The Power of Forgetting (13 page)

When I was seven or eight years old, I had an incredibly difficult time distinguishing my left boot from my right boot during those long Chicago winters. I often ended up with my boots on the wrong feet. My teacher at the time wasn’t the nicest of people, and she’d terrorize me over my boots being mixed up. My mother had an idea: She suggested that we put an
L
in the left boot and an
R
in the right boot. But I told her that it would be embarrassing if anyone saw that, because
everyone else could tell their left boot from their right boot (and I knew that my teacher would continue to be mean about it). So my amazing mom then came up with a better solution.

She wrote my entire name, Michael Byster, in each boot, which was fine because a lot of kids had their names in their boots.

However, in the left boot my mom underlined “Michael” because it ended in L, and in the right boot she underlined “Byster” because it ended in R.

This experience taught me at a very young age that there are many different ways to tackle a problem, and it gave me the confidence to know that it’s okay to try another path to a solution.

It also marked one of the first times that I really understood the power of association. Making a connection between my name and my boots (and my feet) that made sense to me proved to be another pivotal point in my life. Of course, I would come to adapt a lot of things in life to my personal challenges, and just knowing that adaptation was how to get things done would also become a huge confidence builder. But the art of association has become one of my strongest skills in keeping my brain efficient and clutter free—able to focus on the spot and immediately distinguish between what’s important and what’s not so I can store only the information I really need.

In the last chapter, I covered a lot of ground about focusing and concentrating. These will be recurring themes throughout the book, as they provide the foundation for all the strategies that build a better brain.

Now let’s develop the third essential skill for igniting your brain’s potential. I call it increasing mental capacity, or expanding how much information you can retain. I’m not
talking about traditional memorization here. Much to the contrary, I’m going to show you how to activate your memory skills in ways that allow you to develop a faster mind—literally. Remember, memory is the basis of mental capacity and of learning itself. In the past you may have equated memory with memorization, but as you should know by now, memory goes much further than that. Memory is also more than “a good memory”—it is the means by which we perform the largest share of our mental work and ultimately solve problems big and small. It’s also the means by which we become productive thinkers.

From the moment we get out of bed each morning, we use our trained memory to solve problems—from deciding how to drive to work (and navigate through traffic) or how to handle a difficult business or personal call with someone who isn’t happy with us, to simply planning out the week in advance given our responsibilities, our obligations, and the competing demands of work and home. The inability to problem solve is what characterizes illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. People who suffer from these afflictions have lost their ability to reason, think, and remember the way a healthy brain can by recalling certain information to use in making critical decisions. Thus, they lose their capacity to perform the complex tasks of daily living. One of the more fascinating revelations of studies on dementia is that brain diseases are more about learning problems than about memory problems.

Those who have symptoms of Alzheimer’s find it hard to absorb information, so when they seem forgetful, it’s not that they don’t remember the facts—it’s that they never stitched them into their brains to begin with!

I bring up the case of dementia because examining
extreme conditions under which mental faculties have declined or vanished helps us come to a better understanding of how we can keep our minds sharp. And you don’t have to have a brain disease to lack the ability to problem-solve effectively. Unless you learn how to optimize your memory, you won’t be able to make good decisions in life—and life is, after all, a series of important choices to consider: “What should I say yes to?” “What jobs should I try or start?” “What career path should I take?” “Whom should I marry?” “Where should I live?” “What should I do with my life?” “How can I get ahead faster?” These choices force you to consider multiple options; mentally organize streams of competing and sometimes conflicting data; navigate hard-to-understand ideas for which you don’t have the benefit of hindsight; differentiate between key information and that which is immaterial, irrelevant, or even nonsensical; weigh pros and cons; employ logic where necessary; sort out competing agendas; tease out details you may need to help you decide while ignoring the rest; and generally evaluate, examine, and handle information smartly to arrive at an answer or a positive outcome of some sort that helps you live a better, more successful, more fulfilling life. Which is really all any of us wants.

And then we have the other types of problems to solve that do indeed feel problematic when we struggle with them. You could be faced with the challenge of recalling someone’s name or phone number, remembering where you put your keys, storing difficult words or other random pieces of information, or learning a new language or hobby that requires lots of tugs and pulls on your rusty memory. Now, some of you might argue that no one needs to memorize things like phone numbers anymore because we have high-tech gadgets
that store all that data. Similarly, you might be thinking that practicing such a skill is worthless when we have technology at our fingertips to do the work for us. But remember what I said earlier about relying too much on technology: Such dependency can weaken your mind in the same way an unused muscle can atrophy. When we don’t actively engage our memories in ways that help us quickly and effortlessly retain information, we impair our minds. So while it may seem impractical to memorize people’s phone numbers today, when you do you’re actually strengthening the parts of the brain that can help you solve much bigger, more profound problems—from figuring out how to get home when the subway strands you in an unexpected and unfamiliar part of town to choosing a profession, deciding between two acceptance letters, or going with plan A over plan B. In short, there is a direct connection between being able to commit mundane facts to memory and becoming an expert decision maker in all areas of life. The more quickly your memory functions, the better off you’ll be, because you’ll make fewer mistakes and rarely veer off track.

When we work specifically on memory strategies, we’re creating new neural connections and growing a more extensive network in the brain to stretch its current boundaries. But I’m going to make good on my promise and avoid teaching anything close to rote memorization. Instead, what you’re going to do is learn how the fine art of association can increase your memory—and more important, your capacity to “forget” when it’s essential to being a productive thinker who isn’t easily distracted and can stay fully attuned to just the vital facts and data (no matter how voluminous those facts and data are).

Virtually everyone has experienced the difficulty of trying to memorize disconnected and seemingly arbitrary facts. At one time or another, everyone has also had trouble recalling things they once had memorized. And most everyone has struggled to remember something they actually do know but in a different context.

If you grew up in the United States, you probably spent a lot of time as a child memorizing the state capitals and the names of the presidents. Can you now write down all of the capitals? How about all of the presidents’ names—in order? Can you remember who was president when the nation’s capital moved to Washington, D.C. (hint: 1800)? Unless you are a serious history buff, the answer is probably no. Learning these facts is perhaps a rite of passage through middle school, but does that effort really pay off?

Such knowledge rarely sticks very well and doesn’t make itself available when it would be useful. Sure, we can memorize random facts, but we are notoriously bad at it. Why else would we have so many devices for taking notes and making reminders?

And yet it’s hard to argue with the notion that our value or success in everyday activities, including our chosen business, profession, trade, or other occupation, depends to a great extent on the degree of memory we’ve developed. Our memory of faces, names, facts, events, circumstances, and other aspects of our everyday work affects our ability to accomplish our goals and tasks. In our social circles, having a retentive memory—chock-full of available facts—helps us become well-respected members of society. It can even help
us achieve upward mobility, leaving behind lower socioeconomic levels. In the words of Lactantius, who was an adviser to the Roman emperor Constantine I in the third century, “Memory tempers prosperity, mitigates adversity, controls youth, and delights old age.”

Memory systems have been around for as long as humans have tramped across the earth. In much the same way we’ve always known somewhere deep down that sleep is good for the brain, we’ve always known that memory systems exist, that there are in fact “secrets” to optimizing our brain’s storage capacity and processing speed and that it pays to develop them. Think about how valuable it must have been to have a good memory back when there were no practical ways to take notes, store information digitally, or keep a journal. It was memory techniques that enabled people to remember their stories, poems, and songs or the need to avoid a certain path because the local rodents had made it their home. If someone walked in a forest and picked up poison oak, how would they be able to remember what it looked like so as to avoid it in the future?

They’d have to find a way to firmly “implant” that image in their mind and be able to recall it the next time. And to make sure that image wouldn’t be crowded out by too many other competing images, they’d also have to find a way to forget and disregard the multitude of innocuous, harmless plants. In other words, they’d have to “forget” in order to remember. Indeed, one of the linchpins of an awesome memory is the ability to forget.

During the days of ancient Greece and Rome, orators
who delivered long speeches no doubt relied on memory systems to accurately recall every thought without skipping a beat or missing important information. Simonides of Ceos (c. 556–468 BC), a poet famous for his public performances, is probably best known as the father of all memory techniques. But scraps of paper dating back even a thousand years or so before his time have been found that indicate memory techniques were an integral part of an orator’s equipment. Mind you, oratory was an important career during ancient times, and to this day the ability to deliver a compelling speech is a critical skill for anyone who seeks public office or hopes to share their ideas with the masses.

During the Middle Ages, philosophers and theologians depended on memory systems to broadcast their ideas. They may have been the only people of their time who knew about applied trained-memory techniques. I can imagine that being able to memorize was on par with being able to read and write. All three skills were necessary to gain people’s trust, attention, and loyalty.

Despite the early history of memory systems, it took thousands of years for books to appear that shared the secrets to training the mind. One of the best-known early memory-training books was
The Phoenix
, published in Latin by Peter of Ravenna in 1491. It’s amazing to think that of all the topics written about in those early printing days, a book on memory was among the first to be distributed to the lay public—proof of the importance placed on having a well-trained mind. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, many other books were written on the subject.

I would venture to guess that virtually all the great leaders and rulers of the world used memory systems, whether their own or those learned from others. The same goes for all the great teachers, storytellers, philosophers, physicians, writers, lawyers, judges, inventors, orators, scholars, academics, mathematicians, entrepreneurs, and business owners. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre wasn’t called the “memory theatre” for nothing. It was a center for grand performances in the art of memory itself, for his actors would have to recall lots of lines in performing his plays.

Memory systems are part of who we are, and the mind’s ability—need, really—to patternize the world and create associations all the time is what ultimately ensures our survival. Each one of us has the built-in “technology” to have an amazing memory. We just have to learn how to train our memory systems to optimize their functionality. We also need to train those same systems to forget when appropriate.

Let’s assume that you’re a pretty good sleeper, which helps you to nourish your mental faculties and in particular your memory bank. Let’s also assume that you do the other things typical of a “brain-healthy” way of life. You take your vitamins, you eat pretty well, and you solve crossword puzzles to keep your brain agile. You also have already begun (let’s be optimistic here!) to engage your mind in the ways I’ve been suggesting in this book. But today you misplaced your keys. What’s up with that?

Don’t panic. Forgetting where you put your keys stems from one of the most widespread “afflictions” and annoyances: absentmindedness.

When we find ourselves misplacing items that we “just put down” or worrying about whether or not we turned off the oven, locked the door, unplugged the iron, sent that important e-mail, or left something valuable on the train, on the bus, or at our friend’s house, we can become frustrated, question our intelligence, or even begin to wonder if this is the sign of a cognitive decline toward full-blown dementia.