38 Science-Backed Tricks to Sharpen Your Memory

[NJCher]

This is a slide show at Prevention magazine. It has 38 good tips. I already do many of them, but there are quite a few new ones to pick up.

[Hamlette]

1. thanks for posting

[nilram]

2. bookmarking this. That's one of the tips, right?

I know I’ll come back to it…

[NNadir]

3. Well, I'm doomed. What was this thread about again?

[tanyev]

4. Marking to read later.

[usonian]

5. 38 is too many to remember!

Some ideas. Not 38 of them. I use these.

⦁ No TV. I don't even know where I stashed it.

⦁ Music all the time. Play if you can. Memorize! I did it as a youngster. Pianists memorize whole concertos! This engages three halves of the brain, seeing (until you have memorized ), sight, muscles that play the notes, and sound. Oh, that's four. Keeps you ♯.

⦁ Air tags on everything, if you can't keep everything in one place. The basket with keys, pens, cards overflows often. (For ultra vital items, I use a he-man shoulder bag and never empty it.)

One shopping trip, I lost a set of keys twice, inside the car. Stuff falls. Get clothes with deep pockets. Shallow pockets are the work of the devil. 👹

⦁ Outsource your memory. I buy a big box of medium postit note pads now and then. One pad carries my shopping list. Another carries the latest to-do list. If I lose one, no matter. Stuff on computers and phones competes with the entire damn internet for attention.

⦁ I carry three sets of keys, plus a spare home key in the phone jacket. I use an ancient cloth camera case over an Otter case. Stuff falls. Air tags on the car keys.

⦁ Don't use your phone to surf the internet or reply to a DU post. The "keys" are too small, and you'll just get angry, especially when autocorrect picks the wrong wood for you.

⦁ Pay for stuff with your phone, and keep it in a shoulder bag. You won't forget it if you use it often. Have lots of friends who text you all day.

⦁ My family bought me an Apple Watch for Christmas. Wow. If nothing else, it has an instant phone pinger. I hope not to need the fall detection.

⦁ Photograph nature. It opens the eye and mind to find beauty and details that others miss in their rush, and blocks out negative thoughts. Those are worth forgetting. Helps you "focus"

⦁ Keep a journal and notebooks. Writing improves retention. Handwriting reveals your emotional state, and there's no autocorrect to pass you off. A good miss steak is OK. CVS has daily journals without weekdays printed in.

Writing down the day of the week helps you remember what damn day it is. The old Casio watch did, too. Happy Tuesday. ( I think it's Tuesday )

⦁ Keep the phone close by. When, not if, you lose your glasses, the camera or magnifier app will focus far ( I'm nearsighted ) and find the AirTags. So will the watch. It will find the phone, which helps you find the eyeglasses.

[NJCher]

7. usonian, thank you so much!

This is indeed an outstanding list. I can't wait to try some of them.

[usonian]

8. Learn from my mistakes!

I am so good at making them.

[littlemissmartypants]

10. You should create an OP with this.

It's not only useful but entertaining! I love it! As a result, I completely forgot about the slideshow.

[usonian]

11. Thanks!

I have no problem creating a thread.

I did one in the past, something like "You know you're old when .... "

But I FORGOT IT.

(I'll go look it up).

[mitch96]

6. "This engages three halves of the brain,"......THIS cracked me up.

Lots of memory tricks out there. The trick is to use them..
One thing I like to do is when I make out a shopping list is I try to remember the list.. When I get to the store I try to remember what was on the list. When I'm done I then pull out the list and see what my "score" is.
Did I remember everything or did I mess up a bit..
m

[usonian]

9. Of course, I sometimes forget my list.

It's usually in a pocket I forgot to check.

But there's a good reason to keep lists short.

If I can actually recall the list from memory, that means that all the items are important.

I am trying to do more with fewer tasks. Not easy, because I am a generalist, and have a lot of interests.

So I put the less urgent tasks on a postit note stuck in the journal.

Focus is not easy, but worth the effort to attain. Naturally, I'm a photographer who started out with manual focus. I frequently override autofocus on the new cameras.

Working on a short list of goals for the year and beyond.

You may have heard of the "Eisenhower Matrix". In one you plot the importance of tasks against their urgency, IIRC. A useful idea!