Only a Memory

I've always been fascinated by memory. Whether it's remembering childhood events or any of umpteen thousand passwords that we need to recall these days to log into websites, having a strong memory is an important skill.

That's why I was interested when Stephen Colbert this week had as a guest Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. Foer is a science journalist who was covering the U.S. Memory Championship and decided to become a participant; he trained for a year in memory techniques and actually won the event. Entrants had to memorize a deck of cards to ridiculously long lists of numbers. Foer writes about learning mnemonic techniques to help you remember just about anything.

As you get older, there's so much more to remember. Not only do you have past memories, but you've got all the aforementioned passwords, friends past and present, directions, work tasks, etc. I've always half believed that there's only so much information that can fit in my brain, so when it fills up, something spills over the side and is lost. I do think there's something to that theory. I've always found it strange that I can remember something I did when I was 3 but have no memory of something I did last week. I often struggle with remembering the names of people I've only met once or twice. Perhaps some of that is due to brain cells lost over the years, but I think it's more because of the onslaught of information that bombards us each day.

Having a blog is somewhat helpful because I can look back to 2003 and read something I wrote back then that reminds of events I had forgotten. Much more is recorded nowadays, whether through photos or video clips posted to Facebook, updates on Twitter or Facebook, or even just information recorded via the ever-present cell phone. I actually kept a diary when I was 16 and while it's extremely cringe-inducing to go back and read some of that stuff, it's fascinating from a strictly historical viewpoint. Mostly, though, it's just embarrassing.

I find nowadays I get random thoughts and ideas that if I don't record them as I'm thinking about them, I tend to forget about them. Hence my use of tiny Post-It notes, which you'll find around my stereo, reminding me about songs to download, to-do items, ideas for columns, blog posts, or podcast topics. And as for all those passwords, I've got an envelope full of Post-Its with passwords (as well as a bunch of them saved in my Gmail).

I'm definitely interested in reading Foer's book. I don't know if it'll help me improve my memory, but it can't hurt.