Comment by heygarrett
2 days ago
> If it is important, you will remember it at some point during the day.
As someone with ADHD I’ve never found this to be true. I often forget to eat. I’d forget to file my taxes without reminders.
2 days ago
> If it is important, you will remember it at some point during the day.
As someone with ADHD I’ve never found this to be true. I often forget to eat. I’d forget to file my taxes without reminders.
We're on the same brainwave. Literally thought to myself, "but I forget to eat all the time" and scrolled down to see this.
ADHD obviously can make stuff like this hard, and most neurotypical people seem to operate on a "if it's important I'll remember it" mentality, which I'm incredibly jealous of. I still haven't found a good system for tracking important tasks without getting "overloaded" with too many tasks and/or subtasks.
Serious question: in those scenarios, do you never have awareness about your need to eat? Or does it occur at some point, but then you decide not to eat at the moment, and after making that decision then you never revisit it?
I ask because I often realize I'm hungry or it's time to eat, but I'm too engaged in the task I'm doing and I think "I'll eat a bit later" and then once I've done that the first time I often never consider again, at least until the next meal time. I wonder if that's what people mean when they say it, or if the idea of stopping for a meal simply didn't even occur to them?
I don't usually forget to eat, but this happens to me all the time for tasks that don't have a physical feedback mechanism.
I missed a doctor's appointment today because I didn't remember to schedule a corresponding "you need to leave the house _now_" alarm to go with the calendar event, which I forgot about because I looked at my calendar once in the morning and the appointment was in the afternoon.
I will remember _some_ tasks if they "are important", but those are typically things that cause me enough anxiety that I just don't ever actually stop thinking about them until they are done. I can't really do reliable just in time recall of tasks unless it is for something I have deeply internalized into a habit.
Not the person you asked, but in my experience one or multiple of the following happen:
- I just don't notice I'm hungry (this one happens most to me)
- I notice I'm hungry but get distracted and forget
- I notice I'm hungry but I don't have the energy to devote to making/finding food
- I notice I'm hungry and I straight up don't care even though I'm aware I should
Yep, everything here, plus “Why am I dizzy? Oh, I haven’t eaten anything in 15 hours.”
How do you get so engage in the tasks you are doing so you forget to eat? I suppose most people here have the opposite issue, we do not engage in the task at all and once we start, we stop doing it after a short while because we find a more interesting things to do such as eating, grab a coffee or reading HN, news etc. We would love to be able to stay on the task and not go and eat.
It's not like this for every task. But for the ones I find interesting, yes, it's nice to be able to focus like this.
Of course there are tradeoffs.
Quite literally, my awareness vanishes into the task or nothing at all. The conscious experience of it is basically blinking at 2pm and discovering it's actually 7pm and I'm dizzy for some reason.
Heck I forget things between remembering I need to do it and adding it to the list, in the time it takes to get my phone out and open the todo app.
I have reminders and still forget to pay my property taxes sometimes.
Oh shit, this just reminded me that I have a tax deadline this week. I ignored the reminder from a few days ago.