If you have ADHD, you may find yourself constantly playing catch-up on commitments—forgetting promises made in a flurry of good intentions.

Promises made in the car, at a networking lunch, in a Zoom chat, or even running into someone at Target, all exist in separate universes—voice memos, post-its, texts—but rarely make it into your actual task system.

This isn’t just about a single “dropped ball.” It’s juggling 17 balls in six places with zero strategy—a hallmark of ADHD’s impact on executive function. And these follow-up fumbles aren’t just inconvenient; they can chip away at your credibility and your self-trust.

Six Reasons Why ADHD Brains Fumble on Follow-Throughs

1. Impulsive Generosity: ADHD brains crave the dopamine hit of being helpful. Before thinking through whether a promise can be fulfilled, we say “Yes!”—and mean it—without considering bandwidth or logistics.
2. Working Memory Deficits: As explained in Episode #299, ADHD reduces how many mental “sticky notes” you can hold. A neurotypical person might juggle seven or eight promises; with ADHD, it’s three or four. Most commitments simply never get “filed.”
3. Time Blindness: The moment feels manageable (“I’ll send it later today!”), but later is swallowed by whatever fires need putting out, leaving the commitment lost in time.
4. Context Fragmentation: Commitments happen everywhere—car, coffee shop, Zoom, networking lunches—but task management systems live in one place. ADHD brains struggle to bridge that gap.
5. Object Permanence Issues: Out of sight, out of mind. That voice memo recorded in the car vanishes from mental view once you sit at your desk.
6. The Shame Spiral: When forgotten commitments resurface—often at 2 AM—shame and avoidance kick in. Some people even ghost contacts out of embarrassment.

Fixing the Fumbles: The 3 Stage Follow-Through Filter

Stage 1: Before You Promise—Hit Pause

Stop defaulting to “Yes.” Try the 3-second rule: pause and ask yourself, “Can I do this in the next two minutes, or do I need a system?” If not, set a realistic timeline and use a pre-memorized script to acknowledge the request and buy yourself time (“Let me check my bandwidth and follow up by Friday”). This small delay protects you from impulsive overcommitment. Episode #297 is all about ADHD overcompensating, so check it out here.

Stage 2: During—Context-Specific Capture Systems

Don’t rely on a single capture tool. Customize your approach for the context:

1. Driving/Traveling: Use voice memos—with all details, not just “email Sarah.” Set a reminder to process them at your desk.
2. Video Calls: Use chat features in real time, or review AI-powered transcripts the same day.
3. In-Person Meetings: Use your phone’s notes app, or even a physical notebook (but only if you have a consolidation ritual).
4. Casual Encounters: Send yourself a text, voice memo, or use visual cues (move ring/hair tie).
5. Async Communications (Voxer, DMs): Flag messages or add commitments directly into your project management tool.

Stage 2.5: Consolidation Ritual

This is the missing link: a daily download. Set aside 10–15 minutes to process all those voice notes, texts, chat exports, and handwritten scribbles. Move tasks to your main management system. Out of sight means out of mind—make sure everything lands where you’ll see it.

Stage 3: After—Clarify and Reality-Check Commitments

Review: Is the task “in scope,” or are you picking up unneeded extras? Can you delegate? What’s the minimum viable follow-up? Set realistic deadlines and buffer time; use a timer to limit over-investment.

When (Not If) You Fumble: Damage Control

Nobody gets it perfect. When you drop the ball, acknowledge it fast—“I promised that resource and spaced. Here it is.” Skip the drama and excuses, don’t mention your ADHD, just deliver and move forward.

Follow-Through Builds Reputation—and Self-Trust

Your professional reputation and personal confidence aren’t built on intentions—they’re built on consistent, visible follow-through. The good news? With systems tailored for ADHD brains, you can turn scattered promises into completed commitments.

About the Host:

Diann Wingert (she/her) is a seasoned coach, consultant, and the creator/host of ADHD-ish. Drawing from her many years of experience as a former psychotherapist, serial business owner, and someone who thinks "outside the box," Diann is known for her straight-talking, no-nonsense approach to the intersection of neurodiversity and business ownership.

Ready for more strategies? Subscribe to Diann Wingert’s ADHD-ish newsletter on LinkedIn for episode highlights and actionable tips in written form, helping you make real progress every week.

© 2026 ADHD-ish Podcast. Intro music by Ishan Dincer / Melody Loops / Outro music by Vladimir / Bobi Music / All rights reserved.

You get an email from a client that says, hey, just following up on that resource you mentioned during our kickoff call. Your stomach lurches, you have zero memory of this promise and here's the real problem. That Zoom call was just one place you made commitments that day. You also promise things in the car, at a networking lunch, on Voxer, and while running into someone at Target. Some you captured in voice memos, some on Post it notes, and most they never made it to your actual task management system.

Welcome to what I call the “Follow Up Fumbles” and if you have ADHD, you're not just dropping one ball, you're juggling 17 balls across six different locations and don't have a strategy for getting them all back to the same place. So today we're going to fix that, because your business can't grow on good intentions and “oh, I totally meant to do that”. Okay, so before we get into the fixing part, although I know you're super eager for that, let's talk about why this happens. And no, it's not because you're lazy or you don't care enough, or you're a flake it's actually way more interesting than that. This is such a problem with my ADHD brain that my own kids started telling me to write things down way back when they were in elementary school, talk about humbling.

So why do we fumble our follow ups? Well, there are actually six different reasons and understanding them matters because you can't fix what you don't understand. So first off, there's what I call impulsive generosity. We say yes because it feels good in the moment. That dopamine hit from being helpful, it is stronger than our ability to think through whatever we can actually deliver. Someone mentions a problem and before we've even thought it through, we're like, hey, I know exactly what you need let me send you this thing and we mean it.

We're not lying, but we're also not thinking past the next 30 seconds. Second, your working memory is not a filing cabinet. Now, in episode 299, I talked all about working memory, so I'm just going to make a quick reference to the neuroscience here and link to that episode in the show notes in case you didn't catch it or you need to listen again. ADHD brains have working memory deficits. We can hold three, four, maybe five pieces of information at once, whereas a neurotypical can hold 7, 8, or 9 a 30 minute conversation for us might generate 15 different commitments in our head, but only, like, three of them actually make it into our long term memory.

And this is important to understand because people look at you like you're making excuses when you say, I don't remember promising that, but you're not. Your brain literally didn't file it, it's not in there. Third, time blindness strikes again. When you're in the moment and you say, hey, I'll send that over to you later today, it feels completely doable. But we have no realistic sense that later today also includes finishing this call, the meeting after that, putting out some fire that's inevitably going to happen and we don't even know is going to happen yet, making dinner and oh shit, it's 10pm and I forgot that that thing existed. Four and this is the big one nobody talks about, context fragmentation, it's a killer.

Our systems live in one place. That project management tool, the computer, your office, but your commitments, they happen everywhere. You're making promises in the car, hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, and trying to leave yourself a voice note. You're making them at in person events, networking lunches, conferences, coffee meetings where pulling out your laptop just feels awkward and weird. You're making them on Zoom calls where you're screen sharing or on camera and trying to capture anything just feels clunky. You're also making them during casual conversations. You run into someone at a coffee shop, you're chatting with another parent pickup.

You're on Marco Polo or Voxer with a business friend, and you're making them with different people in different roles. Clients, vendors, team members, potential collaborators, friends who might become clients, clients who've become friends. And here's the ADHD trap, our brains can't automatically bridge the gap between promise made in the target parking lot and task that lives in a sauna. We need systems to do that for us and most of us, we don't have those systems. Fifth, object permanence or as I like to call it, out of sight, out of mind. And it is made so much worse by context switching. That voice note you left yourself in the car, it's completely invisible to you once you're back at your desk and looking at your task list, it might as well not exist.

And sixth, the shame spiral. When we do remember, it's usually like 2 or 3am and we're so embarrassed that we just want to avoid and forget about it altogether, telling ourselves, oh my God, it's been too long now, they probably hate me or think I'm just a jerk. I'll just pretend it never happened and maybe they'll forget it too. And if you think I'm exaggerating, I've had a number of clients who have completely dropped out of relationships and ghosted prospects, vendors, colleagues, even people who owed them large sums of money because they fumbled their follow through and felt like an asshat. This is not about dropping the ball once.

It's about your professional reputation like doing the death by a thousand paper cuts thing. Each fumbled intro, each forgotten resource, each broken promise, they all chip away at trust. And you know the part that's most insidious is that you lose trust in yourself, which is even more damaging. So what do you say we fix it? Okay, good, I thought you'd agree. All right, I want to walk you through what I call the follow through filter. It's got three stages and we can think of them as before, during, and after.

And yes, because I know we're often looking for shortcuts, you really do need all three of them. Okay, stage one this is the before. Before you promise, hit the pause button. This is about being strategic before the words I'd be happy to send you that come flying out of your mouth. So, try the 3 second rule. Before you promise anything pause and ask yourself, can I do this in the next two minutes or do I need a system for it? Because if you can do it right now, like literally while you're still on the call or in the conversation, go ahead and fricking do it send the link, make the introduction, whatever.

But if you realistically can't do it within the next two minutes, don't promise. Instead, say something like, hey, that's a great idea let me make a note of it and I'll see what I can do, I'll follow up by Friday. Either way see what you did there? You acknowledge the request, you hit the pause button and bought yourself some time, and you set a specific deadline. It's not a bad idea to memorize that little script so your mind doesn't go blank on the spot. Speaking of scripts, you can also flip that script entirely.

So instead of let me get back to you by X, try this. Would it be helpful if I sent you X let me check my bandwidth and get back to you. You haven't committed to anything yet, you've just opened a door. And you know what often happens? If it really means something to them, they will reach out and remind you. All right, here's another thing, I want you to consider your current context, right? If you're driving, you're at an event, or you're just somewhere that you really legitimately cannot immediately capture and process the commitment be extra cautious because the more context switching you do between promise and delivery, the higher the likelihood you're going to fumble it will be.

And listen, I know this sounds simple and as a concept it kind of is, but I talk a lot about the default yes on this podcast and in my coaching business for a reason. This habit of saying yes is so deeply ingrained for the majority of us. You gotta be patient with yourself and give yourself time and grace to unlearn the old pattern and install and practice the new one. Now, I talked all about this in episode 297, the one I called Enough Already where I talked a lot about overcompensating over committing. So I'm going to link to it in the show notes because if you struggle with this a lot, I don't want to repeat myself, but you might want to re listen or listen to that episode again.

All right, stage two this is the during, this is the capture everywhere where we're going to talk about context specific systems. This is where we get uber practical okay? You cannot have just one capture system because you're making commitments in at least a half a dozen different places, if not more. So let me walk you through some of the typical context that business people like us find ourselves in and what actually works for each one. Okay, so let's say you are driving or in some other mode of transportation. You're on a plane, you're in a train, you're in a taxi, a Lyft.

Voice memos are your friend, but here's the key, you need details. Don't just send yourself a voicemail that says email Sarah. Say email Sarah Thompson, the bookkeeper intro for the woman I met at lunch, in the green dress talked about scaling her therapy practice. I know it'll take a couple more seconds, but if you just listen to a voicemail a memo later that says email Sarah, I promise you it's going to mean nothing to you. You won't remember which Sarah about what or why it even mattered.

Trust me on this one and this is critical set a phone reminder for when you'll be back at your desk to actually process that voice note. Otherwise it's just going to live on in your voice memos app forever and you'll probably never look at it again. All right, how about Zoom, Google Meet some form of video conferencing calls? Use the chat feature, drop your commitments in the chat in real time. The beautiful thing about this is both you and whoever else is on that conferencing call with you can see it right then and there, instant accountability. Or if you're like me and you use Fathom or another AI notetaker, that's great, but you still need to review the transcript on the same day. Don't just assume that the robot captured it correctly.

And if you can't type during the call because you are the one who's presenting or screen sharing immediately after you hang up. And I do mean immediately before you do anything else, spend 60 seconds brain dumping everything you promised during that call into your capture tool. Before you switch contexts, before you move on to the next thing, before you have a sip of water or a bio break, do it immediately otherwise the moment has been lost. All right, next context in person meetings, networking, coffee shops and restaurants, conferences, again, the Phone Notes app, super helpful.

If typing at the table feels awkward, excuse yourself to the bathroom and do it there and I'm very serious about that. Nobody cares how many times you go to the bathroom or if you're carrying a physical notebook everywhere like a couple of my favorite clients do. That also works, but only if you have a consolidation ritual and I'm going to get to that in just a minute. Here's my pro tip, immediately after you say goodbye at any in person meeting, sit in your car for 90 seconds and capture everything before you drive away.

Don't even start the car unless it's blistering hot and you need the ac. Don't check your other messages. Don't check your email. Don't send anybody a text. Just download what you promised before you start the car and drive away. Or even better, send yourself an email right then and there, subject line, follow up and the person's name and then a couple bullet points of what you committed to. Now your inbox becomes your holding tank. All right, how about casual conversations or unexpectedly running into someone? You know the ones I'm talking about.

You're at the school pickup line on the soccer field, you run into someone at Trader Joe's, whatever. You send a quiz text to yourself. I actually have a contact in my phone called follow ups and I text it like I'm texting another person. I know it sounds weird, but it works great. Or send yourself a voice memo immediately after the conversation ends. If you're with someone and think, well, that would be rude to just whip out my phone. Then try using a visual cue, put a hair tie around your wrist unless you usually have a hair tie around your wrist. Or move your wedding ring to the other hand or move your watch to the other wrist, something that is going to bug you until you capture properly.

It's just a visual cue to remind you, but you have to use it consistently or you're going to think, why the hell did I move my ring? Then there's async communications like Voxer, my personal Favorite, Marco Polo, DMs, email, flag it, star it, save it. Or better yet, drop the commitment into your project management system before you even close the app. And of course, this is assuming that you have WI FI access at the time. Now, if you can't do it immediately, at least move it to a Needs Action folder so that it doesn't get completely buried. And you just need to remember the golden rule across all context.

You actually need two systems. System one is your context specific capture. Whatever works in the moment, whether it's something I've recommended or something you come up with, whatever works in the moment and system two is a single point of consolidation. This is where everything ultimately lives, where all the things that you gather from all of the different contexts comes together to get followed up and finished. And here's the hard truth, if you don't have a ritual that moves stuff from system one to system two, what you're actually doing is creating more places to lose shit. And I promise you, I have seen far too many people do that.

Now, obviously we need to talk about the consolidation ritual, because that's kind of stage 2.5. And really, it's the missing link that makes or breaks this whole system. It's also the one that most people seem to forget about. So let me back up, you've got voice notes in your phone, text messages to yourself, scribbles in your notebook, starred emails, Zoom chat exports. And exactly none of that matters if it doesn't end up in your actual task management system. So here's what you need, the daily download 10 minutes, 15 tops.

Ideally at the end of the day or first thing in the morning, if you tend to be pretty fried by the end of your workday, you're going to go through every point of capture. The voice, memos, the texts to yourself, that analog notebook you drag everywhere, flagged emails, your project management inbox, everything. And you're going to process each item, is this a real task? Does it go in the calendar? Should I delegate it? Or is this actually scope creep that I just need to decline? Then you get it out of the temporary capture location and into your single source of truth. You can delete it, you can archive it, but you definitely want to get rid of the original capture once it's transferred. Or you're just accumulating digital clutter.

Now, why does this matter so much for ADHD brains? It's object permanence friend. Out of sight, out of mind. If the commitment lives in that voice note on your phone, it does not exist to your brain. When you're sitting at your desk looking at your task list, everything has to end up in one place that you actually look at. If you skip this ritual, you'll have 14 different systems that feel productive at the time and you will fumble the follow through on every one of them. Trust me when I tell you this is truly the most important step of the system. Capturing the commitment but skipping the consolidation ritual is going to feel just as shitty as it did in high school when you did the assignment but forgot to put it in your backpack so you could turn it in.

All right, you're ready for the final stage. This is the after, this is the clarify the commitment. Or you can also think of it as the reality check. You've captured, you've consolidated and now you need to run those commitments through some filters. Is it actually in scope? If this is client work that we're talking about a follow up on, are they paying for this level of support or are you giving things away for free? Do you need to do this yourself or could you delegate it? Could your VA send it? Can you create a Notion template that they can just access on their own? And what is the minimum viable follow up? Not the gold plated version your overachieving ADHD brain wants to create? What did you actually promise? What did they genuinely expect?

Remember to build in buffer time. If you think something will take 10 minutes, tell them you'll have it to them by the end of the week because it will not take 10 minutes, it never ever does.

Set a time limit on your effort as well. Decide in advance I will spend 15 minutes on this follow up. Do not give yourself the opportunity to make it two hours, because you know you will. And use a timer if you need to. And ask yourself, does this commitment require me to be in a specific context in order to complete it? This is important too.

If you promise to send something but the file is on your desktop, you need to be at your desk when you follow through. If you promise to make an introduction, but you first need to check with the other person, that's a two step task. You need to plan accordingly. Now, we should probably also talk about damage control for when you fumble, because let's be real, you will, no matter how hard we try, we all drop some balls. So when it happens, acknowledge it quickly. Hey, I promised you that resource and completely spaced, my bad, here it is. Now don't make excuses, don't spiral into shame, and don't mention your ADHD. Just deliver.

I like to keep the 48 hour rule in mind. If you remember something that you forgot or fumbled on within 48 hours, send it immediately with a quick thanks for your patience. If it's been longer than that, acknowledge the gap, but don't make it weird. Here's the truth, you can't fix your ADHD brain, but you can design systems that work with it and that means meeting yourself where you actually are in all the places you are. The car on zoom, at a coffee shop, wherever commitments happen.

So start capturing everywhere, consolidating daily because your reputation is not built on good intentions, it's built on follow through. So you know you need to be reminded to practice the strategies you learn here on ADHD-ish right? Well, I want to suggest that you also subscribe to my weekly ADHD-ish newsletter on LinkedIn. You're going to get highlights from every single episode in written form, which many of our brains also need to follow through on everything new we learn. There's a link to sign up right where you expect it, in the show notes. This is Diann Wingert, you've been listening to Adhd-ish and I'll be back next week.