Mastering Forgetfulness: How ADHD Entrepreneurs Can Thrive with Routines for Success

I feel like my ADHD forgetfulness can be one of the trickiest things to manage.

Back when I started my insurance billing company, one of my clients needed the billing completed weekly. One week something came up. I got busy and distracted with other tasks and forgot to do his billing. That one week he didn’t get paid, which meant his employees didn’t get paid. He forgave me for that one time and I kept working for him, then several months later something happened in the way that I submitted the billing.  Somehow I forgot to push the final send button. When he didn’t get paid the next week, there were no more chances, I lost that contract. 

I was a single mom with 5 kids counting on me. I needed to figure out how to get on top of this problem. There is nothing like failure to force you to figure things out when they really count.  

I was determined to make this business work, so I got to work and developed some tools and techniques that helped me to get ahead of the forgetfulness and make sure the most important stuff was accounted for and getting done. 

The truth is, as a person with ADHD, forgetfulness isn’t something I could just control.  I’ve never figured out how to make my brain remember all my thoughts. But I could plan ahead of time to reduce the impact of my brain's challenges.  

In this article we'll discuss the first tool: creating a routine of the most important parts of the business.

Routines are regular work you do on a weekly or daily basis, at the same time every day or the same day and time each week. 

The reason why routines work so well for people with ADHD, is that it takes the decision making process out of the tasks that need to be done. One of the biggest energy wasters is thinking about something and trying to figure out when you’re going to do it and how you will fit it into a busy day.

If you have it already in your schedule and it’s part of a regular routine, it takes only a portion of the energy to do that thing. Without it you have to remind yourself when to do it and continue to remind yourself to do it and then stress and worry about whether or not you actually got it done

You probably already have a routine. But is it working for you? Are there any important parts of your business that are being neglected? 

In my business, I would fall behind in getting my financial statements completed. I tried to put it into a monthly routine. Once a month I wanted to record all of my income and expenses and create my profit and loss statements. I even put a reminder on my phone to tell me to do this. When the time came, I guarantee I could find five other things I would rather do during that time. There were times when I got months behind in updating my financial statements. Reviewing and recording my income and expenses is stressful and often frustrating. I truly dreaded doing it. But do you know what is even worse? Doing 6 months worth of financial statements because I have procrastinated. On top of having to work through a huge backlog of bank statements, I struggled with trying to remember what all of the expenses were so they are recorded properly. Something had to change.

I decided to move this to weekly. I decided that every Friday afternoon I would work on it.  That seems like a good idea right? Guess what happened? Well, it was Friday and I was already half checked out for the weekend and not at all motivated to do a part of business that I was not excited about. I gave it 6 months or so, but I fell behind. It was time to rethink this strategy. 

I pivoted again, and decided that on Mondays I’m heavily invested in business and my brain is more fully engaged. For me, Monday, at the beginning of a week, just made more sense as a time to put the business in order. It has become just a piece of my day as a business owner. At that time, I've already set aside the amount of time it takes to do the work. I don’t have to make the decision again and I won’t talk myself out of it as easily.

What important tasks in your business would you like to get a better handle on?

If there is something that is being left out or that you are regularly forgetting or that you worry about forgetting, try making it a part of your schedule for virtually the same time each day or day of the week. After 3-4 weeks it will be less of a problem for you, and after 90 days you should be able to count on it as being a part of your routine. This difficult task should no longer be a challenge.

If you are ready to make some changes in your business and upgrade your routine. book a consultation with me and let's see what we can do together.