be wild because we didn't have projects before. We weren't able to create custom and. TS And so I have cousin guides specifically for those. But I use one other thing that I am really in love with right now. So do you know about the app called Text Expander?

I don't know.

Okay. Text Expander is for Mac. I think they might be getting a Windows version pulled together, but you can find some other apps for Windows. I can't remember off the top of my head what it is, but what it does is you can put in a little key phrase and I usually signify this key phrase with a semicolon because it's right there on my pinky.

So I hit semicolon and I type in a word or an acronym, and it fills in something for me. So when there are ways and challenge CBT to create what's called a custom GPT, where you give it a series of instructions and a framework of basically like, this is the job that I want you to fulfill, this is how I want you to write for me.

And so you're, you're giving it a job description because the, the basic AI is very broad and then you can tell it be a specialist in this and it approaches it a different way. So that's kind of what I'm talking about, is framing things up. But even when you create that, it's summarized as all of those specific details and then it forgets a lot of it and it still doesn't follow the rules that you give it.

So I have to learned that I need to be very explicit in some situations. So Text Expander allows me to do in semicolon one, colon one, and it fills in all of the details. It's 850 words about my one on one program, the tone, what's important, everything about it. So I'm giving it that context right there. So all I have to do is hit semicolon one on one.

It fills that in. Here's your context. Boom. And now I give it the job. Say, let's I want to write a new email or tweak this email and it knows what email I'm talking about, what part of the program, it knows the why behind all of this stuff. So I use these things all over the place and I've just started using them for for chat CBT, but I use it to fill in the date for my naming convention because I always do.

Yea, yea yea. Or you know so 2025 it's April so zero four and then the date, you know, and if it's the first it's going to be zero one and that way all of my files, when organizing alphabetically, they're chronologically sorted out. So that's the start. And then I have the, the category that that file is next and then I have the description after and I have this really long name because it means that I don't have to create a bunch of subfolders.

And it's and I can, I can know what something is without ever opening it. But that's kind of feels like a lot to type sometimes. So text expander means that I just put in semicolon date and it fills in the date or semicolon contract. It puts in the date, it puts in a hyphen, puts in contract, it puts a hyphen in.

And then I just put in Mandy John after that. So it allows me to do things so fast and consistently because I don't want to do menial work. And so it's just these tiny little tweaks like that that make staying organized and being efficient. So I can just do the fun stuff and well, do it a lot more.

Yeah, I could see how that text expander I could use instead of using my Google doc that I'm, you know, downloading.

And that's what I'm doing. That's why I still have the Google doc for like the permanent stuff. And it's just like, you know, my brand voice that one on one program and stuff like that. And so when I make any sort of change, I do have to make it in both places, just as a backup to, to make sure.

But it's, it's worth the effort because I know it's there and it's just so valuable to me.

Love that love back. Okay, so what have we not touched on yet? I know you named off several things that singing seemed all very interesting to talk about.

Well, let's talk about files. This is just such a big thing for everyone. So with files, you know, we've got iCloud. We you probably have a Dropbox account, you've got a Google drive, you have a Google workspace, and you have a personal Gmail account. So you to Google drives, I have like six Google drives because there's so many accounts for like different parts of the business.

And my own personal stuff. So how do we navigate that? Well, we need to just create spaces. So the big thing is, is is identifying which one you like to use and that's really is going to serve you best. I like to share files with my wife and she uses Google and she's got a Gmail account that she uses for everything.

She has iCloud too. I have iCloud too. So we could use Gmail or iCloud for files that we share. But then I also have my business, and that's built on Google Workspace. So for me, it just makes sense to put all of my stuff in Google. So that means I have moved everything from my desktop, from documents and other folders on my computer into Google Drive and into specific folders.

And that means I downloaded everything from Dropbox and I moved all that into Google Drive and anything that might have been automatically saved by OneDrive. If you have Microsoft Office installed, it really wants to default to saving things into OneDrive. I move it all in there, so I need to create one home for all of my files.

Okay.

And then from there, that's that's the biggest task is is identifying what you want to do and committing to just pulling everything into one place and just using that. And we got to we got to stop this shiny object syndrome. The solution is a good system. The solution is not the next app promise you. So it doesn't matter how good the marketing is, it is still going to check all the boxes.

And if you're relying on that app to do it, you're just going to be stuck in this loop. So we have to set aside some time to create a little system. And I've got a guide for this too, so I'll give you the email guide and then if you want any more, just email me and I'll give you the files organization guide as well.

So that's the big thing. Get it all in one place. Now we don't start organizing, we start trashing stuff, so don't trash it while you're downloading it. Just the for your first milestone is get it all in one place. Once it's in one place, now we start sorting through and let's do a deletion pass and it's going to be real fun and cathartic.

Delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. All the things that you know that you won't need. Again, some people go overboard. Those of you who like to go overboard, maybe rein it back a little bit. You might regret this afterwards or make it back up somewhere. And those of you who are really conservative, I'd encourage you to to push yourself a little bit and ask, Do I really need this?

Am I ever going to look at this again and start trashing stuff from there? We can create an archive. This is the stuff because we probably have a lot you probably have a lot of stuff and it could take a long time to go through all of it. Well, is it really worth it to go through all of it?

Do we have enough time if it is worth it? Do we have enough time? So even if we have enough time, let's still set it aside and prioritize what's important right now. So let's get a folder called Archive Deep Archive, deep freeze or whatever you want to call and move all of this stuff that is not really relevant to your life now and moving forward in that now.

Now we have much smaller set of data. Now we can start organizing and we can figure out what our naming convention can be and things like that, and I can guide you through all that. And there's other guides or we can help one on one with that. But that's really the most efficient way to go about it. And then you're left with this small set of data and that's what you get detail oriented on, because we don't need to create a whole big system to encompass everything in our lives.

That's what probably a lot of you are gravitating towards in the first place is creating the perfect system and being able to access all of it. And the fact is you're just not going to use it and it creates clutter and it creates distractions as well.

And it's it's dopamine seeking to create that perfect system. I mean, I've talked to you in group coaching. We talked about this where that making that perfect plan or having that perfect system that the this is kind of like having the perfect plan, right? You've created this perfect system and then that's the dopamine hit and then you walk away and you don't execute the plan because you've already got what you needed to get out of it.

But there was another thought I had here. I love the way you're doing this because I think of working with clients on anything, whether I had one client that was trying to get control over his email, I have another client that was you know trying to organize her son's room. I had another client that was dealing with this room that was just full of things.

It was just one of those rooms where you dump everything. Yeah, and what happens with ADHD people is once we get enough motivation and we are willing to actually go and tackle the project are we have to be very careful about conserving our energy levels because what we'll do is because we're motivated now we're going to go for it.

And what that might look like in what you're describing was now we're going to go through and we're going to delete all of them until we are finished with every single one. And we've been working on this for 10 hours and we're tired and sweaty and hungry. And the next time we go to do a task like that, your brain is going to say, No, you made me miserable last time we did this.

You're not doing this again. And then people wonder why they don't have motivation to go and do the organization project or whatever it is. So I love I love Deep Freeze as an idea of like putting that aside until later.

We got we got to break it down into chunks. And that's, you know, I keep going back to I because I use it so much as is I've had I gave it explicit instructions to when I get overly complex it'd break it up and then and then let's tackle them in phases and so and then ask me if I'm ready to implement or if you want if I want to move on to the next thing.

And so that way I always have a check and I have to think about do I have enough time to actually finish this? Because yeah, it's, it's, it's that that dog with a bone just I can't let it go sometimes. And like I have to finish it and it's that's so hard and I talked about this earlier trying to fit myself in the mold of how other people do it.

And so my father in law, his name is Michael Hyatt, he's got whole system of, you know, a planner and things like that. And so his thing is like the big three for the week, the big three for the day, and I finally realized, you know, after the ADHD diagnosis, three too many for me, like, it's got to be one at time.

And I haven't it's been very hard for me my entire life to let myself just settle in and do one thing, you know, have that or, you know, I'll do the dog with a bone. And then I then I seriously regret it because I forgot everything else. And now I have to deal with these other things. And so, like trying to find that balance.

And so I've avoided going deep, but then I've also avoided, you know, so I've just been bouncing a lot. So I finally let myself just do one thing at a time. And so I gave it five or six big things that I was interested in in doing for the business. It's important to me and I'm like, I'm not sure what I should be doing first, but here's the priorities for the business and here's the amount of energy that I have and let's prioritize them.

And then I just gave myself permission to do one thing at a time.

Yeah.

In my free time. And so it's just this one thing. And so then I took a screenshot of my calendar on Google calendar and I, and I just uploaded. And so this is what my week looks like. You know, let's look at tomorrow and figure out, you know, how to block this stuff out. And I've just been doing my week like one or two days at a time and allowing myself the flexibility of I didn't get to that and check back in.

And it's like that actually didn't get done. I had to reprioritize this whatever. And and I'm I'm working with it just one day at a time. And one agenda at a time. And I'm accomplishing so much and it feels so good that I can, like, just drop in, I can settle in to just doing one thing doesn't mean I don't have to do emails, take calls, be interrupted.

All life still happens, right? But I'm just allowed to focus on one thing at a time so I don't have to go super deep and like finish it all the way because I'm scared I'm not going to finish it later if I know I'm not going to have time. This is just the next big thing on the agenda and I'm going to keep working on this in the chunks that I have until I complete it.

And and I have a focus. I don't have specific goals and it's just blowing my mind how much better I feel. And how much more I'm accomplishing because I'm just allowing myself to spend some time prioritizing with this little thing and then and then working on it.

About one thing at a time. I was listening to the focused podcast. Mike I can't remember the names of the guys on there, but it's a great podcast. I love it. But they had an author. He's from the Netherlands actually, and his name is escapes me right now, but he wrote a book about Time and the one I'm remembering is time surfing.

But there's another one that he wrote about time and the the mike. I wish I could remember his last name but Mike that's on the show said I really appreciated the illustration in the book and what it was is it was like a gumball machine type thing. You know how they those little little what are they called? I don't know, little like eggs kind of things come out and there's a toy inside.

Yeah. And the point he made is two of those don't come out at a time. They come out one at a time and you open it up and you, you know, you've got your toy or whatever it is. And the reason he had that illustration in the book is he was talking about doing one thing at a time.

And this is an ADHD podcast that he's on. And I really thought about that and I thought, is that possible? Is that really possible to do one thing at a time? And I think what you're feeling as if we start something and don't finish it. Not only is it an open loop in our brain, but it takes a hit on our self-esteem that that thing is not done.

I'm not a person that can complete that task or I'm not a person that finishes. What I start is what really happens. But one thing I created and I've offered this on the podcast before and on the YouTube channel, but I created and it's a work in progress. But if nothing else, that's my one thing for the day.

If nothing else happens, this one thing happens and then I have main intentions. Would be nice if I would like to. And then helping others and helping others is just two lines. And usually it's my kids, but I am the priority here. And so that's a prioritization tool. But now I'm thinking I can kind of work with chatbots to help me fill this out on a daily basis.

Because like you, I have my week planned, but as far as my tasks, I'm planning a day, two days in time, unless it's, you know, a bigger project where I'm putting it throughout the week. Totally. I'm pretty much filling out this this every day and then plugging it into the calendar. So, yeah, about one Thing at a time is something that I decided this morning is going to get its own podcast.

It's going to get implementation in my life just to see, okay, where am I doing this, Why am I not doing this? How does it feel better? How does it feel Worse? Yeah, I have more than one business and I'm sure I'm not the only person that has, you know, more than one business. But let is hearing this.

And the businesses have different tasks and they, you know, need have different needs from me. And so it I mean, there's a split right there. But in those different businesses, how am I taking things one thing at a time to completion. So I think that's been a good theme from you is one thing at a time.

Implementation completion it's it has it has allowed me to plan more to let go to look forward to tasks that I was avoiding before because it's not that I didn't want to do them, it's that I didn't think that I would have enough time to do it and that that it would be something that I would start and and not finish or I would just like.

There's no point starting because I know I can't finish it. So. So that's a big yeah, a really part of it in and the intimidation around more plans and routine is gone and you know I would just do it of do a lot of stuff especially this past year. I hit a point that I just got so frustrated with myself that that's like, I will, I will do it and I'm going to stay here until, you know, I get it, just going to make myself do it.

I would end so many days, just like almost in tears, sometimes in tears because it hurt my brain, my eyes hurt my brain physically hurt. And I would just need to put an eye mask on and just like, set aside for for a few minutes because I just forced myself to do it. And so I don't have to do that anymore.

And Wellbutrin and Sammy and a ton of B vitamins has helped immensely. But then now starting to focus on the one thing I'm not bouncing as much. It doesn't it doesn't take as much energy on the brain. And again, still, it's not by any means perfect. I still have all kinds of other things and sometimes it's like, Well, I actually can't do this.

I have to do priority two right now and switch some things around. And that's just life. But the amount of more energy and and then the and then just the shift in my perspective overall is it's slowly but surely happening now and it's really exciting.

What is the book? I'm actually pulling out my phone to look up what book that is that talks about this like one thing.

I can't wait to read it, but you're trying to figure that out. You so can it. Is it possible to do one thing at a time? Well, it's actually impossible to do more than one thing at a time.

That is a good point.

There's no multitasking. We just stop one thing to do another and it's just switching back and forth. So it's just doing it for a little bit longer. Yeah.

So I, I looked at art. I could just swear I've already read this and it's something I want to revisit because of all this conversation about one thing at a time. It looks like it's The One Thing by Gary Keller. yeah, yeah. And I know I've read it.

So that's that's something I'm going to revisit as I'm like going into implementing this idea of one thing.

My parents are big Keller Williams people, you know, their real estate agents, and they totally drank the Kool-Aid. And so when the one thing is something that they've read plenty of times and have recommended to me and I still haven't read it and like, yeah, yeah, I think I guess I probably should.

There's another another book that I really like, Essentialism, and that talks about this concept a lot too. And I believe I already did a YouTube video about the book Essentialism because I thought it was really effective for ADHD people. So I want to leave time and respect your time, but I want to leave time for you to tell people where to find you.

And I know you had you mentioned before that you're going to you have an email freebie. I believe.

Yeah. So go to the digital organizer dot com slash thrive. That's where you can put in your name and email and you can download the email organization guide. So this is the whole framework with videos linked to it. So you can click on there and then see me actually showing you and talking you through, you know, some of these different concepts that I talked about.

And then you can reply to any one of those. I've got passwords, project management, file guides, like all kinds of stuff that I would just love to give you if you want to self implement and do this for yourself, happy to give that to you. And if you want some help one on one, you know that you'll be presented with an opportunity for that as well, because we love helping people one on one with this sort of thing.

So that's, that's the best thing to do. And we're on all the social channels, if you like. You know, it's just the digital organizer and you'll find us. But yeah, go check out that, that guide. And I think it'll be really helpful.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Shawn.

Thank you.

All right. See you guys next week.