5 Ways to Be Less Forgetful If You Feel Like Your Memory Is Already Shot
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So you’re in your 30s or 40s and you constantly feel forgetful and frazzled: Maybe it’s your first time balancing a high-powered role at work while juggling daycare drop-off and pickup times, or you’re really trying to maintain old and new friendships while also caring for an aging parent. Or perhaps you’re aiming to stick to a consistent workout schedule ever since your back started aching and you’re also trying to cook every meal and go to therapy and be a loving partner. Whatever your personal brand of scatterbrained adulthood looks like, it only makes sense that you’d feel like your memory is a little shot as a result.
Your brain is less capable of remembering things like that one person’s name or even why you walked into a room when you’re being pulled in a million directions. The competing demands of life in these decades can “tax the function of your prefrontal cortex,” Charan Ranganath, PhD, professor at the Center for Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at the University of California Davis and author of Why We Remember, tells SELF. This is the part of your brain responsible for executive functions—things like planning, organizing, and, yes, remembering what’s needed to finish a task. To make matters worse, this section of the brain also naturally begins to shrink (albeit, very slowly) in your 30s, Dr. Ranganath adds, making it even tougher to access those little bits of memory.
Certain lifestyle habits, like getting solid sleep, exercising regularly, and cutting back on alcohol, can help slow that downward memory slide as you age. But according to experts, there are also simple tweaks to everyday behaviors—like how you snap pics on your phone and where you hang out with friends—that can help you feel sharper in the here and now. Here’s how to feel a little less forgetful and scatterbrained as you navigate your 30s and 40s.
1. Work on a single task at a time (and turn off push notifications).
You can’t really do multiple things at once, brain-wise. When you’re “multitasking,” you’re actually just switching between tasks, which strains your brain, forcing it to focus on one thing and then on the other and back again.
The same thing happens with media multitasking, whether you’re popping between your email and Instagram, for instance, or you’re, say, scrolling on your phone while also watching a TV show. You’re putting conflicting priorities on your attention, threatening your memory of any one thing you’re doing.
When you’re task-switching, you’re essentially forming “these little blurry fragmented memories” of each action because you weren’t mentally focused on either, making them easier to forget, Dr. Ranganath says.
The key is to cut out as many distractions as possible when you’re doing something you want to remember (that means silencing any form of ping or ding), so you can lock in on it. The more attention you give to a task now—in brain talk, the more you’re engaging your prefrontal cortex—the better chance it’ll stick with you later, Dr. Ranganath says.
2. Take photos to capture the vibes, not just the facts of an event.
Subscribing to a “pics or it didn’t happen” mentality doesn’t just potentially jeopardize your enjoyment of, say, a concert or a cool trip. When you snap photos of entire scenarios or events, you’re actually less likely to remember key details about them because of the photo-taking impairment effect: Your brain knows it can rely on the camera to “remember” things, so it essentially opts out.
But you can reverse that result by actively opting in and taking photos mindfully and strategically, Dr. Ranganath says, with the goal of using them as mementos later. “Don’t assume that because you’ve taken a picture, you’ll remember it, but rather think, ‘What are the parts of this experience that I want to remember, and what are the unique or distinctive things about this moment that I want to document?’” he says.
This way, your brain is zeroing in on the details (the happy glow on a child’s face, the confetti flying in the air at a concert), and you’re not allowing the camera to do all the focusing for you. And that makes it more likely that you’ll remember the vibes of the moment, particularly when you look back at the pictures (which you should also do to remember these moments better).
3. Build your own memory palace.
If you want to get better at remembering lists of items, like the books your friends have recommended or whatever you need to order on Amazon (without just writing them all down), try tapping your imagination, Antonio Puente, PhD, a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist and chief psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University, tells SELF.
He suggests the “memory palace” technique: Picture a familiar place, like your house, and various rooms or touch points within it, like the entryway table, the kitchen counter, and your bed. Then, visualize each item you want to remember—or images associated with them—located in the different spaces, ideally interacting with them. For instance, if you’re looking to recall the book A Court of Thorns and Roses, you might picture roses sprouting from your coffee table and the friend who recommended it sitting on the couch. The idea is, you could take a mental walk through the building to just pass by each thing you want to bring to mind.
This works because of a memory strategy called “chunking,” Dr. Puente says, which involves associating various bits of information into bigger chunks that carry more meaning—this way, your brain only has to recall the chunks (like the rooms of a familiar place) and not all the individual components, which is an easier mental lift.
4. Switch up your surroundings or activities.
By engineering novelty into your life (maybe you take a different walking route with a friend or try a new kind of cuisine for date night), you can break up the otherwise blurry passage of time and form more vivid snapshot memories.
There are two reasons for that, according to Dr. Ranganath: One is that episodic memories—meaning those of actual events that occurred in your life—are tied to a specific place and time, “so if you stay in the same location for a long period, you have a lot of memories [in that place] competing with each other because they’re all associated with the same context,” he explains. Take the pandemic lockdown for a (deeply visceral) example; spend enough days in a row baking sourdough and knitting and it all starts to mush together, right?
The other reason is that being in a new setting or doing fresh activities with different people triggers the release of dopamine in your brain, Dr. Ranganath says, which can focus your attention on key parts of your environment (making them pop in your mind’s eye) and help with memory consolidation (increasing the chance that an experience sticks with you).
5. Allow yourself to screw up when learning new things.
You know how you never forget certain mistakes—like, maybe, the word that got you eliminated at your fifth-grade spelling bee? (Don’t talk to me about “occasionally.”) The same principle can apply in everyday life: If you struggle when learning something, your brain has the chance to generate the wrong answer, Dr. Ranganath says, which is essentially “wiped out” when you learn the right one, making that one more likely to stick.
It’s a concept called error-driven learning, which is the same reason why you might remember things better after you’re tested on them or have had to explain them to someone else versus if you just read or thought about them again and again.
The key to putting this into practice is active learning, or picking things up by trial and error, versus passive observation: Maybe you take a look at a map and then try to find your way around a new place (versus plugging your destination into Google Maps), or you aim to whip up your grandma’s signature lasagna without finding her original recipe. Or you could just try to predict your route in the new town or the ingredients you need for the dish (and then reference Maps or dig up the recipe before actually driving or cooking) if you don’t have time to risk messing up. The important thing is that you’re “struggling to pull up the right answer,” Dr. Ranganath says.
Like the other tips on this list, it’s a simple way to recruit your brain in a moment where you might typically rely on tech or an outside resource. And the more brainpower you devote to any given task today, the less likely it is to fade from your memory tomorrow.
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Originally Appeared on SELF
