How to Redirect Your Working Memory

You finish a workday feeling completely drained. Your to-do list is still long but you can’t pinpoint where your energy went. You were busy but what did you actually accomplish?

This exhaustion often comes from a hidden source: the mental tax of holding ideas in place. While you were trying to focus, part of your brain was constantly rehearsing: ‘Don’t forget the invoice… remember to call the client… that idea for the proposal is crucial.’

This post will explain why your brain works this way, give you an immediate tool to stop the drain today and show you how to build a system that gives you back that mental energy for good.

Your Brain Is a Processor, Not a Hard Drive

The common belief is that you are forgetful or easily distracted. The reality is you’re trying to use your brain for a job it is not wired to do.

Think of the ADHD working memory not as a desk but as a factory.

In this factory, multi-coloured post-it notes - your ideas and tasks - are constantly flying down a dozen conveyor belts at top speed. The moment you try to focus on one, the others keep moving. If you don’t grab a note immediately, it’s gone for good.

This is ‘attentional capture’¹ and rapid memory decay² in action. A new email or a sound doesn’t just distract you; it can completely overwrite what was in your mind moments before. The previous task wasn’t forgotten; it was cleared to make space.

The resulting exhaustion isn’t from your work. It’s from the immense effort of trying to stop a factory that’s built to run at this speed. The relief begins when you stop fighting it and start working with it.

The 5-Second Capture Habit

You know the feeling: you open your inbox, see an unpaid invoice, think ‘I must chase that,’ and then two days later, you have the exact same thought as if it were brand new. This is the ‘rediscovery loop’³.

The principle that breaks this loop is simple: capture the full thought the first time it appears, while it still exists. The goal is to make this faster than your brain’s erase function.

Here is how to do it in under five seconds.

1. Choose Your Frictionless Tool
   Open the note-taking app that launches fastest on your phone or computer. It doesn’t matter which one - Apple Notes, Google Keep, a draft email to yourself. Speed is the only requirement.

2. Execute the Capture Formula
   Speak or type a single line using this structure: [Task] - [Next Action] - [Emotion/Keyword].

   • “Chase Sarah invoice - send reminder email - URGENT”

   • “Blog post idea - draft intro paragraph - ooOOOooh”

   • “Book dentist - call tomorrow morning - Groan!”

The emotion or quirky keyword is what makes future-you connect with the task and actually do it.

3. Apply the ‘One-Note’ Rule
   Direct every capture into a single, running note titled ‘Open Loops’. This is your initial, messy holding pen. Do not organise or prioritise yet. Just capture.

Your Weekly Triage

A capture habit is powerful but it creates a chaotic list. Without a way to process it, that list becomes its own source of overwhelm. The long-term fix is a weekly ritual to transform that chaos into a clear plan.

This ‘Weekly Triage’⁴ is the system that stops the mental tax for good.

• The Cull (1 minute)
  Scan your ‘Open Loops’ note. Be ruthless. Delete anything that no longer matters, is no longer relevant or you know you won’t do.

• The Categorise (2 minutes)

  
  Tag each remaining item with one of four labels:

  • DO (can be done in under 15 minutes)

  • SCHEDULE (needs a dedicated time slot)

  • DELEGATE (someone else can do this)

  • INCUBATE (not now but maybe later)

• The Commit (2 minutes)

  • Move all DO items to your official to-do list for the week.

  • Take one SCHEDULE item and put it in your calendar right now.

  • Take one DELEGATE item and send the email or message to hand it off.

  • Move INCUBATE items to a separate ‘Someday/Maybe’ list and forget them.

This five-minute weekly process clears your ‘Open Loops’ note and gives you a trusted action plan. You stop second-guessing yourself because you have a single source of truth outside your head.

From Mental Tax to Mental Energy

The journey starts with understanding you’re fighting a neurological process, not a character flaw. It continues by building a lightning-fast capture habit to offload the burden. It culminates in a simple, weekly system that turns chaos into clarity.

This is how you reclaim the focus and energy currently spent on remembering and redirect it to growing your business.

If building a tailored system that finally sticks feels out of reach, that is my specialty. I help ADHD entrepreneurs create calm, structured workflows that work for their unique way of thinking. You can [book a Clarity Session] to explore how we can build yours together.

References

1. Attentional Capture: A psychological phenomenon where a salient stimulus (like a notification) automatically and involuntarily draws attention, disrupting focus. Source: Annual Reviews

2. Rapid Memory Decay: The theory that memory traces in short-term memory fade quickly without rehearsal, often within seconds. Source: NCBI

3. Rediscovery Loop: A descriptive term for the experience of repeatedly encountering a task as if for the first time, often a result of rapid memory decay.

4. Weekly Triage: A prioritisation process, adapted from emergency medicine, for sorting tasks by urgency and importance to determine the order of action. Source: NCBI Bookshelf