Every day, we live new experiences, meet new people, discover fresh ideas. However, a lot of that valuable information is quickly forgotten, never to be remembered nor used again. Can technology offer a better way to make the most of our memories? Welcome to this edition of our Tools for Thought series, where we interview … Read More
We spend a lot of time reading and studying in the hope of acquiring new knowledge. However, most of us focus a lot more on learning rather than remembering. As a result, our mind is often a leaky bucket we keep on trying to fill, only for all of that new knowledge to soon disappear. … Read More
“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist,” once said French author Guy de Maupassant. Whether it’s short-term memory allowing us to perform simple calculations on the fly, long-term memory which can store larger quantities of information, sometimes for a whole life span, … Read More
“It was better before,” says your friend. “Ha, those were the days,” your reply with a sigh. Declinism is the belief that societies tend towards decline, often linked with rosy retrospection—our tendency to view the past more favourably and the future more negatively. It may seem harmless, but declinism can cloud your judgement and lead … Read More
“Wait, I swear, I know this!” you say. “Give me a second, it’s on the tip of my tongue… Does it start with a K? Maybe a C?” You feel like you are just about to remember, but somehow the memory feels stuck in your mouth. This is the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, also known as lethologica. … Read More
How many times have you forgotten where you left your keys? What about your friend who always seems to make up events that never happened? Do you ever struggle to remember someone’s name? Don’t worry—you’re not the only one. Our memory is far from perfect, and the memory bias effect doesn’t help. A memory bias … Read More
My grandma just passed away. Oma was 86 years old. She was born in Algeria, in a small village called Sidi Okba. She had tattoos on her face, which she didn’t like and tried to get rid of several times, to no avail. She also didn’t like drunk people and violence. What Oma liked, though, … Read More
There’s only so much we can hold into our working memory—the system our brain uses to temporarily hold information while we manipulate it. The amount of working memory we use at any given moment is called the cognitive load. While both are theoretical concepts used in psychology and neuroscience, they have profound implications when it … Read More
Writing an educational article about something you want to learn about may be one of the best ways to study a topic. The Feynman Technique—which I recently discovered may have been coined by Scott Young—helps you understand anything by pretending you are explaining the concept to a child or someone who has no prior knowledge … Read More
Spaced repetition is one of the few evidence-based learning techniques you can actually trust will help you remember things better. In this short tutorial, we are going to use Roam Research to build a simple spaced repetition system from your notes. 1. Create your box You need a box with five sections to put your … Read More