Tired of ADHD strategies that don’t work? Here’s what actually does. FREE training here.
October 27, 2025
You walk into a room and forget why you're there. You miss deadlines even though you care deeply about the work. You can remember a random conversation from 15 years ago but not what someone just told you five minutes ago.Welcome to life with an ADHD brain and a memory system that works differently.
Dr. Daniella Karidi knows this firsthand. Diagnosed with ADHD in college, Dr. Daniella finally understood why she'd always felt "off" despite being highly successful. A researcher who earned her doctorate from Northwestern University studying memory and ADHD, Daniella is now the founder of ADHDtime, where she works as a professional ADHD and executive coach. She's spent years translating complex memory research into practical strategies that actually work for ADHD brains and in this conversation, she breaks down exactly why our memory fails us and what we can do about it.
Daniella and Tracy dive deep into prospective memory (remembering to remember in the future), why time-based cues are terrible for ADHD brains, and the five steps where memory can break down. Daniella explains why we forget we took our medication, why she needed multiple cues instead of just one, and why she believes people who master their own memory patterns can finally stop feeling like they're failing at life. She also shares the grief and relief of late diagnosis, and why she'll never stop advocating for better understanding of how ADHD women's brains actually work.
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“My ADHD diagnosis gave me a lens to understand my past and a vocabulary to explain my present.”
- Daniella Karidi
“If you’re tired, overwhelmed, or emotional, your memory will fail more. Support the system, don’t shame yourself.”
- Daniella Karidi
“Forgetting isn’t always the enemy. Sometimes letting go is a healthy brain strategy.”
-- Daniella Karidi
"We’re not machines. You can’t store everything. Pick what matters and build cues for that."
-- Daniella Karidi
"Using humor makes ADHD easier to live with. If I can laugh, I can move forward."
- Daniella Karidi
"Don’t rely on one cue. ADHD brains need multiple reminders to start a task."
-- Daniella Karidi
"Girls don’t have ADHD — that’s what they told my mother. Now we know that was never true."
-- Daniella Karidi
- Daniella was diagnosed with ADHD in her fifties after hitting a breaking point as a professor, when a therapist friend sent her an ADHD book years earlier that she dismissed as "for kids" until she found it at her lowest point and started crying reading it.
- She was initially dismissed for diagnosis because she was a successful professor with a PhD, showing how high-functioning individuals are overlooked, despite having severe dyslexia that required dictating her entire dissertation using NASA's text-to-speech program.
- Her mom was told in Israel that "girls don't have ADHD," attributing Daniella's behavior problems to her redhead temper and learning challenges, even though she couldn't sit still regardless of interest level in the topic.
- Daniella explains prospective memory (remembering to do things in the future) has five failure points: encoding instructions, storing information, retrieving with the right cue, executing the task, and closing the loop by confirming completion.
- ADHD brains don't actively categorize and store information like neurotypical brains do—neurotypicals consciously decide where to "file" memories while ADHD brains just put things away without thinking, making retrieval much harder.
- Time-based cues are the worst for ADHD brains; she recommends converting time-dependent tasks to event-based (take medication "with dinner" instead of "at 7pm") and always using multiple cues instead of relying on one reminder.
[00:45:00 - 01:07:55] Practical Memory Strategies and Aging Considerations
- Her top three memory strategies are: use multiple different cues (not the same alarm repeatedly), make cues relevant to the task and location (put reminders where you'll see them when needed), and analyze which of the five steps is causing your memory failures.
- Retrieval challenges worsen with age and anxiety, creating a feedback loop where stress about forgetting makes forgetting worse, but she emphasizes giving yourself grace and understanding this is normal aging combined with ADHD.
- She recommends tracking memory failures with beads or marks to determine if decline is normal or concerning, ruling out sleep, eating, and hormonal issues first before assuming significant memory problems, especially since early ADHD diagnosis may reduce later decline risk.
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick—they weren’t designed for how your brain actually works. Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy is different. It’s a patented, science-backed coaching program that helps you stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits. 👉Learn more here