FORGETTING WITH A BLINK!

Memory generally has a very intrinsic limitation. Do you remember the plots of books you read and movies you watch, even months later?  Why do we forget all of this stuff we’re constantly consuming? The human brain is not designed to help you handle with massive amounts of data. We’re bombarded with stimuli every day. If we processed and remembered everything, then it would probably make it difficult for us to function. Your brain sorts through all your experiences to weed out the significant and insignificant things that we encounter.

Research has shown that the internet functions as a sort of externalized memory. When people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself.

The “forgetting curve,” as it’s called, is steepest during the first 24 hours after you learn something. Exactly how much you forget, percentage-wise, varies, but unless you review the material, much of it slips down the drain after the first day, with more to follow in the days after, leaving you with a fraction of what you took in.

Five normal memory problems

Transience

This is the tendency to forget facts or events over time. You are most likely to forget information soon after you learn it. However, memory has a use-it-or-lose-it quality. Although transience might seem like a sign of memory weakness, brain scientists regard it as beneficial because it clears the brain of unused memories, making way for newer, more useful ones.

Absentmindedness

This type of forgetting occurs when you don’t pay close enough attention. You forget where you just put your pen because you didn’t focus on where you put it in the first place. You were thinking of something else (or, perhaps, nothing in particular), so your brain didn’t encode the information securely.

Misattribution

Misattribution occurs when you remember something accurately in part, but misattribute some detail, like the time, place, or person involved. Another kind of misattribution occurs when you believe a thought you had was totally original when, in fact, it came from something you had previously read or heard but had forgotten about.

Bias

Even the sharpest memory isn’t a flawless snapshot of reality. In your memory, your perceptions are filtered by your personal biases — experiences, beliefs, prior knowledge, and even your mood at the moment. Your biases affect your perceptions and experiences when they’re being encoded in your brain. And when you retrieve a memory, your mood and other biases at that moment can influence what information you actually recall.

The First Time You Read Something, Finishing It Is The Only Aim

When you read the book, finishing it is your main course. After you’ve satisfied your desire, you probably won’t remember what you’ve read. Finishing a book is not the same as remembering all the detail. Our brain is better at encoding information when it can correlate new information with pre-existing experiences.

 

Tons of research shows that improving your memory will positively impact your professional and personal life… but who needs research to know that?

We all want to remember more and forget less.

When we read books, we are not actively engaged with the material. Our eyes are skimming over the words, and we put most of our time and energy in recognizing what is being said.

Unfortunately practicing recognition is virtually the only thing most people do when they read a book. When you’re reading a book, most of your time is spent recognizing what is being said. Only rarely do you have to specifically recall an idea, unprompted. If you’re reading a well-written book, you may never have to use recall as good writers know that recall is difficult and so they will often reiterate previously made points so that you don’t get confused.

Then, after you’ve read the book, you suddenly want this knowledge to be available in a recallable format. You want to be able to, given a conversation with a coworker, a question on an exam, or during a decision you have to make, be able to summon up the information that you previously had only practiced at being able to recognize it.

Given this pattern, it’s no wonder most people fail to recall much from books they’ve read.

Recognition vs. Recall

Recognition is an important memory ability. It’s what happens when you see a bird and know it’s a seagull. It’s what happens when someone says your name and you know they’re talking to you. It’s also what happens when you’re reading. To read this text you must individually recognize each of the words I’ve written.

Recall, on the other hand, is somewhat different. It’s the ability to pull up the answer to a question, without looking at it. If I ask you the capital of France, and you know the answer, Paris, it’s because you recalled it from memory.

Recall, unsurprisingly, is almost always harder than recognition. Asking you what is the capital of France, and you replying correctly, “Paris,” is much harder than me asking you “Is Paris the capital of France?” and you replying, “Yes.”

Also, perhaps unsurprisingly, recallable memory is usually what we want when we read books. Although some information is probably best knowing we can look it up when we need it, I generally read books because I want that knowledge to be useful in some way. I want to be able to recall the important ideas in situations where they are relevant: a conversation, a life decision, a work project. If I can’t recall them, they’re not that useful for me.

 

The Question Book Method

Whenever you’re reading something that you want to remember, take notes. Except, don’t take notes which summarize the main points you want to recall. Instead, take notes which ask questions.

If you wanted to do it with this email, you could write down the question, “Q: What are the two different memory processes?” and the answer would be “A: Recall and recognition.”

Then, when you’re reading a book, quickly go through and test yourself on the questions you’ve generated from earlier chapters. Doing this will strengthen your recallable memory so that the information will be much easier to access when you need it.

So let’s jump right in.

Here’s a simplified version to show how memory takes place:-

Step 1. Create a memory

 Our brain sends signals in a particular pattern associated with the event we’re experiencing and creates connections between our neurons, called synapses.

Step 2. Consolidate the memory

 Do nothing else and that memory could soon fade away. Consolidation is the process of committing something to long-term memory so we can recall it later. Much of this process happens while we’re sleeping  as our brains recreate that same pattern of brain activity and strengthen the synapses created earlier.

Step 3. Recall the memory

Recall is what most of us think of when we talk about memory or memory loss. Recalling a memory is easier if it has been strengthened over time, and each time we do we cycle through that same pattern of brain activity and make the connection a little stronger.