Ever Walk Into a Room and Can’t Remember What You’re Doing There? Neuroscience Has a Word for That — and Simple Tricks to Help
I have to admit I am the kind of person who frequently forgets her keys, where she parked the car, or the name of that nice person she met at the party last week. Which is why, as a writer, I am always on the lookout for evidence-based advice and tips on how to strengthen my memory.
I’ve found plenty of them over the years, but what I didn’t realize is all these memory-boosting hacks and techniques were likely solving only half my problem.
The two kinds of memory
Not only do I have trouble remembering details of the past (particularly when I am juggling a million thoughts at a time), but I am also often guilty of forgetting future commitments.
I’ll space out on a Zoom call I organized a few weeks back, forget the due date for the field trip permission slip, or need to set myself five different reminders to make a deadline. Sometimes I even do the classic move of walking into a room and then forgetting what I am doing there.
All of these are examples of forgetting some future plan or obligation, and as I recently learned, this is a whole different form of memory, involving entirely different parts of the brain…
