Your Memory Isn’t That Good, Take Notes

“The true art of memory is the art of attention.”  — Samuel Johnson

Admittedly, the title content is a bit more complex than a one-liner can handle. Research has shown our memories to be both excellent and very flawed. To add to the equation, memory is unique person-to-person and affected by things such as stress and age. As this could be an infinitely long article, we are targeting those moments when our memory fails us, such as the forgetting of a required item at the grocery store or a recommended book title. To overcome these known blindsides, take more notes.

Learning is putting knowledge into memory¹. This process is complex and requires focus. It is no secret attention spans are shrinking. In a study, college students self-reported lack of attention more often than feeling focused during lectures². This helps explain why some memories are crystal clear and others blurry or non-existent. After being taken on a tour, participants were asked two days later to recall what happened. Even though, on average, they only recalled 15-22% of the events, those memories were 93-95% accurate³. No surprise, the recall percentage dropped drastically after two years. Finally, memory changes as we age. In a word recall test, younger adults outperformed older adults overall. An interesting finding though was older adults’ memory retention was higher when a wakeful rest phase followed the learning phase⁴.

This shows memory can be excellent, but is not always reliable. Remembering your elementary school teacher’s name will not help you remember the forgotten item at the grocery store. Overcome these blind spots with notes. Someone give you a show or book recommendation? Put it in your notes. In a class and the lecturer says something important? Make a note. Need to tackle a bunch of tasks for the weekend? Create a to-do list (which is also a type of note). There are plenty of note apps out there to pick from. Also, there is always the trusty old pen and paper. No matter the approach, the trick is to build the habit. Then, don’t forget to reference them.

Action: Pick a note taking approach which works for you and utilize it.

Further Reading:

1. How Memories Are Made: Stages of Memory Formation
2. How Long Can Students Pay Attention in Class? A Study of Student Attention Decline Using Clickers
3. The Truth Is Out There: Accuracy in Recall of Verifiable Real-World Events (full text)
4. Wakeful resting and memory retention: a study with healthy older and younger adults