Why Many Adults May Be Forgetful During Daily Activities and 3 Strategies That May Help

Are you frequently forgetful about day-to-day tasks? While occasionally forgetting something is natural, persistent lapses can start to have a negative impact on your life. As an adult, you likely have many tasks and responsibilities that require your attention. Keeping these tasks in mind can be key to success as you manage your responsibilities and work toward long-term goals. With a free Executive Function guide and toolkit, you can begin learning the essential skills you need to succeed. These may include memory-centered skills to help you overcome forgetfulness.

3 potential causes for forgetfulness

Forgetfulness can affect many aspects of your life. You may find yourself forgetting to return phone calls or missing important appointments. In these situations, understanding why you are forgetful during daily activities can help you take steps toward improvement.

• Stress — Stress is a common reason for forgetfulness in adults. When you’re stressed or burned out, your brain may struggle to keep up with everything that is happening. Stress can also make it hard to focus, leading to distractions whenever you try to concentrate on a particular activity. If you think stressors in your life may be linked to your forgetfulness, practicing self-care can be a great option. By reducing your stress levels, you can start to regain your focus. 
• ADHD — Adults with ADHD often experience forgetfulness. This symptom can affect working memory, which is a kind of short-term memory that is essential for decision-making and other key cognitive functions. When ADHD impacts your working memory, you may find yourself losing track of daily tasks even as you complete them. For example, you may forget the subject of an email you intended to send by the time you open your inbox. If you frequently find yourself in this kind of situation, it can help to look into treatment strategies for ADHD.
• Executive Dysfunction — Executive Function skills are the cognitive skills you use to manage your daily life. These skills include time management, planning and prioritization. Executive Dysfunction is a broad term that encompasses challenges with these skills. If you’re experiencing Executive Dysfunction, you may feel disorganized or distracted. Forgetfulness is another common example of Executive Dysfunction. While individuals with ADHD often experience Executive Dysfunction, the two terms are not synonymous. To get a better understanding of your own condition, a professional assessment will be helpful.

Strategies to manage forgetfulness

• Maintain mindfulness — Forgetfulness often results from trying to keep too many objectives on your mind at the same time. When you’re distracted by an overwhelming number of tasks, mindfulness can be crucial. Mindfulness involves being fully present in the moment. Being mindful means focusing on one task at a time and avoiding unproductive distractions. To help you stay mindful, you can take steps to reduce distractions in your environment. For example, you may want to remove devices like your phone from your workspace. If you need to keep your phone available, you can still turn off nonessential notifications to keep you focused on the task at hand.
• Set priorities — Do you sometimes forget about very important tasks and responsibilities? To prevent this, it can help to set priorities. Instead of completing tasks at random, try to prioritize the most important and urgent tasks on your to-do list. The Eisenhower matrix, also known as “Covey Quadrants,” is a great way to visualize your priorities. To create an Eisenhower matrix, draw a four-box grid. On the top of one box, write, “Urgent,” and on the top of the other box, write, “Not Urgent.” On the left side of the top-left box, write “Important,” and write “Not Important” on the left side of the bottom-left box. Here is an example of what your Eisenhower matrix might look like: 

Image from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eisenhower_matrix.svg

Place each task on your agenda into one of the four quadrants you’ve created. This chart can serve as a helpful reminder as well as a guide for which tasks to complete first.

• Stay organized — A guide from Harvard University shows that working memory, mental flexibility and self-control are highly interrelated. To improve one of these functions, it is often necessary to work on all of them. By staying organized, you can improve your self-control while also addressing your forgetfulness and making room for mental flexibility. To stay organized, you can incorporate many different strategies. One of the best ways to improve your organization is reminders. By setting reminders on your calendar, you can keep track of important dates and tasks without overloading your brain. Decluttering your workspace and setting a daily schedule can also help you become more organized and less forgetful.

Improve your memory with WorkSmart

At WorkSmart Coaching, a division of Beyond BookSmart, we have Executive Function coaching services centered on improving working memory. Our coaching services are designed to help improve skills like this one and many more. That way, you have the tools you need to create an effective and workable routine at the workplace and beyond. 

Executive Function skills can be taught, learned and applied for success. WorkSmart services can help you reach your fullest potential by personalizing the coaching to your personal strengths, learning differences and emotional challenges.

Contact our team today for more information or to schedule an inquiry call.