Improving Your Memory

From what I’ve learned about recalling information when you most need it, I can offer you two key points:

1. We usually don’t “forget” anything. We just “fail to learn it”. For information to be immediately and consciously accessible we need to learn it in an aware fashion. We seldom forget where we put our keys, for example, we just did not dedicate sufficient energy to learn their put-down location so that it would survive the onslaught of new information washing over us after that fact. Try it yourself: If you have a challenge with constantly misplacing your keys, purse, glasses, or anything else, next time you put it down dedicate one short, sharp second to mentally photographing its location. You’ll find that it sticks easily, and you’ll go straight to it when needed.

Same goes for remembering people’s names. If you invest a tiny amount of time and attention to associate someone’s name into a funny picture you’ll find it’s a lot easier to recall it when you next need it. A friend of mine makes a point of repeating the persons name back to them upon introduction, “it’s very nice to meet you Joe.”

(I must admit, I was tempted to end this article here and then wait for the howls of “You forgot the second point!”, but my conscience got the better of me, so here’s the second point):

2. While we may not invest the effort to consciously learn something that we’ll need to recall in future, we do in fact unconsciously “snapshot” it and store an involuntary impression of the event, thing or person automatically in our unconscious or sub-conscious.

Recalling unconsciously stored information requires just that – putting a call in to your unconscious, asking for the specific information, and then waiting for the answer to be delivered in “unconscious time”. We’ve all experienced this phenomenon when attempting to remember someone’s name and having it pop into our heads at a later time, but it still surprises me how seldom others treat it as a repeatable technique.

For the record: Imagine yourself having the answer you need, next sincerely thank your unconscious self for delivering it, then go about your business knowing that the answer will come, and respecting the fact that your unconscious experiences time in an entirely different way to your conscious self.
Bottom Line 
Failing to remember important information is a common stress symptom of over-tasking and the cure for that is really simple: Invest a little time and money in using The Best Time Management System on Earth .

Tip: The faintest ink will outlast the longest memory, so if something is truly important; capture it on paper, or with a written or spoken note in your PDA. There! You don’t have to remember it any more, and can now use the freed brain space for other work!