From Nick Parker’s occasional “numbered points” newsletter of wondrous random connections of ideas, “The Notices”
- How do we remember what we remember? How do we know when to keep rummaging in the library of our consciousness for something that we have forgotten but somehow know we will remember? How do we speak of remembering and forgetting in ways that capture these different varieties and flavours? If these questions are your jam you’re gonna bloody love Agnes Heller’s piece ‘Speaking of Memory’ in the Baffler.
The article he shared is an in-depth exploration of the topic, and this paragraph leapt out at me:
Every time I find or discover something I need in my preconscious and subconscious long-term memory, to use Christopher Cherniak’s term, I basically “copy” it from my long-term to my short-term memory.
I am fascinated by how we remember what we remember. My children know me to be a font of useless general knowledge (you’d want me on your quiz team), but beyond that, I have a voracious curiosity and am often focused around and tangential to business and leadership. In short, I know a lot of things across a lot of areas.
How, though, do I remember what I remember. A piece in the article before the paragraph I extracted was about the ability to stay in hotel rooms on business and remember the room number very quickly and for the duration of one’s stay, but then to not only forget the room number but also the name of the hotel as soon as you check out. This is totally me, if you pressed me to seek to extract from long-term memory as many of the hundreds of hotels I have stayed in on business, I doubt I could name ten, and almost all of them would be ones that I chose to stay at over and over when in that city.
I’m also interested in the fact that I seem able to pull something out of long-term memory easily once I listen to people deeply and connect the dots to whatever topic they are talking about.
Chip Conley is also fascinated by this and he taught me that, as we age, we are able to retain fewer things in “front of mind” short-term memory. I certainly cannot “spin” as many “plates” while listening to someone as I used to, so unless I have a pen and paper in front of me, I have to stop them after a while to capture the thoughts from the first few “plates” I was “spinning” as they spoke.
On the other hand, and as Chip also notes, as we age our ability to “pattern match” continues to be one area of the brain that continues to develop and grow, as opposed to, well, atrophy.
I certainly feel that I can connect dots faster and extract experiences, thoughts, past ideas and learnings from long-term to short-term memory much faster than when I was younger.
Whatever the science is, I find that fascinating. I don’t fully understand how I can remember what I remember, but I am very thankful at my growing abilities to do so.