When it comes to my clients, primarily financial advisors, I understand the importance of memory in performance. Keeping track of names, information, sources, lists for the day, and finances can be difficult. There are a few things that people don’t realize can conflict and aid in memory.&nbs;
1. A common way to aid memory is a strategy called chunking. This is putting a large amount of information into more manageable units so that you have less to remember. For instance, think of the way that you would memorize a phone number or a date, breaking it down into smaller groups of numbers before committing it to memory. The chunks may also hold meaning for you, smaller pieces of a larger whole. For example, you can remember a grocery list by thinking about the ultimate dish that you want to make and listing the ingredients that are needed. Let’s say that you need to buy bread, eggs, milk, sugar, chicken, salt, and rosemary. You could remember that to make French toast the key ingredients are bread, eggs, milk, and sugar. If you want to bake a chicken, you would need the chicken, salt, and rosemary. To more easily remember what you need from your list, just think of French toast for breakfast and rosemary chicken for dinner. The list is narrowed down to two things.
2 ) One detail that many people overlook when it comes to memory is paying attention. In the digital age, we are forced to split our attention across many things simultaneously. When needing to process information from short term to long term memory, paying attention is the key. Sometimes we don’t notice where we place our keys or remember what we meant when we wrote that one word note to ourselves as a reminder. When not paying attention to why we need that information, the reminders are pointless. It is important to stay in the present and really pay attention to the task at hand. Minimize distractions such as music, televisions, and cell phones to focus fully. Staying in the present is also key to managing stress instead of panicking about the future. Trying to be in the moment is the key to helping us stay on top of things.
These are a few ways to manage memory a little better. We all have our own tips and tricks for better memory. In an age of technology where we can have questions answered instantly on our phones, it is important to exercise memory like a muscle. What use is researching an answer if only to have it for a split second? Try to hold on to the things you have learned by relying on your memory instead of the fact that you can simply pick up your phone anytime you need information in the future.
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