ADHDers don't do "medium" 🤩
Being "too much," those 33 open tabs, and why we forget phone numbers
Absolutely floored with the reception of “ADHD Assets” last week.
Honestly out of words so I’ll jump right in to avoid a blabber 🤭
A reminder that the book comes with coaching, so scan that QR code at the back.
ADHD as a high-variance OS
(context over cure)
ADHDers don’t do “medium.” Like EVER 🤭
When you’re excited, everyone knows it. The enthusiasm that fills a room. The energy others can’t manufacture no matter how hard they try. Your emotional expression has no dimmer switch. And let’s face it, what you feel moves directly into what others see.
And your inability to fake it?
People always know where they stand with you. In a world full of performed sincerity, you’re verifiably real. Corporate speak feels like chewing tinfoil (yes, every meeting) because pretending drains you fast.
The same intensity that overwhelms some people inspires others. You’re the spark that ignites teams, starts projects, makes moments memorable.
Yes, the crash comes later.
Yes, some people find you “too much.”
But your tribe?
They want whatever you’re having.
Deep Dive: on the memory you can see
The ADHD brain is famously bad at holding information in working memory. The three-step instruction that vanishes before step two. The brilliant idea gone seconds after it arrives. And yet - that same brain can navigate complex spatial environments without conscious effort, or instantly grasp a diagram that would take pages to explain in words.
Both are true.
The conventional view
The standard model treats working memory deficits as a core ADHD impairment. A 2021 meta-analysis in Neuropsychology Review confirmed this:
ADHD consistently shows reduced verbal working memory capacity compared to neurotypical controls. The logical response is compensation - external systems, reminders, written lists, repetition.
This is all correct. Working memory limitations are real and measurable.
The advice follows: write everything down, make lists, set reminders.
The wrinkle
But there’s a missing bit here. The same research shows ADHD working memory deficits are asymmetric.
Verbal working memory struggles.
Visual-spatial working memory? Often intact - sometimes superior.
A 2019 study in Journal of Attention Disorders found that ADHD participants performed as well as or better than controls on tasks requiring mental rotation and spatial reasoning.
The brain that can’t hold a phone number can navigate back to a restaurant visited once, years ago.
A different frame
What if the working memory “deficit” is actually a format thing?
Many ADHD brains don’t think in words and sequences. They think in
pictures,
shapes, and
spatial relationships.
Force verbal-sequential processing and the system strains. Use visual-spatial processing and capacity appears that no one expected.
Forget art skills, this is about using the right format for how your brain actually encodes information.
A three-step instruction vanishes because it’s asking verbal working memory to do the heavy lifting. A quick sketch of those same three steps - boxes with arrows - externalizes the memory into a format the brain handles better.
The paper remembers so you don’t have to.
What this reveals
This reframe explains some odd patterns. Why you might find mind maps intuitive while lists feel suffocating. Why drawing a problem often unsticks thinking that circled for hours. Why timelines make abstract deadlines feel real in a way calendars don’t.
It also raises questions about how we teach and communicate. Systems built around verbal instructions and sequential lists assume a particular cognitive format. When someone with different strengths enters those systems, the mismatch gets labeled as memory impairment rather than format incompatibility.
Sitting with it
None of this eliminates working memory struggles. But treating the problem as “wrong format” rather than “broken capacity” changes what solutions look like. The question shifts from “how do I remember better?” to “how do I think in the format my brain actually uses?”
Sometimes the memory was never broken. It was just looking for something it could see.
Stuff that helps RIGHT NOW
(with some cash + 10-ish min)
ADHDers: you have too many tabs open.
(I don’t even know how many anymore.)
Every tab is a decision you haven’t made yet.
Mental weight your brain tracks even when you’re not looking.
Tab limiter extensions force you to close tabs before opening new ones.
Install xTab (Chrome, free) or Max Tabs (Firefox, free).
Set a limit to 10 tabs.
Try to open #11 and it blocks you.
That makes you decide: is this new tab more important than what’s open?
Usually it’s not.
I disable mine during heavy research days, maybe 30% of the time.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated to any of the stuff I mentioned. Just sharing in this way to save you the research and cause it can help.
This is fascinating. I can’t follow verbal instructions or remember a phone number to save my life. I lose my phone multiple times a day. My 7 year old son calls me Dory.
But age 25 I went to the WW1 battlefields and remembered the exact location of both of my great-great uncles’ gravestones in each graveyard from a previous trip I’d taken age 12.