Working Memory - The Gift I Forgot I Gave

I mentioned "working memory" in a previous blog post, so I'll just expand a little bit with an example from my own life.

So, I'm standing at work and my cell phone goes off. I've got a text message from my wife.

"Thank you! I love it! How thoughtful!"

Now, any husband will tell you this is great...if you can remember what you did.

Eventually, through judicious questioning, I find out what it is (this happened a couple of years ago, so I've forgotten again what it was).

Anyway, simply forgetting was not necessarily the adult ADHD thing.

The fact that I forgot a couple of minutes after I did it was. I was doing some things on the computer one night, ordered something as a surprise for my wife, gloated for a second, and started doing something else...which essentially erased the immediate memory of "the wonderful deed I had done".

That's the way it is sometimes. I am doing something, for a perfectly good reason, and a minute later don't know that I did it, or, if I remember doing it, I don't remember why I did it.

My brain moves on to the next thing, and each action and event erases, at least in working memory. Working memory is what you use to get things done, particularly in a sequence or group.

It's a bit like putting several things in a basket until you need them. For most people, working memory can hold at least a small pile of "stuff"...directions, lists, sequences, groups...etc. However, person with adult ADHD, or a child as well, working memory is more like a conveyor belt than a basket.

We usually get either the first item or the last, or the most important (and people with ADHD are often very poor at assigning priorities). Sometimes, I'm not even sure why I remembered one thing and not another.

Here's an example of adult ADHD at work. I actually started another sentence, thought of a comment which needed to be added above. Added the comment, and "Poof" the sentence I was going to add, along with the idea behind it, is completely gone. Well, there's still tomorrow. I can add it then...if I remember what it was.