Remembering Naturally
Remembering Naturally
How to make your brain care.
In this last issue of The Brainjo Connection, I gave you a bit of reassuring news, which was that forgetting things that we "think" we should remember is not usually the sign of a dysfunctional or aging brain, but rather the sign of a brain working exactly as it should.
And yet, it's not something we should necessarily ignore altogether, either.
If you recall (ahem...), one reason we remember less of our life experiences as we get older is because we don't need to remember them. We remember less because we encounter fewer truly new things in our day to day life.
But as you may know, the less we use something, the weaker it gets. Including our ability to remember. And when we stop using parts of our brain, they wither and atrophy. Which is precisely the sort of thing we're trying to avoid here.
So...if our goal is to retain our ability to remember, and maintain the brain structures that support it, then we want to continue to give those circuits something to do.
But here's the thing: the vast majority of the memories now stored inside our noodle didn't get there because we intentionally put them there. They happened naturally.
Remembering more of our life should not be about trying to remember more of our life. That never works. It's about understanding how our brain naturally makes new memories, and using that knowledge to our advantage.
So, with that in mind, here are 3 strategies for waking your memory circuits from their slumber.
Strategy #1: Seek novelty.
We remember the things we pay close attention to. And the less familiar something is, the more likely we are to pay attention to it.
Again, this happens naturally. If an elephant crashes through your ceiling as you're reading this, you are likely to give it your undivided attention. It's also likely to produce an intense emotional reaction - some mix of surprise, bewilderment, and terror.
That combination of attention and emotion means you're likely to remember details from that episode until the end of your days. No studying or threats of summer school required.
On the other hand, if today feels pretty much like yesterday (same story, different day), then your memory circuits can continue to go on with their lazy selves.
But you don't have to wait for an improbable encounter with a large land mammal to stimulate those memory networks, you can engineer novel experiences yourself.
Some of my favorite ways of doing so are to:
Travel. Few things can recreate the freshness of our childhood experiences like traveling to places we've never been. The more unfamiliar the location and culture, the more things you have to figure out, the less you can rely on your usual routine, the more important it is for your brain to make new memories.
Vary your daily routine. Routine has its advantages, for sure. But every now and then, shake things up. Even small changes count.
Learn something new. Acquiring an entirely new skill (like a musical instrument :) ) or learning about an unfamiliar subject is arguably the single best way to add novelty into your life. And the more complex the better!
Side note: all of these practices have the added benefit of making our lives feel like they're moving slower, since part of how we perceive the passage of time is by the number of new memories our brain encodes (our experience of time has little to do with what happens on the clock, and everything to do with how our brain constructs our experience of time).
Strategy #2: Outsource mindfully.
Think of all the things we once remembered that we now outsource to our devices. Phone numbers. Directions. Song lyrics. Chess strategy.
With the advent of ChatGPT, we may soon be outsourcing conversations with our spouses.
Now, I'm not about to delete my Waze app any time soon, and in many cases these technologies free up our cognitive resources for more productive pursuits.
But it's an issue worth being mindful of. In particular, we want to ensure we're not entirely outsourcing an important cognitive function.
Try to give yourself little challenges during the course of the day. See if you can memorize a grocery list. Drive to a new spot without GPS. Take a walk on some wooded trails you've never been to before to.
Or better yet, try your hand at some orienteering (a recently published study showed that people who'd participated in orienteering displayed better spatial navigation and memory skills - it's quite possible that our neglect of spatial navigational skills is why it's one of the most common early signs of Alzheimer's).
Strategy #3: Keep a storytelling journal.
A journaling habit of some kind is a great way to ensure we take time to regularly reflect and pay attention to our life experiences.
And you can boost the brain benefits even further by looking out for the "storyworthy" moments in your day, and then crafting and telling those stories - see the book recommendation below for more details...
BRAIN BOOSTING RESOURCES
In this section, I'll provide some of my favorite recommended resources for improving brain health and function (I am not paid to do so, I just like and use these things). .
FROM THE BRAINJO LIBRARY...
"Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling."
For a very very very long time, we humans passed along information to each other exclusively through stories.
That's because stories are the ultimate mnemonic device.
Try to remember a string of isolated facts? That's quite hard.
Package those facts into a story about who did what to whom, sprinkle in bits of scandal and intrigue, and there's no way we'll forget it!
But these days, we get most of our stories not from each other, but from books, movies, and TV (and our appetite for them is endless!).
While I have no scientific data to support it, I suspect that the fact that we no longer need to remember and tell stories like we used to means we don't pay attention to our daily lives as closely as we once did.
"Storyworthy" is about bringing storytelling back into your life. The author of this book, Matthew Dicks, is a 5-time winner of "The Moth's" GranSLAM competition, which means he knows how to tell a good story.
It's a great book for understanding the key elements of a great story, and it includes some fantastic examples (as such, I highly recommend the audiobook version).
That said, in my opinion, the most important benefit of the book is that it will prompt you to start looking for the "storyworthy" experiences in your life, and learning how to identify them (after reading it, you'll realize that there are far more of these than you probably think).
In other words, it promotes the kind of closer attention to your daily life that's necessary for memory making.
(Read more about how books are selected for inclusion in the Brainjo Library)
Recently on The Better Brain Fitness Podcast
The Better Brain Fitness podcast is officially in full swing!
And in case you missed them, here are the two most recent episodes:
Product Recommendation: Anki
Cramming large amounts of facts into our brain isn't something that comes naturally to us. Again, we're wired to forget information that lacks any survival benefit.
Not surprisingly, research shows that when we try to remember facts, like the capital of Delaware or the molecular formula of benzene, we tend use very ineffective strategies.
Research also shows that by applying a bit of our understanding of how memory works, we can remember much more with far less effort.
For example, it turns out that the best time to review something is right before you're about to forget it. Review it before that goldilocks moment, and the memory isn't strengthened. Furthermore, each time you review it, you remember it for longer, until ultimately it's yours for good.
So, by strategically spacing out your study sessions (or "repetitions"), you can remember a whole lot more for a whole lot less effort. The technical term for this technique is "spaced repetition."
Anki is a system for learning from flashcards that utilizes the spaced repetition approach. You give it what you need to remember, and it decides the best time to quiz you, based on the science of memory (or, more accurately, the science of forgetting).
It's most common use case has been learning vocabulary words when learning a foreign language and for examinations involving copious amounts of factual knowledge (medicine, law), but it can be applied to a great many things, including music.
I've recommended it for helping musicians build their repertoire of tunes, and covered how to do so in the book "The Laws of Brainjo."
Podcast Recommendation: "The Moth"
Perhaps the best way to learn the elements of great storytelling is to listen to lots of great stories.
"The Moth" podcast, whose mission is to promote the art of storytelling, features people telling true, personal stories live on stage. Like a great movie, the stories are often humorous, moving, and thought-provoking (as mentioned, the author of Storyworthy is a 5-time winner of The Moth's GranSLAM storytelling contest).
You might start with "Whatever Doesn't Kill Me," a fan-favorite episode about a violent encounter that causes a man's life to spiral out of control.
Anyhow, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it!
Josh
p.s. - if you're on Facebook, then be sure to join the Better Brain Fitness Facebook group.
p.p.s. - If you know of someone who’d enjoy reading The Brainjo Connection, feel free to share!