An ADHD Entrepreneurs Answer to The Never Ending Inbox
You walk into your office on Monday morning with the best intentions.
Today is the day. The day you finally tackle that strategic planning you've been putting off. The day you worked on your business instead of just in it.
You’ve got nothing urgent on your schedule. No client calls. No fires to put out.
Yet somehow, three hours later, you're drowning in emails, fixing a payment processing glitch, and answering "quick questions" from your team. Your carefully planned deep work session? Nowhere to be found.
This story is autobiographical. There have been many Mondays when I walked into my office with grand plans, only to find myself swept away by the current of reactive work before I'd even had my second cup of coffee (decaf).
But over the years I’ve been able to develop a process that helps me keep refocused and stay proactive even when everything feels urgent.
And that's what I want to share with you today.
Why Our ADHD Brains Get Stuck in Reactivity Mode
Here's the thing about reactive work: it feels really good to our ADHD brains.
Someone emails you with a question? Boom, instant dopamine hit when you solve their problem.
A small fire pops up in your business? Your brain lights up with the satisfaction of putting it out.
These tasks give us immediate feedback, clear completion points, and that lovely rush of being helpful. They're like business candy for our dopamine-hungry brains [1].
So when faced with the choice between answering emails (immediate dopamine) and strategic planning (delayed reward), our brains will almost always choose the emails.
And that makes sense!
But it's also why traditional productivity advice, "just focus on what's important", doesn't work for us.
The Two Reactivity Traps That Keep Us Stuck
In my experience working with ADHD business owners, there are typically three main reasons we get trapped in reactive patterns. Here we’ll discuss two of them.
Trap #1: Everything feels urgent.
When you're overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks screaming for your attention, it's easy to lose sight of what truly matters. Your brain treats every notification, every email, every "quick question" as equally important.
Trap #2: Everything feels confusing.
When you don't know where to start or what to focus on, paralysis sets in. Your brain’s working memory overloads and just says, "This is too complicated, let's just answer emails instead."
I fell into both of these traps early in my business.
Even after bringing someone on to help manage customer communications, I found myself constantly checking and responding to emails. I wasn't allowing the systems I had built to actually function as intended.
Instead of trusting the processes, I treated every email as a unique decision point, asking "What should we do in this particular circumstance?" rather than relying on the systems I had created specifically to handle these situations.
This is the whole point of delegating and building systems, to reduce the need for constant decision-making and allow you to focus on higher-level work.
But my ADHD brain was so used to the dopamine hit of "solving problems" that I kept jumping back into reactive mode.
Understanding Deep Work vs. Reactive Work (The ADHD Way)
Here's how I think about it now:
Reactive work is anything that responds to someone else's timeline or agenda. It's urgent, visible, and gives you immediate feedback. Think: emails, phone calls, putting out fires, answering questions.
Deep work is any activity that allows you to focus for a substantial period on something that may not help you today, but will build the business, processes, and systems that serve you long-term.
For our ADHD brains, reactive work feels like the most important job because:
It generates visible activity (we look busy!)
It provides immediate dopamine rewards
It makes us feel helpful and needed
It has clear start and end points
But the truly transformative work is proactive. It's the kind that no one sees or appreciates initially, but has massive long-term impact.
This is when you step back and ask the big questions: What am I doing that will actually drive this business forward? What systems do I need to build? Who do I need to train or upskill?
As I often tell my clients: We do not get paid to write emails.
My Unconventional Solution: The Proactive ADHD Protocol
So what can we do about this? After all, we still need to run our businesses and serve our clients.
Well, the first thing we need to do is accept our ADHD brain.
We do NOT naturally prioritize long-term over short-term rewards.
And that makes sense!
But what if we could give our brain a hand, and create a system that makes proactive work feel as rewarding as reactive work?
This is where my Proactive ADHD Protocol comes in.
Step 1: Create Protected Proactive Time
I designate Mondays as no-meeting days. Previously, every day was filled with client meetings or teaching, making my entire week reactive.
By blocking out specific periods where I refuse to schedule meetings, I created protected time for long-term business building activities.
But here's the ADHD twist: I don't just block the time. I make it impossible to ignore (because you will forget).
I put it in my calendar with bright colors. I set reminders. I tell everyone on my team that Monday mornings are sacred.
And I start the day with the 2-minute Focus Formula.
Step 2: 80/20 Clarity
When everything feels confusing, I remind myself: What is the 20% activity that will drive 80% of my results?
Usually it’s the activity that I’ve already designated as important. Not the shiny new thing I’m getting distracted by.
Step 3: Give Yourself a Reward for Starting
Remember how I said reactive work gives us dopamine hits? We need to create those same hits for proactive work.
I give myself rewards for starting proactive work, not just finishing it. A special coffee. A favorite playlist. Working in a space that makes me feel good (I wrote this in the living-room hanging out with my family).
So often the reason you aren’t starting is that you won’t give yourself that reward.
Recognizing When You're in Reactivity Mode
You can identify reactivity mode by these telltale signs:
You're doing surface-level tasks while sensing there's something deeper you're avoiding
You're running around without really starting or finishing anything substantial
You're working on tasks that can be done with lots of distraction
You feel busy but not productive
You keep checking your phone or email "just quickly"
The moment I notice these patterns, I pause and ask myself: "Is this reactive or proactive work?"
If it's reactive, I finish the task, take a quick movement break to boost my working memory and then I transition to something proactive [2].
The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything
One of the biggest mental hurdles in transitioning from reactive to proactive work is that reactive work feels more supportive of others.
When you respond to emails quickly, you're helping people in real-time. You're being helpful.
While this is true in the immediate sense, you're only helping one person at a time. You're not helping your entire team, your family, your business, or all your other obligations.
The mindset shift involves recognizing that by setting boundaries and dedicating time to focus on business growth, you're ultimately doing what's best for everyone.
So I had to reframe it: Every hour I spend on proactive work is an investment in my future self. It's reducing the number of fires I'll have to put out next month.
And the future version of me and my business deserves my attention too.
The Dangerous Consequences of Staying Reactive
Here's what I learned the hard way: remaining in a reactive state for too long carries serious risks.
You can lose the core of your business that actually drives revenue and forward momentum. When you're too reactive, you might miss important developments in areas where you need to grow.
For example, if your role requires you to upskill, grow, or upgrade the systems you're using, and you don't make time for these improvements because you're too busy being reactive, your competitors who are making these investments will eventually surpass you.
I've seen this happen to brilliant business owners who got so caught up in daily operations that they stopped innovating, stopped growing, stopped building.
Their businesses plateaued - not because they weren't working hard enough, but because they weren't working proactively enough.
The Long-Term Payoff (And Why It's Worth the Wait)
The effectiveness of becoming more proactive is difficult to measure in the short term, but transformative in the long run.
There's a saying that we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in the short term and underestimate what we can achieve in the long term. This perfectly captures the nature of proactive work.
The positive long-term consequences of proactive work require a level of trust, which can be particularly challenging for people with ADHD who crave immediate dopamine rewards.
But here's what I've discovered: once you start seeing the results of proactive work, the systems that run smoothly, the team that operates independently, the business that grows while you sleep, it becomes its own reward.
The key is giving yourself credit for the process, not just the outcome.
Taking Your First Step Into Proactive Territory
The transition from reactive to proactive work isn't easy, but it's essential for sustainable business growth.
Start small. Pick one to two hours this week and protect them fiercely for proactive work.
Create a specific ritual around that hour. Make it special. Make it yours. If you need help check out the dopamine dial.
And remember: your future self is counting on you to make this shift, even if the benefits aren't immediately visible.
Because the most important work often happens behind the scenes, when no one is watching, when no one is demanding your attention.
That's when you're truly building something that lasts.
Wishing you focused, balanced days.
Skye
P.S. If you're struggling with delegation and want to improve your team's ability to support your proactive work, message me "DELEGATE" and I'll send you my template for effective delegation. Sometimes the biggest barrier to proactive work isn't willpower, it's not having the right support systems in place.
P.P.S. If you feel like the bottleneck in your business and life feels like chaos, click here to apply for a call with me. We’ll discuss your struggles and explore systems to support you in growing without the overwhelm.
References:
Tripp, Gail, and Jeffery R. Wickens. "Neurobiology of ADHD." Neuropharmacology 57, no. 7-8 (2009): 579-589. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropharm.2009.07.026
Zhang, Ruiyun, and Haixia Li. “Effect of Vigorous-Intensity Exercise on the Working Memory and Inhibitory Control Among Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Italian Journal of Pediatrics 51, no. 1 (2025): 104. https://ijponline.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13052-025-01924-w