ADHD and Working Memory: Why Do I Keep Forgetting What I Was Doing?
Understanding the mental juggling act behind everyday forgetfulness, distraction and overwhelm.
Have you ever walked into a room and completely forgotten why you went there?
Or been given a few instructions, listened carefully, understood every word, and then realised about 30 seconds later that you can only remember the first one? Perhaps you've been halfway through telling a story when another thought pops into your head, and suddenly you've lost your original point entirely.
If you have ADHD, these experiences might feel frustratingly familiar. And while we all have moments like these, for people with ADHD they can happen frequently enough to interfere with everyday life. One possible reason is something called working memory.
Think of your brain as a kitchen
Imagine you're preparing dinner. You have a kitchen bench where you lay out the ingredients you're using. You might have some vegetables to chop, a recipe you're following, a saucepan bubbling away and a few things you need to remember to do next. Your kitchen also has cupboards and a pantry where everything else is stored.
Your pantry is a bit like your long-term memory. It's where information you've learned and experiences you've accumulated are stored for later use.
Your kitchen bench, on the other hand, is like your working memory. It's the mental workspace where you temporarily hold information you need to use right now. But heres the important part: your working memory isn't just storing information, it's actively doing something with it. You're remembering the recipe, calculating quantities, keeping track of what you've already added and thinking about what needs to happen next. All at the same time.
Now imagine your kitchen bench is quite small. You've got your chopping board, ingredients and recipe laid out, and you're managing reasonably well. Then someone walks in and asks you a question. Your phone rings. You remember you need to send an email. The saucepan starts boiling over. Suddenly there's nowhere left to put anything. Something gets pushed off the bench. And that thing might just be the reason you walked into the kitchen in the first place!
Welcome to working memory overload.
So, what exactly is working memory?
Working memory is a cognitive system that allows us to temporarily hold and use information while we're completing a task. It's closely related to short-term memory, but there's a useful distinction. Short-term memory is generally about briefly retaining information. For example, remembering a phone number long enough to write it down.
Working memory involves keeping information available while also using, updating or organising it. For example, remembering that phone number while mentally adding the digits together.
Working memory helps us:
Follow instructions with several steps.
Keep track of conversations while planning what to say.
Read and understand longer sentences or paragraphs.
Perform mental calculations.
Organise and sequence tasks.
Remember what we're doing when something interrupts us.
It's a surprisingly important part of everyday functioning, and we rely on it constantly without giving it much thought.
How much can our working memory hold?
Probably less than you think. Early research suggested we could hold around seven pieces of information at once. More recent research indicates that our immediate mental capacity may be closer to three or four meaningful pieces, or chunks, under certain conditions.
But it's not quite as simple as everyone having four spaces available. Our ability to hold information depends on what we're doing, how familiar the information is, how we organise it and how effectively we can direct our attention. In other words, the amount of usable bench space changes depending on the task and what else is going on.
What does this have to do with ADHD?
Research consistently finds that, on average, people with ADHD experience greater difficulties with working memory than people without ADHD. Importantly, this doesn't mean that everyone with ADHD has poor working memory, or that working memory difficulties are unique to ADHD. For some people, the difficulty may involve how much information they can hold at once. For others, it may be more about maintaining their attention, managing competing information or keeping track of what they're supposed to be doing.
Think back to our kitchen bench. For someone with ADHD, the issue might be that there's less usable space available for a particular task. Or perhaps the bench is a perfectly reasonable size, but every noise, thought or interruption keeps demanding a place on it.
Sometimes it's both.
This can help explain something that often confuses people about ADHD.
How can someone be incredibly capable, intelligent and knowledgeable, yet struggle to follow a few simple instructions?
Because intelligence and working memory are not the same thing.
You can understand complex ideas, have excellent reasoning skills and possess an enormous amount of knowledge, yet still find it difficult to keep several pieces of information active in your mind while you're doing something else. It's not necessarily a problem with understanding the information. It's a problem with keeping it available long enough to use it.
When the mental bench gets crowded
Working memory difficulties can show up in ways that aren't immediately obvious. You might lose track of what someone is saying during a conversation because you're busy thinking about how to respond. You might start writing an email, remember something else you need to do, open another tab and then completely forget about the original email.
You might read the same paragraph three times because, by the time you reach the end, you've lost track of the beginning. Or perhaps you're cooking dinner, someone asks you a question, and you suddenly can't remember whether you've already added an ingredient.
These experiences can be particularly frustrating because you often know what you need to do, you just can't seem to keep all the necessary information in your mind at once.
Over time, repeated experiences like these can affect confidence. People may start describing themselves as forgetful, disorganised, careless or unreliable. Others might interpret these difficulties as a lack of effort which can reinforce feelings of shame or inadequacy.
Forgetting an instruction doesn't necessarily mean you weren't listening. Losing your place doesn't mean you weren't trying. Needing to write something down doesn't mean you're less capable. Sometimes your mental workspace simply has more competing demands than it can comfortably manage.
Why stress and tiredness make everything worse
Working memory isn't something that operates independently of the rest of our experience.
Sleep deprivation, stress, anxiety, emotional distress and competing demands on our attention can all make it harder to think clearly and keep information in mind.
Imagine trying to prepare dinner when half your kitchen bench is already occupied. Perhaps you're worrying about a difficult conversation, thinking about tomorrow's workload or mentally running through everything you haven't finished. Those thoughts require attention too. And when your attention is pulled in several directions, there's less available for the task in front of you.
This is one reason working memory difficulties can become particularly noticeable during periods of stress or overwhelm. It also helps explain why someone with ADHD might manage reasonably well in one environment but struggle considerably in another.
Context matters.
What actually helps?
The good news is that we don't necessarily need to make our mental kitchen bench bigger to make life easier. Sometimes the most effective approach is to stop expecting ourselves to keep everything on it.
Here are a few ways to reduce the load.
1. Get information out of your head
Write things down. Use reminders, calendars, checklists or voice notes.
The aim isn't to improve your ability to remember everything. It's to reduce how much you need to remember in the first place.
2. Break instructions into smaller steps
Instead of trying to remember five things at once, focus on one or two steps before moving on. When possible, ask for written instructions, particularly for complex or unfamiliar tasks.
3. Reduce competing demands
If you're doing something that requires concentration, consider what else is competing for your attention. Notifications, background conversations and interruptions can make an already demanding task even harder.
4. Use routines and familiar systems
When an activity becomes more automatic, it generally requires less conscious mental effort.
Keeping important items in consistent places, following a regular morning routine or using the same planning system can reduce the number of decisions and details you need to hold in mind.
5. Be realistic about multitasking
We often think we're doing several things simultaneously, when in reality we're rapidly switching between tasks. That switching can come at a cost, particularly when each task requires active concentration. Doing one thing at a time isn't always possible, but reducing unnecessary task-switching can help.
6. Pay attention to your overall cognitive load
If your working memory seems particularly unreliable, consider what else is happening.
Are you sleeping enough? Feeling anxious? Trying to manage too many things? Constantly rushing? Sometimes the most useful intervention isn't another productivity strategy. It's reducing the demands you're placing on yourself.
Can you improve working memory?
This is where the research becomes interesting. Working memory training programs can improve performance on the particular tasks people practise. However, evidence that these improvements consistently translate into broader, meaningful changes in everyday functioning is much less convincing.
That doesn't mean working memory difficulties can't improve. ADHD treatment, including medication where appropriate, may improve aspects of attention and working memory for some people. Psychological interventions can also help people develop strategies to manage the practical impact of these difficulties. However, there's an important distinction between trying to increase working memory capacity and learning to work more effectively with the capacity you have. For many people, the latter is a more useful place to start.
A different way of thinking about forgetfulness
One of the things I find particularly important in working with people with ADHD is helping them understand the difference between a cognitive difficulty and a personal failing. When you've spent years forgetting things, losing track of conversations or struggling to complete tasks that seem effortless for other people, it's easy to develop a story about yourself.
I'm hopeless. I'm lazy. I'm so disorganised. Why can't I just get it together? These conclusions often overlook the cognitive demands involved in seemingly simple activities.
Understanding working memory doesn't explain every difficulty associated with ADHD, and it certainly doesn't mean that people have no control over their behaviour. What it does offer is a more accurate and useful starting point. Rather than asking, "Why can't I remember anything?", we can start asking, "How much am I expecting my brain to hold at once, and what could I do differently?" Because perhaps the answer isn't to try harder to juggle everything. Perhaps it's to put a few things down. And give yourself a little more room to think.
Two Birds Psychology
Two Birds Psychology provides individual psychological therapy for adults, including support for ADHD, anxiety, trauma and life transitions.
We offer appointments in Bondi Junction, Sydney, and via telehealth across Australia.
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