I am extremely forgetful due to inattentive ADHD issues. With medication, I am much better at being focused. But my mind seems to be a blank slate. I have to look things up constantly whenever any one asks me questions about something I worked on a few days back or even the same day. I have a big picture fuzzy idea but the details always escape me.
I know the basics of mnemonics. Creating a memory palace to remember lists of information etc. Also at work, I am starting to use mnemonics to remember bits of information I am confused about. So, it is helping me. Finally, I am slowly integrating mnemonics into my life to help me. I started doing this from a week back. I knew about mnemonics since the past 3 or 4 years but only became serious about it now.
I am looking at mnemonics as a way to improve the quality of my life tremendously.
Anyways, back to the topic in question. I would like to remember important events that happen throughout the day permanently.
For example:
I need to make a request to John asking for permission to do Task B. This should happen 10 days before beginning Task B.
After a few days, Jimmy asks me if I all set to do Task B and if I asked John for permission.
I draw a blank even though I actually made the request to John. I am not sure. I check the records and then after a while I confirm that I made the request.
I feel that the solution is to figure out a way to store all important events like this in my long term memory using mnemonics.
If so, how do I go about it? Should I create a memory palace for each day and then use mnemonics to store both the time of the event and then the event itself. And then store all these memory palaces inside a bigger memory palace.
Would this work? This seems pretty daunting to me. Is there an easier way to get around this issue?
I would like to offer my sympathies for your unfortunate affliction. But I hope that I can quickly reassure you that in today’s culture of blame and litigation, everybody now writes down everything to cover themselves. So you don’t need to feel that you are any different from anyone else.
It’s obvious that you would like to be able to remember more info, rather than write everything down. That’s very natural.
However, the best people that I’ve worked with in 50 companies in a dozen countries always wrote things down. If you give incorrect verbal info in a meeting with several top managers - you’re dead. But if, instead, you spend a few seconds digging something out of your phone, or laptop, or day-book, people will be impressed with your meticulous record-keeping. So don’t feel self-conscious about carrying a laptop around. Nowadays everyone does it.
Before I retired, I recorded everything using (1) the free version of Evernote, (2) voice recording in iPhone, (3) phone calendar, (4) the free Stickies, and (5) Anki.
Everything was eventually entered into Evernote (EN). Anything enduring or important would be entered into Anki for long-term memory.
The EN info came from sources such as the following:
Casual conversations
Info from meetings
Emails
Internet pages
Facts from any company docs that I read, including reports, project plans, engineering specs, requirement specs, test info, etc.
Info from external sources, such as news items, TV.
BTW: You need to protect your back if someone gives you important verbal info in the corridor - especially if there are no other witnesses. An entry in EN is not sufficient proof (the date of creation is part of the visible metadata). You should, ASAP, send a “thanks for the useful info” email to the donor. I’ve know some guys who didn’t do that and found themselves in trouble 6 months later. There’s a good chance that the original donor sincerely believed that the incorrect info was accurate at that instant - and indeed might himself admit that later. But then again…
For emails, or web pages, or reports, I don’t include the complete item. Some people do that. They are the people who probably exceed EN’s free monthly MB allowance. I personally don’t know anyone who has exceeded that allowance - even project managers of large teams.
For emails, I included only some key sentences, plus the sender, subject, and date. I can then find the email if needed.
Similar comments apply for web pages. I only included the URL, title, date, and some key sentences.
There are some EN note titles that I use consistently. For example:
Project X: bits and pieces
Project X: journal
Project X: ToDo (not “To Do”, which is difficult to search for)
“Bits and pieces” includes isolated snippets, where sequence is not important. For example, it might be some key features of a project plan,
“Journal” is similar to the old-fashioned accountant’s journal: everything is recorded in sequence, as it happens. (But see next paragraph.)
Note that there might be dozens of other notes that relate to Project X. These will be “standalone” notes, rather than individual snippets of only 2 or 3 sentences. For example, “Project X: high-speed turbine test results”.
BTW: EN has excellent tagging features, but I always include “key words” in a note title, because titles are listed and sorted by several columns.
For any EN “note”, I add text to the top of a note, not the end. This is similar to a list of emails, where the most recent entry is at the top of the list. This is helpful for two reasons:
I’m most likely to refer to recent entries, which will be at the top of the note.
I don’t need to scroll down to the end of the note in order to add some new text.
Here is the format of a note:
Each entry in a note has the date of entry.
Sub-topics are separated by three dashes (—)
Topics within the same date are separated by 30 dashes.
Topics having different dates are also separated by 30 dashes.
So the skeleton of one of my notes might look like this:
6 Oct 2017
text
text
text
text
text
text
text
5 Oct 2017
text
There are normally no empty lines - but that’s a personal preference. I simply want to reduce the scrolling time. However, I use an empty line to represent a genuine break between two consecutive paragraphs - as in any normal text memo.
Most of the info to include in a note will be obvious. But you can jog your creativity by using the standard Who? Why? When? What? Where? How? How long? How many?
Examples using “Who?”:
Who told me?
Who do I need to inform?
Who is going to do this?
Who is the project owner?
Who are the stakeholders?
For me, an important “Where?” is “Where did I find this info?” Reason: if I make a few key notes in EN, I might later want to find some more info from the same source. The source could be, for example, an email, report, URL. I used to spend hours looking for a specific web page. When I first saw the page, I recorded all the info that I thought might be necessary in EN. Yeah, right. Six months later I vaguely remembered some info that was not relevant at the original viewing, but would be top priority right now. Yet another late night at the office
If your company is “e-mail oriented”, your life will be a lot easier, because there’s an audit trail as well as a valuable source of info to include in EN. In the last half dozen companies I was in, most interaction was by email.
Exchanging info by casual conversations and time-wasting meetings are almost a thing of the past. People such as Bill G. and Hillary do everything by email. But if there are meetings, they are minuted, with a list of issues and actions. So, that’s another source of valuable info.
If you intend to write down a lot of things, you should learn touch-typing. Most of the Americans that I worked with in various countries could touch-type - even high-ranking managers. On the other hand, I think I’m one of the few Brits that can touch-type.
I had to learn from a book. But nowadays there are loads of free interactive tutors. The best programs learn which letters you find easy, and which letters you have difficulty with. It will then prompt you more often for your difficult letters. The worst programs refuse to allow you to move on to the next lesson until you get 100% in your current lesson. Excruciating boredom
If you can touch-type in shorthand - so much the better. There’s a post here that might help:
I have an iPhone, so I use the Voice memos app. When convenient, I then type each memo in Evernote, using headphones.
I can touch-type in shorthand fairly fast, but I can’t keep up with a playback. But I don’t stop/rewind/start dozens of times. Instead, I allow the playback to continue to the end, and continue typing bits and pieces. Each time I leave a gap, I insert a carriage return (CR). That warns me that there’s a gap.
I then repeat the playback, and try to fill in the gaps that I missed.
I might need a third playback - and so on.
I think the multiple continuous playback method is faster than a single playback, where you need to stop/rewind/start many times. But maybe that’s only my opinion.
Here’s an example. Assume the sentence is “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.”
Here’s how I might type the first playback:
Now is the time
good men to
aid of the
Or, using my own shorthand, that might be
Nw s th tim
good mn t
ad f th
But, with any shorthand, including Gregg’s and Pitmans written shorthand, even the best stenographers needs to add missing letters ASAP, before she forgets what some of the cryptic words are.
BTW: I once tried teaching myself Gregg’s and Pitman’s shorthand. These are good systems, but took far too much time for me to learn. The basic systems are easy. That takes about the first 5% of each book. The remaining 95% is the prefixes such as pre-, in-, un-, under-, and suffixes such as -able, -ful, -ing, -ingly, -ed.
So, you might as well type the shorthand rather than write it, and then go back and fill in the missing letters.
Organizing my working life became a lot easier when I started using the free Stickies software. Stickies are 1-click notes that I used either for quick notes, or as reminders.
Any quick note was enterd in EN as soon as convenient. When used as reminders, Stickies uses time intervals rather than absolute times. By time interval, I mean that the reminder can be set for 10 minutes or 1 hour, or 3 days or whatever. I find this to be less bullying than reminders which wake at set times such as 13:00 or 2 Nov and point a gun at my head. It’s all psychological.
Very few of my Stickies contain text - just a title such as “Email JS re progress”, or “Pub lunch”.
Screenshots are an important part of my life - socially and for work (I’m still contacted by previous companies - I must be doing something right). I use the free Greenshot. It’s a lot simpler than Snag It, but it does everything I need.
I hope you can find something of value in this post. I wish you the best of luck
