Monday, May 08, 2023

Memory Cues

What do you use to remind yourself?  Some things I put on the paper calendar in the kitchen.  Some things I dictate a sentence or two about into the notes on my phone.  I lived by a legal pad filled with 2-3 letter abbreviations from 1985-2020 at work.

Mentally, I occasionally use mnemonics, especially initial letters in a list that I quasi-pronounce to recall. Sometimes I will use a killer humorous or clever line to expand on, knowing that I am going to use it to either begin or close a paragraph. I will keep reshaping it until it can hold a paragraph together on its own. That is less reliable, though, because sometimes it goes to recall-only memory and has to be triggered by something else. Otherwise I'm walking around the block thinking "Gee, I had a killer line about memory and something, but I can't pull it forward."

2 comments:

james said...

I spell it out on paper. Abbreviations will almost certainly be unreadable later. However, writing "hole wheat flower" does help me remember it.
I've tried reciting lists ("Heart, liver, 'n' lights"), but something generally distracts.

My wife sorts the list according to where in the grocery store things are--she remembers that. I don't, and the back and forth in the store -- oops, go back in the store for the missed item.

Anonymous said...

I don't bother. My memory is perfectly sufficient to bring all the things I need into my mind, when I have found a new clue. It all just pops up, and allows correlation and adjustment, to the larger understanding. What I think is important.

I forget little really and appointments etc are easy. I do put appointments into my calendar sometimes, I think, because I think I should.

I once used to buy parts from International in Vancouver, for the various trucks I owned. There was an old guy who I think was retired, as he never did anything. He given the description: Year thing, and or the part number. He could tell your server exactly where it was, in the rather large warehouse full of International's parts for the Pacific Northwest of Canada.