We are constantly trying to balance the demands of work and personal life and we rely on technology to help us remember tasks we have to complete, birthdays to remember, and other things that are important to us.
According to a recent research study done by Pew Research Center, Americans open their phones 58 times a day and spend three and a half hours online. Our phones help us being organized and productive, but are there any negative aspects of using technology for this?
Academics from Oxford, King’s College London, Harvard, and Western Sydney University, have found that smartphones actually replace our ability to remember facts and that the constant internet notifications from our phones prompt us to hold a constantly divided attention, which can decrease our ability to concentrate on a single task.
In today’s world we are not training our minds to recall information as we should be, but instead training it to rely on technology that can do it for us. Imagine how productively and efficiently we could work, if we stopped relying on our smartphones for memorization. Minetum is here to help you build a strong memory with 3 tips that can help you in your personal life as well as professional life.
1. How do you learn best?
Different people learn in different ways. There’s no one-way-suits-all when it comes to obtaining new information. When talking about learning styles, the most known model divides people into groups of visual, auditory, read/write, and kinesthetic learners. When you have discovered what kind of learner you are, you can alter how your new information is introduced to you.
This can occur when you are learning a new topic, but also in your interactions with people and e.g. trying to remember facts. Especially in your professional life, it can be detrimental to your career if you often forget peoples’ names or other details. These things add up and it sends a message to the people around you that you aren’t interested in them, when really you just have trouble remembering.
There are many tests online that allow you to discover your learning style, so that would be a great place to start.
2. Don’t pass on tasks
Sometimes we encounter work tasks that might seem tedious and tempting to ask a subordinate to complete instead. This however is a big mistake, as these tasks can be extremely helpful in establishing connections in your memory. This offers you a way to turn short-term memories into long-term memories, as you will look over the information multiple times while working. It can even be a good idea to ask yourself if some of the tedious work tasks you put off regularly could actually be a good learning opportunity for you to train your mind.
3. Prioritize information
The best way to commit new information to memory is to prioritize it by newness and not importance. For example, when you meet someone new and you want to remember their name, ask yourself what you can do now to remember this information for the future.
You can look up new people on LinkedIn and see them in a different context and then during your next conversation you can ask questions that you might already know the answer to from your research. Having the information repeated will help you retain the information later on.
It can be challenging to put down our phones and train our memory instead, but it will pay off down the road. A strong memory is a valuable skill that will help you in relationships, in business, and in your job.
If you need help increasing your memory, Minetum offers a fascinating training day: The Learning brain. During this day you’ll learn why the brain should be trained and how it will improve your career.
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