Working Memory and Forgetfulness in ADHD

I walk into the kitchen and do not know why I came. I go back to the living room, I remember, I go again. Sometimes I make this trip twice.

For years I thought this was "absent-mindedness" and I was angry with myself. What I learned after the diagnosis was this: the thing lost in those three seconds has a name, and being angry with it does not bring it back.

This article is about the most everyday and quietest tiredness of ADHD.

What is forgotten

Working memory is different from long-term memory. It is not about remembering childhood memories; it is the buffer memory that carries the job you are doing right now.

What is in it: why you came into the room, what you were about to say at the start of the sentence, the second of the three items in your mind, what the person in front of you just said, the number you carry while doing a multiplication.

In ADHD the capacity of this buffer does not have to be low. What really struggles is holding on: while the information is there, a stimulus cuts in and it is wiped. In Barkley's (1997) theoretical framework, working memory is treated as one of the components standing at the center of executive functions. Brown's (2005) model similarly describes memory not as a skill on its own but as a part working together with the attention and regulation system.

This is the distinction that comforted me. It is not that I am not taking in the information. I take it in, and when the next thing comes it disappears.

Where it shows itself

• The doorway effect. A change of environment resets the buffer. Something that happens to everyone, much more often in ADHD.
• Multi-step instructions. The first two steps are done, the third drops. Of the sentence "turn off the light on your way out, take the trash, double-lock the door," usually two stick in me.
• Half sentences. The word being lost while speaking and usually not coming back. This is the side that upsets me most, because the other person can take it for lack of interest.
• Missing while listening. At some point while the other person is talking, the mind goes and you do not hear the rest. It is not disinterest, it is the buffer overflowing.
• Loss of prospective memory. "Take the trash on your way out" is exactly this. Remembering to do something in the future is the type of memory that drops most often in daily life.
• Going back while reading. Getting to the end of a paragraph and not remembering what it said at the start. I covered why reading books is hard in a separate article.
• Losing things. Opening the door with the key in your hand and not knowing where the key went. This has its own mechanics, in the article on losing things.

The information is not not being recorded. It is recorded and wiped by the next stimulus.

What does not work

"Be more careful." The buffer capacity does not grow with effort. This sentence only produces guilt, and in me it did for years.

Memory exercises. Improvement happens in the exercise itself and the transfer to daily life stays weak. Getting better at remembering a series of digits in an app does not remind you why you stopped in the kitchen.

Being ashamed. Living by apologizing for forgetting does not reduce forgetting; it only teaches you to hide that you forgot. And the more you hide, the less likely you are to ask for help.

What works

The common principle in one sentence: load remembering onto the environment, not onto memory.

Writing at once. Writing whatever comes to mind somewhere at that moment. Five seconds later it is gone. There should be a single place; more than one list also adds the decision of "which one will I look at." The single list rule is exactly for this.

Leaving it visible. What needs to be remembered should stay at eye level. What goes into a closed drawer ceases to exist for me. Details in the article on the visible place system.

Fixed places. Keys, wallet, card in one place. The rule of dropping them into the same bowl as soon as you come in shortens the time spent searching considerably. There is only one condition for the rule to work: no exceptions.

Turning instructions into writing. Asking for an instruction given verbally at work to be written as well is the cheapest arrangement. It helps everyone, and in me it becomes necessary. The sentence "could you send a one-line summary after the meeting" has gained me a lot.

Repeating aloud. When leaving a room I say aloud what I am going for. It sounds silly and it really works.

Chunking. Splitting long information into meaningful clusters: like grouping an eleven-digit number in threes.

The double copy rule. Critical information does not stay in one place. An appointment is both in the calendar and somewhere I will see that morning. It looks like redundancy; for me it is insurance.

Closing open loops. An unfinished job goes on taking up room in the mind. Once a week gathering all open jobs in one place empties the buffer. Taking notes itself is a memory job here.

Why it is so tiring

Forgetfulness has an invisible cost and I think the real tiredness comes from there.

If you are not sure you will not forget something, you check it constantly. Did I turn off the stove, did I lock the door, did I reply to that message. These checks are small one by one. Added up over the day they make a serious load, and this load shows up nowhere; not in the calendar, not in the job list.

The second cost is trust. Someone who does not trust their own memory cannot be sure of the promise they give either. There was a time when I had come to avoid making promises, because the chance of not keeping the promise tired me more than the promise itself.

The third is compensation. There is an invisible job list: alarms set to remember, notes written twice, calls made to ask "did I forget?" This work is explained to no one, and because it is not explained, no one knows it is work.

What to say to the people around you

I skipped this part for a long time, because I thought the explanation would sound like an excuse.

The sentence that worked was this: "If you tell me verbally there is a high chance it will be lost, could you write one line?" This sentence is not an apology, it is a user manual. The other side usually does not resist, because the cost is low for them too.

What does not work is apologizing every time. An apology tells the other person there is a problem but does not tell them what to do. When you tell them what to do, the conversation goes somewhere quite different.

The limits need to be stated

None of these methods ends forgetfulness. My keys still get lost, my sentence still breaks off in the middle.

What changed is this: when I forget, I know what to do, and I do not read it as a character flaw. My own father is also a man looking for his keys; getting angry at him had never crossed my mind, while getting angry at myself took years.

There is also something to separate: if forgetfulness has increased markedly recently, it should not be written down directly to ADHD. There are causes that are easy to rule out, such as sleep, thyroid, iron and B12, and these are things to talk about with a doctor.

The sentence I keep in mind is this: my memory is not bad, it just does not work alone. When I put a piece of paper next to it, most things fall into place.