More seriously, ADHD, among others, is a working memory disorder. A way to cover this is to use “prosthetics” for it, such as a notepad that you always carry with you. If this affects you strongly, train your muscle memory to use it to note down what you were planning to do and to refer to it when you forgot.
In PC-speak, ADHDers have traded RAM for more CPU.
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How does writing things down help when I don’t remember to read them back…?
The idea is that you can regularly check the notebook. If that doesn’t work for you, then an app with a notification might be a better match
I started using todoist for this and it helped a lot.
(I’m not trying to shill this product, but I am trying to shill the idea - I’m sure there are a ton of similar products out there.)
I use it in the “getting things done” method where you drop every little thing you need to remember in the inbox and go through the inbox once a day to organize your thoughts into whatever project or container they need to be in. It has immensely improved my life and the underlying feeling of dread that you missed or forgot to do something.
I go through phases of writing things down. I do it for a week, realize I remember everything I wrote down, and get used to remembering. Then I’ll think, well, this whole thing was useless, I’m just remembering it. So I get lazy, stop writing things down, and start forgetting. Repeat ad nauseum.
I do something similar for waking up on time. I’ll set 8 alarms in 15 minute increments. I’ll start waking up 2-3 minutes before each one, and think to myself, well this is annoying, I’m waking up on my own. So I remove most of the alarms, and then oversleep.
I may have Alzheimers, but al least I don’t have Alzheimers.
train your muscle memory to use it
Remember Sammy Jenkins.
I wanna remember to remember to forget you forgot me
Modest Mouse lyrics always relevant
I traded ram for cpu and drive space for gpu lol. No memory all processing.
That’s a damn good description, 4 GB of 2600 mhz ram on a 6 GHz 64 core processor and a 20gb flash disk for a hard drive.
Ha! That’s a great quote, I should write it down somewhere… nah. I’ll remember it.
Seconded. If it wasn’t for alarm and notes apps on my phone, I’d never remember anything, let alone actually do stuff! Even paper notes wouldn’t work because I’d forget that the note existed in no time flat 😂
My old boss gave me a load of shit for writing down tasks that I had to do. He just couldn’t comprehend that it wouldn’t stick if it wasn’t written down.
He took my book from me, and then asked me to do a bunch of complicated stuff each with its own deadline.
He then got annoyed when I didn’t do the stuff because I hadn’t written it down because he took my book.
He got sacked, I got promoted.
Ugh, he sounds like such an asshole! I’m glad he got sacked and belated congratulations on the promotion 😁
Thanks! I’m now working in a new role where there is no more ridiculous pressure or wild expectations and have been able to commit to working on a degree (because I fucked up the first one).
Work shouldn’t leave you panicking on a monday morning or crying into your lunch.
I don’t think that’s the working memory. At least in my diagnosis I have extremely well functioning working memory and I excel at a lot of tasks that require to juggle with a lot of information.
However I still struggle with remembering that I need to do something after the current task if I don’t put some reminder in place.
So I think it’s some other part of the memory that’s … erm … weird.
That’s working memory
