You know how sometimes you do a task and then you see later that you also wrote it on your list? And then you think you shouldn’t have bothered to write it down because you remembered to do it anyway? In fact, just the act of writing something down increases your likelihood of remembering it. It doesn’t even matter whether you ever look at the list again. So keep making lists!
I got that tidbit from an interesting site devoted to memory improvement. Here’s another finding that seems counterintuitive.
"Don’t assume that because something is important to you, you will automatically remember it — somewhat to their surprise, researchers have found no evidence that personal importance has any effect on the likelihood of remembering to do something."
So that explains why you can remember what some TV character ate for dinner but not remember your own wedding anniversary.
It is very true. I have tested on myself. I remember from my student years that I set on my desk and started to write notes and schemes to organize my courses. Without them, all in my head were a brainstorming. In my daily work, my post-its help me a lot.
Posted by: sugar | September 20, 2006 10:44 AM | Permalink to Comment