Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0419: How to remember more about your life

Episode Date: October 15, 2015

Jeremy asks how you can remember more details about your life. I talk about some strategies for applying memorization tactics to personal memories, without making it a chore. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 419. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Jeremy asked a question in an email saying, How do you remember more of your life? What techniques do you use to remember anything from conversations to things that happen on a daily basis to daily to-do lists?

With so much stimulus and steady flow of new information, how does one control that intake and retain the content? So Jeremy, this is a very interesting question and one that I was occupied with more earlier in my life than currently in my life. So earlier in my life, I would say several years ago, I guess during all of my teenage years, I was really interested in the idea of remembering lots of things about my life, all sorts of details about conversations that I had, about things that I'd done, every single event that I went to, and things that happened like that. And I would say probably from years 16 to 21, those things were really important to me. And so I did lots of things to make sure that I could remember those things. The easiest answer, of course, is to journal. And my practice for journaling until I would say the last few weeks, honestly, has actually to be has been to keep a log of all my time every single day.

So honestly, for the past eight years of my life, if you asked me, I could tell you what I've done, where I was and what I was doing at basically any hour of my life in the last eight or nine years, something like that. And what's the point? I don't know. I just started doing that. I was trying to keep track of my time, hold myself accountable, and also just remember lots of things. I would then, at the end of the day, so basically I would carry around a piece of paper

and log different hours and say, okay, I was, let's see, from 4.05 p.m. to 5.30, I was at this event. From 5.30 to 6.10, I was on my way home. At 6.10, I started making dinner and so on. And I would log exactly what I ate, what events I went to, and all of that stuff. But then at the end of the day or the next day, I would take a day's log and then turn the important information or the loggable categorical information, and I would place that in a spreadsheet that is stored digitally. So everything that I ate, for example, I would put into different categories

so I could see what I ate each day for health reasons. And for events, I could log those. For conversations that I thought were significant, I would put the gist of the conversation into another spreadsheet or, you know, basically repository of information about conversations. And then once in a while, not regularly, but occasionally, I would go back and look at my notes. And the really interesting thing is that I would actually remember basically every single conversation or every single event. If I went back and I looked up the event with just a basic outline of what had happened during that event, I could remember what I was doing, how I felt, who was there, that sort of thing. I could remember that sort of details. And it's especially helpful if you include important details like

where the event was, what sort of environment it was in. And as you've seen in other episodes of the show, memories really live in places. The more places you've been, the more places you have to store memories, and your life is going to be most memorable if you've spent it in lots of different places. But in answer to this question, that can be expanded to say, if you make sure that you remember the places that you've been, you can remember more about your life. So what do I do now? Well, for me, honestly, remembering lots about my life is not as huge a priority at this point. I am excited about future projects. I have lots of things going on. I'm doing, well, frankly, more interesting things that I did earlier in my life. I'm spending time in more places further away from where I grew up with

more people speaking different languages and things like that. And so honestly, I can remember things more automatically if I really want to go back and remember them, which I do occasionally. But I don't make as many strong efforts to remember things because I find that things simply are more memorable for me. And I honestly don't place as higher priority on remembering my life. And I'm positive that will change when I have a family and I have kids and things like that. I'll want to capture every single moment. I'll want to remember everything. And so we'll see what my techniques turn into at that point. So Jeremy, yeah, I would actually just take physical notes and then go through and review those once in a while and see what is easier to remember,

what is harder to remember. And note specifically that when you note down where you were when something took place, whether it was a conversation or any other type of event, you're going to remember details about it, you're going to remember how you felt, and all that sort of thing. Thanks for the question, and for everyone listening, what do you want to learn, remember, or memorize? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.