The first step in your 30-day memory plan should be creating a memory journal in which you think about what you remembered, what you didn’t remember, notice patterns, and start to pay increased attention to things. This way you create a baseline for where you are now and can track your progress as you move to where you want to be. Since a first step to remembering anything is paying attention (apart from being in good health, getting a good night’s sleep so you’re alert, and otherwise having your mental equipment tuned up to remember), being attentive to your memory processes will help you focus on remembering more.
So devote your first week to paying attention and upping your awareness of when and how you remember. Besides setting up the journal, described in this chapter, devote this week to some attention exercises to help you pay more attention. Then, as you develop this habit it will carry over into your everyday life.
Set up your journal like a diary or chronology in which you make entries in your diary each day—or even several times a day, as you get ideas related to your memory. You might even consider including the parts of your journal you want to share on a blog. You might even add a section on this to your blog, if you are writing a blog on your own Website or on one of the popular sites for blogging. If you do turn this into a blog or something you share with others, be sure you feel comfortable with others reading what you post. If not, consider just posting those parts of your journal anyone can read and keep the other parts offline. A good way to make the distinction is to keep personal observations and thoughts about yourself in your private offline journal; but if you have any insights about what you can do to improve your memory—which could be useful for anyone else—by all means, post them for all to see.
To make your journal more helpful to you, divide it up into a series of sections, such as listed below, so you have a series of goals for developing your memory, keep track of your successes in remembering different types of information, and note when you experience memory lapses. This way you can notice trends in your ability to remember over time, chart improvements and continuing challenges, and record insights. You can turn this study of your own memory into a chart, with a column for each section.
For example, in your notebook you might have these sections:
My overall goal (i.e., what you hope to achieve by the end of 30 days).
My goals for today (i.e., the areas of memory improvement you are focusing on now).
My memory successes (i.e., specific incidents, experiences, and observations where you enjoyed a notable, outstanding, or unexpected success).
My memory lapses (i.e., specific times when you found you weren’t able to recall or recognize something at all or where you remembered it incorrectly).
Trends and patterns (i.e., types of things you are likely to remember, types of things you find you often forget or remember incorrectly).
Memory improvements (i.e., things you find you can remember now that you didn’t before).
Memory challenges (i.e., things that you are continuing to find especially difficult to remember).
Memory insights (i.e., ideas and tips you have gained from your own experiences in trying to remember things or in keeping this journal, plus ideas and tips you have gained from your reading or from others—including talking to people or from radio or TV).
If you turn this into a chart, such as by creating a table in Word or an Excel chart, make each of the above categories a column header.
Then, enter what you feel is most relevant each day, and use these categories to help focus your attention on different aspects of your memory development. You can also use this journal to direct your attention to what you consider the most important areas to work on, so you can better plan and prioritize what to do. In effect, you are using your central executive function, which you read about in Chapter 1, to recall and think about what you have and haven’t remembered and decide what to do about this so in the future you remember more.
While the above sections may be a helpful way to divide up the study of your own memory, as an alternative, you can make entries in your journal as a narrative, just keeping those categories in mind so you can incorporate these different topics in your journal as you write.
Most importantly, write in your journal each day if you can, since this way you can better chart your progress and stay focused on what you need to do to improve. Then, too, you will be able to better remember what happened on a day-by-day basis; otherwise, your images and impressions from each successive day will interfere with you remembering what you did the day before. You know the feeling. Someone asks you what you did during your lunch break yesterday, and you very likely have trouble remembering exactly what you did—unless it was something dramatic that cut through the clutter of many thousands of sensory inputs and memories for each day, like observing a fight between two women in the supermarket while you were waiting on line.
If you do skip a day, return to writing your journal as soon as you can and try to recall what happened the day before, along with your thoughts and insights from those experiences.
As you keep notes about what and how you remember in your journal, you can use this to guide what you do.
For example, suppose you note that you have had trouble remembering names at events you attend. That will suggest that you target this area of memory to work on. Or suppose you notice a pattern that you are forgetting things more at certain times of the day. This might suggest that you are more tired and less attentive at this time. You need either to take steps to up your energy (say, getting more sleep or eating an energy snack around that time each day) or to recognize that your memory ability is less sharp at this time, so you find another time to seek to learn something new if you can. In short, use what you learn about your memory powers as you keep your journal to determine what you need to work on or when your memory powers are at a lower ebb.
Conversely, if you note memory successes, take some time to congratulate and reward yourself, which will help to keep you motivated to continue to improve. When you see signs of your success and are rewarded for them, you’ll feel even better about what you are doing to increase your memory. For example, say after a history of not remembering the names of most of the people you meet at a business mixer, you consciously work on encoding those names into your memory and find you are better able to make them part of your long-term memory, so you can recall much more—from the details of what they do to what you need to do to follow up with each person. That’s great! A terrific achievement! So acknowledge this to yourself and give yourself some reward, such as praising yourself, patting yourself on the back, treating yourself to a coffee latte, or giving yourself a star or blue ribbon. This way you recognize your progress and keep yourself going to the next level of improvement.
A good way to use rewards is to provide a small amount of praise or give a small reward to yourself after a day of good progress. But make the reward even bigger for your achievements for the week. Then, after 30 days, go all out to reward yourself as well as clearly indicate where you have made your progress. This will show that you have completed 30 days to a better memory successfully—then you can sign on for another 30 days to work on making even more improvements.
Here’s an example of how you might keep a memory journal, based on the first two entries in my own journal. I have used a more narrative approach in keeping this journal, though later on, I frequently broke each daily entry into separate categories, as relevant.
June 28, 2006
Now that I started working on this memory book, I began thinking about paying attention more and thinking of strategies to better memorize things when I prepared for a potential quiz in a Native American class I’m taking. We had about 70 pages of creation stories from different tribes to read, and the stories had a lot of detail. There were also many unfamiliar names, overlapping storylines, and other things making it hard to remember. I began thinking of strategies to make it easier for me to remember and thought about how these might be applicable for others.
Read once for the general flow of the story and to enjoy it, though I might bracket major points to review later. Read the story a second time a day or two later to more closely notice detail (like names of key characters, title of the story, what group it refers to) and consciously notice what seems new to me even though I read it before. Then, a day or two later, skim over the story, paying particular attention to what I have underlined.
To remember something even more precisely, I can create a chart with several columns that highlight the major points to remember. For example, for these stories, I might use one column with the name of the story, a second with the major plot line, a third with the names of key characters, and a fourth column to note special themes, lessons, my reactions, and any other thoughts I have about the story.
I also had a conversation about the class with one of the other students, and she mentioned the difficulty she had remembering the stories. She had read the stories the day after our weekly class, but then she didn’t remember what she had read in the class. She didn’t even remember having read the stories at all. Based on my own experience of reading each story two or three times—and the last time, the day before the class—her account suggests that it is better to wait until shortly before you have to remember something and allow the time to read it by then; or use the multiple reading and review process I used.
I also recalled how I found it helpful to recall unfamiliar names by not only seeing them visually, but by saying them over in my mind a few times, so I would learn the new information through multiple channels.[*] Another technique that I found helpful is mentally reviewing what I have read, which also applies to what I have seen or experienced. I just repeat in my mind or use self-talk to tell myself what I want to remember. This way I reinforce my initial information input.
June 29, 2006
As I drove home from school today I began to think of different types of memory exercises, based on noticing things and paying attention. For example, these exercises, which I can do by myself or with others, include:
Looking at cards with multiple images where you have to notice what’s different.
Observing a scene closely on a card or in reality; then you see the same scene again with something removed. Your job is to notice what’s missing. In turn, this exercise might help you pay attention to what’s there.
Observing a scene closely as above, except that instead of noticing what’s missing, you have to notice and identify what has been added to the scene. Again, another exercise to help in paying attention.
Imagining yourself taking a series of pictures of the scene; then you recall as many objects you saw in the scene without looking, and later check your recollection.
Having a mental conversation about what you just did or learned; imagine you are telling yourself or a friend what you just experienced, or imagine you are a teacher instructing your class.
Reflecting on what you have learned or your experience, and consider what it means to you and how you can use this information.
I also thought about some of the main principles of memory and how they might provide a frame of things to do for the next week. The key ones are:
Being well rested and alert (preparatory)
Paying attention—and paying attention to yourself paying attention (so you get the information into your working memory)
Creating keys to help you pay attention (such as name triggers, mnemonics)
Recording what you are paying attention to, such as through writing or drawing, to intensify what you are taking in
Using techniques to make what you have seen or experienced stand out, such as imagining you are a camera taking pictures of a scene; imagining you are a tape recorder recording a conversation
Using associations with what you have seen/read/experienced, such as images for names, places
Reviewing what you have taken in
Participating in activities to reinforce what you have learned
Prioritizing what you have taken in, so you focus on what is more important
Categorizing and grouping what you have learned, so you can better recall it, since we generally only can take in 7 bits of information (plus or minus 2) together
Sharing what you have observed, read about, or experienced with others, since that intensifies the experience
Keeping a written record, like this memory journal, to notice what you remember more effectively and what you don’t, so you can increasingly apply what works in the future
Similarly, you can develop your own memory journal, where you record what you experienced and what’s important to you, along with your ideas on what to do to improve your own memory. You’ll see many techniques in this book. But as you keep your journal, you may come up with your own ideas for what you need to better remember and what you might do to increase your memory power.
[*] Though I didn’t yet know about the different aspects of the working memory, this would be a good example of improving one’s memory by reinforcing it through rehearsal and repetition, and using both imagery through the visuospatial sortbox and words through the phonological loop to drive these names into my long-term memory.