How to remember stuff
My short-term memory has been getting worse. A friend kindly suggested that I’m just getting old, which I guess is in some ways true. But I don’t blame aging brain cells. I blame the Internet.
The downside of sitting in front of a computer all day and having another one in your pocket is that after some time, you let the ‘cloud’ take over. And like any other muscle, the less we use those parts of our brains, the weaker they get.
Wait a sec…
Isn’t that the whole idea? We let the computers handle the lower-level stuff so we can spend our time philosophizing about more important things. Like Alaskan vice presidential candidates, LOLcats and social media.
Theoretically, yes. Technology is supposed to make things easier. Its purpose is to give us more time, clarity and control over our lives and the world around us. And it has. But in a lot of cases, it’s done quite the opposite too. When we let technology take over too much of our biological memory, we put ourselves in a constant state of reaction. We end up with less time and less clarity because we become increasingly vulnerable to the push and pull of trivial outside forces. Like a zombie army whose commands are issued in the form of bouncing email icons, chiming calendar alerts and vibrating hunks of metal and plastic.
I could go all day about the merits of moderation in digital stuff, but let’s talk about ways to clear out some of the cobwebs. Memories are the strongest when they are anchored to something; when we associate them with some specific act or trigger. And the more we rehearse those associations, the deeper they’re ingrained on a subconscious level. We’ve all been beaten over the head with inspirational sports movies preaching “practice makes perfect,” yet the problem is that some acts, like remembering directions to a particular address, aren’t easily practiced. The best way to learn those is to go again and again, which takes significant time, effort and gasoline.
Science to the rescue!
Here’s the interesting thing: a recent study mentioned in the New York Times highlighted strong biological evidence to support a popular theory about memory — that when we recall something from our past, a lot of the same neurons fire as when we’re actually experiencing it.
In other words, when Tom Brady sits on the couch to study his playbook and he visualizes how a play unfolds, his brain behaves (for the most part) like he’s actually on the field running the play. Of course, it’s never as good as the real thing, but it’s pretty close. We can use this insight to our advantage.
What you can do right now:
Say for instance, you want to remember to take out the trash before you leave for work in the morning. Imagine yourself going about your AM routine. Close your eyes and focus on one specific thing. Something you know you’ll do for sure, like putting your shoes on before you head out the door. Got it? Now think about every little action you’d need to take to put on your shoes: kneeling down, slipping your foot in, adjusting the heel and tying the laces. Relive that memory — the more specific, the better.
Now comes the fun part. Imagine yourself standing back up, but instead of walking out the door, you walk over to the kitchen, open the garbage can, and lift the bag out. Go back to the beginning and repeat the process a couple more times. The goal is to mash up two memories and create an association between the act putting on your shoes (the trigger) and the act of taking out the garbage (the action). It’s mental rehearsal for something that hasn’t happened yet!
And it works (for me at least). Try it. Let me know if it works for you too.
