So, I kept hearing this name, Dee Dee Adams, popping up everywhere. You know how it is, someone becomes the next big thing in a niche, and suddenly their methods are all over the internet. This time, it was about her approach to, get this, managing your email inbox. Yeah, I know, another one. But folks were raving, saying it changed their lives, brought them “digital peace,” all that jazz.
My inbox was a disaster zone, always had been. Thousands of unread messages, a mix of actual important stuff, newsletters I never read, and just plain junk. I’d tried a few things before, you know, the usual “zero inbox” stuff, but nothing ever stuck. So, I figured, alright, let’s see what this Dee Dee Adams fuss is all about. I was at my wit’s end, really.
My First Brush with the “Adams Method”
I found some articles and a couple of forum posts outlining her technique. It wasn’t just about folders or filters; it was a whole philosophy. She called it “Intentional Communication Flow.” Sounds grand, doesn’t it? The core idea, as far as I could tell, was to interact with each email with a specific “intention” and then “release” it. Okay, a bit woo-woo for my taste, but my current system of “ignore and pray” wasn’t working.
The first step, according to one summary, involved setting aside dedicated “Email Engagement Blocks.” Not just checking email whenever, but specific, timed slots. I tried that. Scheduled 30 minutes in the morning and 30 in the afternoon. Felt a bit rigid, like I was clocking in just to read ads for stuff I didn’t need.
Then came the “Four D’s of Dee Dee” – or something like that, I might be misremembering the exact catchy phrase. It was something like:
- Do it (if it takes less than two minutes)
- Delegate it (if someone else can handle it)
- Defer it (schedule a time to tackle it)
- Delete it (be ruthless!)
Sounds simple enough, right? Pretty standard advice, actually, just repackaged. But Dee Dee Adams added another layer: for every email you “deferred,” you had to assign it a “Future Action Value” and log it in a separate “Action Register.” This register wasn’t your calendar; it was a whole separate spreadsheet or notebook.
Diving In and Hitting a Wall
So, I started. The “Do it” and “Delete it” parts were okay. I got a tiny bit of satisfaction from hitting delete on a mountain of old promotional emails. But the “Defer it” part with the “Future Action Value” and the “Action Register”… man, that’s where things got messy for me.
I found myself spending more time trying to figure out the “Future Action Value” of an email and logging it into my brand-new, shiny “Action Register” than it would have taken to just deal with the email in the first place! My “Email Engagement Blocks” quickly turned into “Action Register Frustration Blocks.” I had this growing spreadsheet of deferred tasks, each with a beautifully assigned value, but the actual work wasn’t getting done any faster. It felt like I was just creating more work about work.
I stuck with it for about two weeks. Honestly, I gave it a good try. I really wanted that “digital peace” she talked about. But my inbox still looked like a battlefield, and now I had this complicated register thing to maintain as well. It was like I’d just added another layer of bureaucracy to my own life.
Figuring Out What Actually Works (For Me)
One afternoon, after spending way too long trying to assign a “Future Action Value” to a reminder about a software update, I just kind of snapped. I closed the “Action Register” spreadsheet. I deleted the “Email Engagement Block” from my calendar.
What did I do instead? I went back to basics, but with a bit more oomph than before, maybe inspired by the sheer effort I’d put into the Adams thing. I started unsubscribing aggressively from newsletters. I set up a few very broad filters – “Work,” “Personal,” “To Read Later.” The “To Read Later” stuff, I’d just skim through on a Friday afternoon, no pressure. If it was important, I’d drag it to my main calendar or a simple to-do list app I already used. No special values, no separate registers.
It’s not perfect. My inbox isn’t always at zero. But it’s manageable. It doesn’t give me anxiety anymore. I realized that all these fancy systems, like the one Dee Dee Adams promotes, might work wonders for some people. Maybe they need that detailed structure. But for me, it was just too much. It felt like trying to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
So, that was my little adventure with the Dee Dee Adams method. Learned a bit, mostly about what doesn’t work for me. Sometimes, the simplest path is the best one, even if it doesn’t have a fancy name or a twenty-step process. Just gotta find your own flow, I guess.
