91. Why “I’ll Remember That” Is a Lie: Working Memory Strategies and Tips(ADHD-Friendly)

productivitytask managementADHD/Executive Functionsorganization
Written By Katie Azevedo

Episode 91

Our working memory has many strengths, like doing mental math and remembering the first part of a sentence as we read the second part. But the one thing it’s NOT good at is the one thing we keep asking it to do: remember information for longer than a brief moment.

That’s NOT what our working memories are designed to do. In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, we talk all about working memory and how to support it. People with ADHD, this one’s especially for you.

What You Learn:

  • The difference between working memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory

  • How to get information from your working memory into your long-term memory so you can actually remember the information when you need it (like for a test)

  • Tons of practical strategies for supporting your working memory

  • The impact of ADHD on working memory

🔗 Resources + Episodes Mentioned:

Never stop learning.

▶  ✏️Get my FREE parent training: How to Help Your Student Handle School Like a Pro — Without Study Frustration, Assignment Overwhelm, or All the Drama (If you’re the parent of a high school or college student, this training is for you.)

  • The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them 😉

    Why “I’ll Remember That” Is a Lie: Working Memory Strategies (ADHD-Friendly)

    ===

    [00:00:00] Hey there and welcome back to the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. I'm Katie Azevedo, and today we're diving into a sneaky little executive function that is behind more of your daily operations than you realize, and that is our working memory. I'm gonna dig into a little science today, but not enough to scare anyone away.

    But this is an episode where understanding the biology behind our brains is essential to understanding our behaviors, and that is what we're doing here.

    [00:00:30] So let's just start with a scenario. I want you to picture this, all right? Picture that you're sitting in class and the professor wraps up the lecture with, okay? So for [00:01:00] tomorrow I want you to read pages 120 to 138. Make sure you do problem set four, and also bring a draft of your outline by Friday. You nod along and think, got it. Okay. And you head out the door and then poof. An hour later, probably actually less than that, you're sitting at lunch with no clue what problems that you were supposed to do or when that draft was due.

    Or maybe you're in a work meeting and your manager casually drops three follow-up tasks right there. As the call is ending, you figure you'll remember them, but 20 minutes [00:01:30] later, all you've got is some fuzzy feeling that you were supposed to do something. Does that sound familiar? That's not you being forgetful.

    I mean, maybe a little bit, but mostly that is your working memory and is actually doing exactly what it's built to do. So what exactly is working memory and why does it matter at all? Great questions. So glad you asked. Working memory is like the brain's mental scratch pad. It's the [00:02:00] place where you temporarily hold onto small bits of information so you can use it in the moment.

    It is different from long-term memory, which is like your brain's hard drive. That's where we store memories and information that's not really going anywhere. And now this is important, and this is where so many people get confused about this part. But working memory is also different from short-term sensory memory, which is just about taking in raw information for split second.

    Working memory is more of the middleman. Now the thing we need to [00:02:30] understand about working memory is that it is limited. All right. I feel like that should just be the punchline of this entire episode. Working memory is limited. Most research says that our working memory can hold around four to seven chunks of information at once.

    That's it, four to seven, and those chunks do not last long at all. So if you are relying on your working memory to hold onto something important for more than a few minutes, or for some people, even seconds, you are setting yourself up for [00:03:00] significant frustration. Now, working memory does serve us well in certain situations. It is great for things like mental math, like adding 47 plus 86 in your head without paper. It's good for following multi-step directions.

    Something like turn left at the light and then right at the gas station, and then it's the third house on the left. Right? But again, not too many steps because our working memory is limited. So if someone gave you those directions, followed by what you're supposed to do after passing that third house on your left, you'd probably end up lost.

    It's [00:03:30] also good for remembering the beginning of a sentence while you finish listening to the end. Or if you are reading, uh, it's good for remembering the beginning of a sentence while you finish reading the end of it. And it's helpful for holding onto what you want to say in a conversation while the other person is still talking.

    So it's not useless, it's just an ultra short term piece of our brain. It's meant for in the moment tasks and definitely not for long-term storage, but here's where most people get into trouble. We constantly [00:04:00] misuse our working memory by expecting it to do jobs it was never designed to do. It's like asking a plumber to rewire your electrical panel and getting bummed out when the dang thing blows up.

    Like we have to match the right worker to the right job description, you know? Students will sit in class without taking notes, telling themselves, I'm gonna remember this later, and then they don't, and then they get burned. Professionals will leave a meeting without writing down the action items, assuming that they're just gonna magically recall them when needed, but then they don't [00:04:30] and they face the consequence.

    And yet, and this is the part that I find both fascinating and absurd. People keep thinking they're unique. You know, I come from a place of love when I say this, but it's just so interesting when people are so deeply convinced that they have some kind of superpowered working memory ability, despite the, you know, bananas amount of evidence that we don't, what's the evidence that they're ignoring?

    Missed assignments, missed task, late work, forgotten [00:05:00] appointments, bad grades, because you said you studied but forgot it all. We'll talk about studying actually in just a bit. Stress and anxiety about wondering if you're missing something, needing other people to remind you to call the vet or get the milk or submit the thing.

    So many people think that they will remember, even though biology is working against them. The truth is that our brain is not designed to act as our planner, our filing cabinet, our long-term notebook, or our secretaries. We might want to fair enough, but that's not [00:05:30] facing reality. So the next time you hear yourself saying, I'll remember that.

    You need to recognize what's happening. You're relying on a broken strategy that's built on a crumbly foundation of wishful thinking. Now, this brings me to one of the most common academic pitfalls I see in terms of misunderstanding and misusing our working memories, and that's studying by cramming the night before a test. When you cram, all you're really doing is shoving information into your working memory. So let's say that you study for 90 minutes, that's, you know, way too [00:06:00] long. But let's say that you're not enrolled in school Habits University and you don't yet know the study methods that do work.

    Okay? So you're studying for 90 minutes, but by the end of the 90 minutes, you might be able to remember some of the material from the beginning of the study session, if you're lucky. But by the following day, it's gone. Why? Because working memory isn't designed to hold onto information long. That's why cramming fails, and this is why so many students feel like they studied for hours and then blanked during [00:06:30] the test.

    I've talked about this before in episode seven, how to Learn things, and also in episode 20, what is active recall and how to use it to study. In those episodes, I explained how spaced repetition. Is the actual and only way to move information out of working memory and into long-term memory. Spaced

    repetition simply means coming back to the same material over and over, across days and weeks, instead of all at once, just the night before, which most of us do. So if you've ever wondered why your all-nighters don't seem to pay off, now you [00:07:00] know you're asking your working memory to do a job. It simply cannot do.

    Now I wanna talk a sec about A DHD before I get into some of the strategies for supporting our working memories. People with A DHD often struggle more with working memory than neurotypical folks, and the science shows differences in the prefrontal cortex activity. That's the part of the brain that's heavily involved in working memory.

    And what that means is, in real life is that A DHD brains often have a smaller working memory capacity, where the information [00:07:30] decays faster. So for students with A DHD, it's not just that it's hard to remember multistep directions, it's that the directions might vanish halfway through or in way less time than someone who's neurotypical and the student may process only one direction.

    For professionals with A DHD, it can mean forgetting the action item by the time you switch tabs on your computer. It's not laziness or carelessness, it's just simply biology. And the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can work with it instead of against it.

    As an executive function coach who [00:08:00] specializes in A-D-H-D-I work with both students and professionals who struggle with the exact same issue. And my clients who are the slowest to evolve are the ones who resist the reality that their biology is different. Everybody's working memory is limited. Like that's all humans.

    But people with a DHD need even more support in this area. And that starts with saying, yes, I have a DHD. That means I need more systems and strategies and supports than most people, and I'm gonna keep working at this stuff until I find those systems and strategies and supports. No matter how hard this is, [00:08:30] it starts with that.

    All right, so what do we do now that you understand that working memory is different than our long-term memory? It's different than our short-term memory. And do you understand the various scenarios in which we're asking our working memory to do a job it's not designed to do. We understand that people with A DHD need some more support than anyone else.

    Cool. So if our working memory is fleeting and limited, how do we set ourselves up for success? Like what do we do? Glad you asked. There's loss. We can do, [00:09:00] and I'm gonna start by going over some general strategies and then I will share some tips that are specific to students and then tips that are specific to professionals.

    Alright, so some general strategies to support our working memory and break the cycle of asking the plumber to do an electrician's job, so to speak. Number one, externalize nearly everything. If it matters, write it down if you need it later.

    Don't trust your brain to keep it. Think of working memory like a whiteboard that somebody just keeps erasing so annoying. You can write something on it, but [00:09:30] unless you transfer it to a more permanent storage, it's gone by the time you turn around. And this is where externalization comes in, getting information out of your head and into a trusted system that's not gonna disappear for students, that might mean a paper planner, a digital homework app, or even a sticky note on the corner of your desk or on the corner of your laptop.

    Obviously I've said this before, but your task management system is not your learning management system.

    For professionals, that might be a project management tool, a task list app, or simply a notebook you [00:10:00] carry with you everywhere. I talk a lot about building trusted systems back in episode five, secrets of a Good Task Management System.

    The point I made there, and it applies here too, is that once your brain trusts you to capture information, it stops burning energy, trying to remember it, and that frees up our working memory for the real work, which is thinking and problem solving, and creating and learning, and just experiencing your environment.

    Think about the last time that you had a really crowded browser with 17 tabs open, when you've [00:10:30] got 17 tabs open, the computer actually slows down. Not because it's doing anything important, but because it's just trying to keep everything available just in case. And that's exactly what your brain does when you rely on your memory instead of your systems.

    And externalizing is like bookmarking the tabs you actually need. And then just closing the rest. Strategy number two, chunk information. So chunking is the strategy of breaking down large pieces of information into smaller, more manageable groups.

    Our brains love patterns and chunking [00:11:00] creates patterns. The phone number example is a classic one. Nobody remembers like 6 1, 7, 4 9, 3, 6 2, 7 5. I don't know if I just hit the right amount of numbers, but whatever. No one remembers that. It's one long string, but we remember like (617) 493-6275. I made up that phone number.

    Hopefully that's nobody's phone number. Don't call it. Why? Why is this easier be to remember? Because we've chunked it into like little meaningful groups that's more easy for our brains to hold onto. [00:11:30] This is also why acronyms are so powerful, nasa, A DHD, even things like pemdas in math. Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally, right?

    That's chunking in action.

    Remember, I'm gonna leave all the links that I mentioned today at Learn and work smarter.com/podcast/nine one, and in the show notes in the description box, all of this, but back in episode 25, which is, um, five Time management mistakes you're making, I talked about the mistake of tackling work in giant undefined blocks and chunking is a solution for that.

    Um, [00:12:00] another analogy. Imagine trying to eat a whole pizza without cutting it into slices. It's ridiculous, right? You would never do that, but people try to eat information. Maybe that sounds weird all the time. And then wonder why they choke on it. Chunking is just cutting the pizza into slices. I probably could have used a better analogy, but we went with that.

    strategy. Use visualization. So working memory hangs onto images more easily than abstract words. Visualization takes advantage of that by turning information into pictures, diagrams, and even [00:12:30] mental movies. For example, let's say that you are trying to remember a grocery list. Milk, bread, apples, and peanut butter.

    Obviously the best strategy is to write these words onto a list and bring that with you to the grocery store, obviously, but to explain the concept of visualization, just play along with me. Instead of trying to brute force, remember those items. I want you to picture yourself walking into your kitchen.

    You see the gallon of milk that is just tipping over onto the counter, slices of bread getting soggy [00:13:00] in the spilled milk, apples rolling across the floor after they were knocked down by the milk jug. Okay, and a giant jar of peanut butter just stuck like semi floating in the middle of the mess. The weirder the image, the more your brain holds onto it,

    students can use visualization to remember concepts like picturing the cell as a tiny factory when learning biology professionals can sketch workflows, draw mind maps, or even use color-coded sticky notes to create a visual system. I have a YouTube video that [00:13:30] explains how to use mind mapping. I'll leave that into the description box.

    I don't have a podcast episode about mind mapping 'cause it's really one of those ones that benefits from the visualization of video. Like I actually map it out in real time and show you how to do it. Obviously, you can imagine.

    Um, strategy number four is to use rehearsal. So rehearsal means repeating information either out loud in your head or back to another person in order to keep it active in your working memory for just a little while longer.

    [00:14:00] So if you ever get directions, like take a right at the light and left at the second stop sign, and it's the third house on the right, right? What do you do? You repeat it over and over and over until you get there. That's rehearsal. Actually, again, here I am making the case for writing it down, but let's say you were driving and you couldn't write it down.

    You just repeat it to yourself. Students can rehearse by summarizing a lesson to themselves after class, literally whispering. Okay. Today we learned about photosynthesis first, the chloroplast absorbs light. It's probably as far as I can go with that [00:14:30] one, but that quick little recap stretches the lifespan of what's in the working memory long enough you know, for you to transition it toward long-term storage, which in that case would be notes. Professionals can rehearse by restating meeting tasks before logging off. Okay, I'll handle the client follow up. You draft the proposal, we'll reconvene on Friday, right? That repetition is simple, but it can be helpful when you don't have a pen and paper handy to write these steps down because you know, as I keep saying, writing the steps down [00:15:00] and externalizing the information that way is hands down, the most effective way to support your memory, your working memory, just to make that clear.

    In episode 20, what is active recall and how to you use it to study? I talked about rehearsal as a stepping stone to active recall. Active recall is testing yourself, but rehearsal is the lighter version, the repeat cycle that makes active recall possible in the first place. Getting outta breath. All right, let's move on to some student specific strategies, even though I touched on a little bit of [00:15:30] those in the general strategies, but here we go.

    These are the things that will help you stop overloading your working memory in school and actually give your brain the backup that it needs to not make school so hard, if that makes sense. First, always capture your assignments immediately. I don't care if it's an A paper planner, a digital app, or scribble on a sticky note that you transfer later.

    The important information is that you don't trust yourself to remember it. If the teacher says, read chapter four and do problem set two, right, and bring in a rough draft by Friday, [00:16:00] you need to capture that in writing on the spot, this is the same principle I talked about back in episode five, where I broke down what makes a good task management system. When your brain trusts you to capture information, it can just relax and stop juggling it in the background, so you're actually free to sit there and pay attention to class. Second, take what I call catch notes in class, even if they're messy. Don't wait until you've got the perfect highlight, you know, color or neat handwriting.

    Just catch the information as it comes. You can always reorganize your [00:16:30] notes later, but if you don't catch it in the moment, it's gone. And if you're not sure how to take notes quickly enough in class without falling behind or missing the actual important stuff, I teach you exactly how to do that step by step inside my college note taking power system program.

    That's where I teach the actual framework and shortcuts for getting the information down efficiently during class so you're not left staring at a half empty page or like way too many notes wondering what just happened. Third, do a quick post post-class [00:17:00] reviews. This doesn't have to be a 30 minute study session.

    I'm talking about two to three minutes tops. Flip your through your notes right after class. Highlight the key points or rewrite one or two things that stood out. Or maybe fill in some of the gaps that didn't make sense to you. Or rephrase stuff that you wrote down that you don't even understand. What you're doing here is transferring information from working memory into a long-term memory before it fades.

    It's like hitting save on your document. Not that anybody hits save anymore, but like, you know what I mean? Instead of relying on auto save and hoping for the best, although I completely rely on auto [00:17:30] safe. Fourth, use spaced repetition when you're studying. I have said it before episode seven, and I'll say it again here.

    Cramming the night before an exam doesn't work. Because all you're doing is shoving information into your working memory and like we've already covered, working memory is not designed to hold information for very long at all. Space. Repetition is the process of coming back to the same material multiple times over and over again over multiple days or even weeks, and that's what signals to your brain, Hey, like this stuff's important.

    Move it to the long [00:18:00] term storage, please. It's the difference between writing something in pencil and carving it into stone. If I were to give you some cave person analogy, fifth. Externalize reminders for multi-step projects. So don't try to remember every part of a group project or research paper in your head.

    Write a checklist to use a project tracker. Put the milestones in your calendar. Every time you offload some detail from your working memory into a system that it's not gonna evaporate on you, you are freeing up your mental bandwidth to actually do the work [00:18:30] instead of just, you know, trying so hard to remember the details, which stresses you out in the background.

    Sixth make visual aids so our brains hold onto images better than abstract words. So whether that is a mind map, a flow chart, or even doodles in the margins of your notes, give your brain some kind of visual hook. Back in episode 29, I shared how adding diagrams to your notes make them infinitely more useful.

    That's 'cause you're turning abstract ideas into something that your working memory can more easily hold [00:19:00] onto. Seventh practice retrieval, not just rehearsal. Those are different. Rehearsal means repeating something over and over again, like a phone number or a list of directions. That's fine for the short term, but if you want information to last long term, which if you're studying you do you need to test yourself.

    That's active recall, which I explained in episode 20. Instead of just rereading your notes, close the notebook and see what you can remember. That process of pulling information outta your brain is what makes it durable.

    So that's seven strategies right there. All of them [00:19:30] designed to keep you from overusing your working memory for jobs that it's not built to handle. The theme is the same. Stop trusting yourself to just remember. That is a losing game. Instead, you're gonna build systems that catch the information for you so that your brain is free to do what it does best.

    I've said this before, but to learn, to problem solve, to think creatively, you know, just to experience your environment. Now let's shift over to strategies for professionals, because all of the same brain [00:20:00] rules apply in the workplace. If you're relying on your working memory to keep track of your tasks, your meetings, your deadlines, you're probably dropping balls and falling behind and stressing out and missing things, and you know, staying awake at night, being like, eh, am I remembering this right and right?

    No one wants that. So I have six strategies for you. First. Always end meetings with the written action steps and confirm them with the group. Don't just nod and log off. Take 30 seconds to write down exactly who's doing what and by [00:20:30] when, even better, read them back to the team. Say, okay, I'm gonna follow up with this client.

    You'll draft the proposal. We'll reconvene on, you know, Thursday. That's rehearsal plus externalization, kind of, you know, married into one. And that is a much more guaranteed way to have nothing slip through the cracks.

    Second, keep a running notepad open during phone calls, whether it's a physical notebook, a digital document, the notes app on your computer, whatever.

    Have a place where you're capturing things in real time. [00:21:00] Do not trust yourself to just remember it. In episode 61, I talked about how to prepare for meetings so you look sharp in front of your boss, which isn't like, you know why we do our job, but it sure helps to look smart in front of your boss. And this is a big part of it.

    Writing down action items as they come up. It shows professionalism and it keeps your working memory free to actually participate in the meeting instead of just trying to like, you know, never looking up and always just writing down your notes.

    Third you can use checklists for weekly [00:21:30] recurring processes. If you send a weekly report, um, or onboard clients or prep for presentations the same way every single time, put it in a checklist or an SOP. That way you don't waste your working memory energy trying to recall all of the steps. In episode 52 where I talked about SOPs and workflows, I explained that SOPs or standard operating procedures aren't just for, you know, CEOs.

    They're for anyone who wants to do high quality work without consistently forgetting how to do high quality work, [00:22:00] right?

    Fourth. Calendar everything or like put everything in the calendar, even your small things that you swear to goodness that you're gonna remember. Don't just put meetings on your calendar.

    Block off time for project work, um, deadlines, even quick reminders like email Sarah the draft. If it's not in your calendar, it's living rent free in your working memory. I hate using that expression 'cause I think it's silly, but it is. Okay. And remember, working memory is not reliable real estate. By putting it on your calendar, you're [00:22:30] taking it outta your head and putting it somewhere safe.

    Fifth, use visual management tools when possible, when projects get complex. Kanban boards, Trello, asana, even sticky notes on a whiteboard. Anything that lets you see the moving parts at a glance. Visualizing tasks reduces the strain on your working memory, which would otherwise be juggling 10 invisible pieces of a project in your head.

    We're not about that. This ties back to what I said earlier about visualizations. Our brain holds onto [00:23:00] images way better than language and abstract lists. All right.

    And number six, build in end of the day reviews or shut down routines. So before you shut down, spend five minutes writing tomorrow's top three tasks.

    This clears your head so you're not lying in bed trying to remember like what's waiting for you in the morning or what maybe you forgot at the end of the day today. I explained a similar process back in episode 21 where I talked about how to plan your ideal week. The principle is the same. The more you externalize in advance, the [00:23:30] less you burden your working memory overnight.

    So whether you are in school or at the office, the theme is the same. Stop relying on your working memory is your main system. It's fragile, it's temporary. Unreliable build supports around it, and you'll instantly feel less, you know, chaotic and stressful and like you're always missing something.

    All right, so let's recap what we covered today. We talked about what working memory is, why it's so limited, and why it can't handle the jobs that we keep throwing at it, like remembering assignments, cramming the night before a test, or [00:24:00] walking out of a meeting without notes. We also went over a whole set of strategies for students and professionals to give your brain some backup, I guess is a good way to think about it. But if you only remember one thing from today's episode, and yes, I see the irony there, let it be this. Write it down. Capture the assignment, jot down the task, record the voice memo if you need. Whatever it takes, writing it down, or I guess recording a voice memo too is the single best way to support your working memory, because it frees your brain [00:24:30] to actually think.

    Instead of just trying to frantically hold on to whatever random piece of information it thinks is important, so don't make your plumber rewire the house. Let your working memory do what it is good at and put systems in place to handle everything else. Keep showing up. Keep doing the hard work, keep asking the hard questions, and never stop learning.

Katie Azevedo
Next

90. Building a Reading Habit and Chronic Illness Work Tips (Q&A)