Forgetting stuff is human. However, for the neurodiverse community, such as those with ADD/ADHD, constantly forgetting about really important things all the time starts to add up.
Here's how it can impact you and here's how the Dwellingright app can help.
Forgetting Important Tasks and the 'Forgetfulness Tax'
As a mother of 4 children and a lawyer, Miriam Rapaport-Hindin (founder of Dwellingright) explained to me firsthand that there's a 'tax' associated with forgetfulness.
For example, let's say you forget to change your air conditioning filter. Summer comes along, and boom, suddenly there's a huge flood of water from the air. It messes up your ceiling, decays the walls and drenches the couch under it.
The cost of forgetfulness in this instance doesn't just equal the cost of replacing the $10 air conditioning filter. It's also really the time and hard dollar cost of everything else after. The cleaning, fixing the walls, not to mention the re-painting it's going to take in order to restore the bedroom back to it's original state. Miriam knows this, because it's something that's happened to her.
Miriam has borne the cost of the 'forgetfulness tax' many times. Forgetting to change the car oil, annual baby vaccination appointments, renewing the driver's license, paying the bills on time... you name it... and it's probably slipped her mind.
And of course, all the costs in time, money and resources that come after it aren't insignificant. One could probably buy an around-the-world holiday with all the money lost over the years to the forgetfulness tax.
For many of you that know Miriam, this may come as a surprise to you. On the outside, she seems to have it all together. She has a successful career as an international lawyer, an MBA from an Ivy-league university, a loving and supportive husband, and she's also the proud mother of 4 children. One would ask how she manages to juggle it all!
However, growing up and adulting is actually a big contributor to the forgetfulness tax getting higher and higher. The older you grow, the more you become accountable for, the responsibilities you take on. It can be overwhelming, but if you drop the ball on something, the consequences can definitely be felt by your wallet.
Nevertheless, when you have a screaming baby and a corporate boss to placate, everything else takes second priority. And of course, you end up forgetting important household tasks, like paying credit card bills or servicing the furnace.
Getting a System that Works
Miriam looks back to a stage in her life when she was doing her MBA, where she just looked around and saw her ultra-organised peers. She thought to herself, "I just need to find the right system to get myself organised and then everything will run more smoothly".
She downloaded and tried every personal organiser app she could find on the app store, but none of them stuck. It wasn't for a lack of trying. However, none of the systems seemed to work the way that her brain did.
She asked my friends for recommendations. Most of her high-flyer corporate network had adapted their work organisation tools for their home life. Excel spreadsheets, calendars, note-taking software synced on all their devices. Miriam noticed that their brains seemed to work in straight lines, goals and steps. Whereas her mind organised tasks or processed thoughts differently. After all, excel sheets are like the bane of her existence.
To her annoyance, all the different options and choices inside the different software options just left her even more confused than when she started. For awhile Miriam wondered if there was something wrong with her. Did she have ADHD? Why was her brain so different? Nevertheless, she realised that the cost of constantly forgetting things had an impact on her family and my well-being. She wanted to be the best mother she could be. Therefore, she knew that she needed to get organised so that she could always stay one step ahead of everything in life.
Getting Organised with Dwellingright
Fast forward to a few years later, Miriam created Dwellingright. It's a personal life organiser app that's simple and visual. For all the technophobes out there - you don't need to 'learn' how to use it, because it's built to be intuitive.
She created it especially to remind herself about critical tasks. So, the app actually gives you a heads up about the important things that you have to do this month. Like, annual dental checkups, renewing passports, or changing the car oil.
Using Dwellingright has been a life saver for Miriam and her husband. Before, they used to have a myriad of uncompleted tasks that would boomerang in between them. They both have demanding careers and long hours, and sometimes things just slipped both of their to-do lists and end up with a pending status for months on end.
However, Dwellingright has really been able to help Miriam and her husband stay connected and stay on track. Having these notifications from Dwellingright in Miriam's routines have allowed her to stay on the ball and in the driver's seat of life, rather than constantly reacting to a chain of events. So, as human and natural as it is to be forgetful, if you're someone that struggles with this issue constantly then finding the right system to get organised is absolutely key. Having something that matches the way your brain naturally processes thoughts and tasks, is an absolute life saver. The tax of being forgetful is definitely very real, and it's well worth your time to get yourself set up with a system that works for you.
This article was brought to you by Dwellingright, the app that helps you stay one step ahead in life. Download Dwellingright free on iOS and Android today.