Memorize More - Outsource Less

"Try using your memory more," Stephen DeMaio cautions in the Mangement Tip of the Day at Harvard Business Publishing. Though today's technology opens a warehouse of tools to keep schedules, records of life - text, photos and other archives, we're relying much less on our brain to store these. Can you recall phone numbers you use often or can you picture a visual map of where the doctor's located, whom you visit yearly?

When calculators came on the scene, memorizing multiplication tables became less important. PDA's, smart phones and GPS devices eliminatied the need to memorize schedules or phone numbers and to dicipher maps.

Why does it matter? "What we're outsourcing to technology," David Bucci, Dartmouth College observes, "we're not relying on our brains to do any more."

If we learn to use technology and new apps, doesn't that stimulate the brain to learn to do new tasks? Yes, but there's a downside as well... "Recording everything you do takes people out of the "here and now," Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College notes. "Constant documenting may make people less thoughtful about and engaged in what they're doing because they are focused on the recording process."

Here's the clincher about why committing more to memory and stimulating our working memory works in our favor... "The key thing is that the sedentary brain, just like the sedentary body, is going to atrophy," Bucci affirms.

Consciously challenge your brain to do more! For instance, create ways to turn boring tasks into fun at work. Memorize favorite scriptures, telephone numbers or friend and family birthdays.

As we age, the more we learn and put in our memory bank, the longer we'll enjoy mental acumen.

Blogging Memory on Overload?

How many different blogs do you read in a day... 5, 10, 20 or more? If you're like me, you're reading several. How much would you recall about each after reading about 10 or more in an hour? No doubt you would forget more than a few. Why is that? Your brain has a forgetting mechanism...

Brain Forgets on Purpose "The brain's ability to suppress irrelevant memories makes it easier to remember what's important," according to Stanford researchers, Anthony Wagner and Brice Kuhl. The reason why is there's a cost involved for your brain. "Any act of remembering re-weights memories, tweaking them to try to be more adaptive for the next time you try to remember something," Wagner says. "The brain is plastic—adaptive—and one feature of that is not just strengthening some memories but also suppressing or weakening others."

"The prefrontal cortex is the CEO of the brain; it governs cognition, bringing [memories] into line with your goals," Wagner said. "It's an important property of our memory system that the memories change in both directions—they get both stronger and weaker—and that this confers benefits," by freeing the brain from "computational resources" by allowing the brain to use less of its computational resources to recall what's important, thereby making them available for other processes.

Oursource Your Memory It makes sense, that if I read several blogs daily over periods of weeks, only the posts that pique my curiosity or engage me past mere reading, re-weight my memory. Similarly, this same forgetting mechanism is at work when you read several job-related articles! Thankfully, there're several different web tools to help "outsource your memory"...

"Memory Banks" for Recall Handy "memory banks" are available for bloggers to store articles. Mine include Favorites on Internet Explorer or Bookmarks on Firefox. What great recall tools to "outsource" your memory and stand at the tip of your fingers for easy access when you need them quickly for a link.

Stumble Upon, a social media tool can easily be used as your sticky "post-it note." You save the article where you can easily access it, and not only that, when you "Stumble" it, you also bring value to the author.

We're at the tip of a gigantic iceberg when we read so much, but want to recall later... So, what's your favorite tool for "outsourcing your memory" when you blog or want to remember what you read for your work position?

Image by Ecliptic Stock Illustrations