memory

[ringlat]

been stressed out a bit too much with class lately. the actual class isn't going bad at all, and i can say i'm seemingly the second-best in the class (the best actually lives IN japan and also knows like korean, chinese, swedish etc) but i always freak myself out about it.

the good news is, i've really noticed over the past few months that my

Comments

[thewhitelily]

Glad to hear your memory training's still doing well for you. I've been doing super tiny bits occasionally when the opportunity comes up, and I've been pretty pleased with the results of those; I managed to keep a grip on a few bits of mental editing for a story that I'm sure I otherwise would have lost. I've been finding multi-sensory associations really suit my non-visual brain, and those lines I memorised are *still* hanging around in my brain when I go looking. But I think I need to find a way to incorporate memory training into my daily habits to start making much difference. Which is hard, because I don't feel like I have much call for outright memorisation in my life at the moment. My everyday memory problems are substantially due to distraction and inattention. Hopefully you'll get the return on investment you're looking for if you manage to step up to every day - you've certainly got plenty of chances to practice!

[ringlat]

Yeah, the book I've been reading ends up making it pretty clear, the more different things (sound, taste, sight, touch, smell, movement) you can put in your mental picture or movie, the better it will work!! Presumably because some of those things are going to fail you so you need the others as backup...

I think it works even to just try it hard once or twice a day. "Right now I'm going to memorize the opening hours for Monday at the grocery store". Or "right now I'll memorize this ONE word using a detailed picture-story". That's fine, that's it for the day.

Also, even though I didn't think I needed it either, I've realized just how amazingly easy life could be. Potentially, I could go to a lecture and not have to take any notes yet I'd still remember it all. In everyday life, I could remember if I had turned the stove off, locked the door, where I put my sweater, etc. I could at least match faces to names and not forget them. When learning something new or being at someone else's house and asking where something is, I wouldn't have

[thewhitelily]

Yeah, I think my main day-to-day issue is the inattention thing. I don't know I put my phone because I wasn't thinking about my phone at all when I was putting it down, because I was dealing with an emergency, and that developed into another two emergencies and four non-urgent requests for assistance, and then I remember I was halfway through folding the washing, and then I need to start dinner... I don't even need to memory train, really, to remember where I put it down, I just need to pay attention at the crucial moment when I'm putting it down. My hope would be that if I did some more deliberate memory training, it would osmose into those moments - either by making me pay attention more instinctively, or helping me remember it without consciously applying a technique. In a moment when I know I'm going to forget something, I rarely have the attention to spare for constructing a story because someone's bleeding, or asking me to recast world hunger into five year old language, or I'm running through four simultaneous pre-flight

[ringlat]

With me, after a while it started coming instantly. Now I have a surprising amount of times where the entire image/movie etc. pops up literally the second after I get that "I have to remember this" feeling, without having to actually think about it. Or when I think back "how many spoonfuls of flour did I put in?" I can just remember it right away, even though I haven't exactly been doing memory training on stuff like that. From what I understand, the end goal is to just have that happen all the time. And then if you actually want to forget whatever it is, you just don't actively try to remember it.

We're only two people and we go shopping every 2-3 days (+ tend to impulse shop the same few things) so the grocery list is usually really short, but I think it's good practise because you'll still have the list in your pocket anyway, so forgetting stuff doesn't do any harm ; D