Ep 130: Boomerang Tasks: The ADHD Trap That’s Draining Your Mental Energy

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Have you ever finished your part of something… but it’s not actually done?
You made the call. You submitted the form. You sent the email.
And now? You wait.

But you still have to track it. And if it falls through the cracks, you’re the one dealing with the
consequences.

That’s what I call a boomerang task: if someone else doesn’t follow through, you have a problem- but not one you can deal with NOW.

In this episode, I’m breaking down:
●What a boomerang task is
●Why they quietly drain so much mental energy (especially with ADHD/EF challenges)
●A simple way to manage them without carrying them around in your brain

This is especially relevant for late-diagnosed women who are often juggling invisible tracking
work on top of everything else.

You don’t need to store these in your head. There’s a better way.

Let me know in the comments: Do you have a system that works for these kinds of tasks?

⏱ Time Stamps:
00:00 – What is a “boomerang task”?
00:35 – Why these tasks are especially hard with ADHD
01:05 – Stop using your brain as storage
01:25 – The insurance claim example
01:50 – Why your to-do list isn’t always the best place
02:15 – Treating it like an appointment instead
02:40 – Protecting your mental energy
03:05 – What system works for you?

#ADHDWomen #ExecutiveFunction #LateDiagnosedADHD #ADHDSupport
#OccupationalTherapy #WomenWithADHD #NeurodivergentWomen #ADHDStrategies
#MentalLoad #TimeManagement

Transcript

Boomerang Task

[00:00:00] I wanna talk about boomerang tasks, what they are and how to handle them. If you have a DHD now, boomerang task is something where you've already done your part, you've done a piece of the work, but it's not done. And so you still have to track it. You still have to know whether or not someone else has done their part.

And these can be really tricky things for us, especially when if that person doesn't do their part. If you don't follow up and know that that's happened and be able to check it off your list, it could drop and you could end up. With the consequences of it dropping. Like a perfect example is an insurance claim.

If my insurance turns down the claim that I've turned in and they're not going to pay me, and I call them, I'm already dreading calling them, right? I do this task of staying on the phone with them and clear it up. I think it's cleared up. But it's not cleared up until they've paid me. And so what I do with a task like that, where I am now having to carry this thing or it drops, is I don't expect myself to remember it.

I don't expect myself to ha to carry that in my brain. You know, a [00:01:00] lot of times we treat our brains like, it's like storage device for the things that we need to do, the things we need to track it. It's not a great use of your brain power and your brain space, especially if those things are hard for you.

We wanna take things that you're carrying like that put them outside of your brain. And so the way I treat a boomerang task like that is I just do my best guess thinking of like, okay, when am I, is that insurance company likely to get back to me? And then I treat that thing like an appointment and I put it in my calendar so I don't forget it.

You could put it in your list of things to do, but for me, when I look at that, I once again feel like I'm having to like carry it when I'm looking at it. It's on my list of things to do, but I can't do anything about it. So I don't like treating it that way. I like to treat it as a check-in to make sure it happens.

If it pops up and it's happened, okay, good. Then I, I don't need to deal with that. I can just cross it off. If it pops up and it hasn't happened, I know that represents another step for me that I have to go do something about that.

I gotta call the insurance company back. or file an appeal or do something else on my end. But those boomerang tasks are ones that take up a lot of our mental energy because we still feel like we [00:02:00] need to track them and carry them. 'cause we do.

Right. There's times where we end up with a consequence that they don't happen, but we don't have control over them. We can't get them done, or knock them out, cross 'em off our list. 

 We don't wanna carry that over on our things to-do list and have to keep looking at that and keep visually scanning through it and thinking about that thing because we can't do anything else about it. that's the thing about a boomerang task.

You've done your part, you can't do anything else about it. It's out in the world. You're waiting for the result. You're waiting for the next part to happen. So you want a way of managing. Your role so it doesn't fall through the cracks. And also so you don't have the burden of kind of looking at that every day and thinking about that every day when you can't take any steps towards completing it, 

 So that's what a boomerang task is, in a way that you can manage it if you have a DHD, so that thing doesn't fall through the cracks, but also doesn't take a lot of your mental energy having to look at it every day when you can't take any steps on it.

So let us know in the comments if you have a system that helps you keep track of these kind of tasks, these boomerang tasks, and what works for you.