Ever think of something that you need from another room, walk to the room to get it, and discover that you have no idea what you needed?
Or notice an incipient problem or opportunity and forget to do soemthing about it until it's too late?
My favorite is starting the tractor to plow the first snowfall of the season and realizing that I need to add some anti-gel to the diesel, then forgetting to do it until everything gels up. (Yes, this has happened to me. More than once.) Or seeing a tire on a field vehicle that is slightly underinflating, but failing to fill it up before it goes fully flat.
A 2011 article in Scientific American describes a series of experiments designed to explain this phenomenon. Basically, some forms of memory are optimized to keep information immediately available until it isn't needed any more. Since we can't remember everything we encounter, the brain has a mechanism for purging information that isn't needed any more. When you change locations or situations - whether it's moving from one room to another, answering a phone call, or stopping to chat with the mailman while you're plowing the driveway - your brain dumps the information it had been keeping immediately acccessible, making room for new, now-relevant information.
It may not be the best for remembering what you need when you go to the hardware store, but it certainly helped avoid saber-tooth tigers back on the savannah.
So we can't rely on our brains to keep track of information that we can't act on immediately. We need a little bit of technology. A universal information capture device is in order - and the best version doesn't run on iOS or Android. A pocket notebook and a pen - I prefer a sheaf of index cards held together with a binder clip, and a Fisher Space Pen - is the most basic, reliable way to quickly record a piece of information.
In my experience, a one- or two-word note is enough to jog the memory. The words "truck tire" is enough to make the rest of the information flood back in - or at least enough context to remind me that the tire's going flat, and I need to fill it and decide if it needs to be replaced.
Combined with a system for regularly reviewing the capture information - checking the notecards daily for things that need to be done - simple notes keep your brain from losing the information entirely, ensuring that you notice and act on things when they show up, instead of when they blow up.
Or notice an incipient problem or opportunity and forget to do soemthing about it until it's too late?
My favorite is starting the tractor to plow the first snowfall of the season and realizing that I need to add some anti-gel to the diesel, then forgetting to do it until everything gels up. (Yes, this has happened to me. More than once.) Or seeing a tire on a field vehicle that is slightly underinflating, but failing to fill it up before it goes fully flat.
A 2011 article in Scientific American describes a series of experiments designed to explain this phenomenon. Basically, some forms of memory are optimized to keep information immediately available until it isn't needed any more. Since we can't remember everything we encounter, the brain has a mechanism for purging information that isn't needed any more. When you change locations or situations - whether it's moving from one room to another, answering a phone call, or stopping to chat with the mailman while you're plowing the driveway - your brain dumps the information it had been keeping immediately acccessible, making room for new, now-relevant information.
It may not be the best for remembering what you need when you go to the hardware store, but it certainly helped avoid saber-tooth tigers back on the savannah.
So we can't rely on our brains to keep track of information that we can't act on immediately. We need a little bit of technology. A universal information capture device is in order - and the best version doesn't run on iOS or Android. A pocket notebook and a pen - I prefer a sheaf of index cards held together with a binder clip, and a Fisher Space Pen - is the most basic, reliable way to quickly record a piece of information.
In my experience, a one- or two-word note is enough to jog the memory. The words "truck tire" is enough to make the rest of the information flood back in - or at least enough context to remind me that the tire's going flat, and I need to fill it and decide if it needs to be replaced.
Combined with a system for regularly reviewing the capture information - checking the notecards daily for things that need to be done - simple notes keep your brain from losing the information entirely, ensuring that you notice and act on things when they show up, instead of when they blow up.
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