Working memory holds a few things at once. Summer hands your brain far more.
Hi Reader,
Picture your working memory as a desk with room for four things. During the school year, the calendar and the routine hold the rest for you. Summer clears the calendar and drops twelve things back on the desk at once.
So you walk into the kitchen and forget why. You lose your sentence halfway through. You read the same text three times and nothing sticks. You are not slipping. Your desk is full.
Working memory is the small workspace your brain uses to hold information while it works with it. Research on adults with ADHD shows weaker connectivity in the networks running this workspace, for both words and images (NeuroImage: Clinical, 2024).
In plain terms, your desk is smaller and clears faster than most. It was never built to hold a whole summer at once.
The school year and/ or work schedule along with season rhythm supports working memory with repeatable structure; Bus times, work blocks, and the bedtime routine acted as extra shelves. Summer removed this and handed everything to you like a pile of papers on the same small surface.
The fix is to use space outside your head.
Try this week:
- Brain Dump. Every morning, write down every open loop rattling around. Appointments, the text you owe, the thing you keep meaning to buy. Getting it out frees the surface for thinking.
- Capture things the second they land. Keep one note app or one paper pad. The moment a thought or task shows up, it goes there, not in your head. Your brain trusts what it sees.
- Build one summer anchor. Pick a fixed daily point, like a 2 pm reset, where you check the list and clear the desk. One anchor gives some structure and a moment for you to decide what's critical before the 5pm dread, "I got nothing done" shame cycle.
Give your brain a place to set things down and an anchor point.
If summer keeps overloading your brain and you want a system built for how it works, book a free 30-minute discovery call. We will map your open loops and set up shelves you can use instantly.
Until next time,
Heidi
