I can’t work on maths problems: by the time I key a calculation into my calculator I’ve forgotten what I was actually calculating.
When I open my phone to write an email, by the time I have the ‘new email’ screen open I’ve forgotten what I wanted to write and to whom.
When I go off looking for something in another room, I forget what I was looking for by the time I’ve entered it. I constantly mutter ‘What was I doing? What was I doing?’
This is so debilitating – I can’t live like this. What can I do?
Coffee
Exercise
Vyvanse/Adderall
Firm sleep routine
Reduce background noise and clutter
Take regular work breaks, use a timer or alarm
In no particular order, some or all of these may not help or be counterproductive
Thanks. Were/are you struggling with this as well? Does the Vyvanse/Aderall stop the forgetting?
I have terrible memory issues that seem to be hereditary. The things that help the most are having a daily routine and minimizing things that might sidetrack me mid-task. If someone asks me a question while I’m carrying something, it’s pretty likely the thing will be lost.
Stimulants would be more useful for maintaining focus on a task like filling out forms or mathematics work. I don’t think they necessarily help with general memory issues, but all these things together make it much easier to maintain focus.
The single biggest contributor to focus, memory, and mental health issues for me personally is sleep quality. If you snore, or you wake up with back or leg pain, etc., that carries over and adds up over time. There’s no magic bullet, just a lot of incremental improvements that don’t seem to do anything on their own.
Ahh thanks for this. Yes, seeing as the main thing stopping me from getting sleep is that my brain sees it as a ‘boring’ activity, I can see stims helping this as a knock-on effect.
Also important to get yourself physically tired at least every day, especially with prescription stimulants. If you don’t, you will have trouble sleeping and back to square one 😕
Stimulants shouldn’t affect memory directly but, at the same time, they kinda do. Take myself as an example, I have good long term memory but just like you I also forget things I just thought (or was told). That means the problem here is not retrieving information stored in my brain, but actually saving it in my head. What stimulants might do is improve focus, so you actually save the info in your brain before forgetting it. This doesn’t necessarily work for everyone, but it’s a common treatment for ADHD for a reason.
Hmm yes, I can see this helping. Yeah, I’m waiting for an appointment to get stims right now.