Tips to Improve Memory—Ideas That Might Help You Live Longer Too
Memory is more than the road to wealth on Jeopardy. It’s a great leadership skill that helps with engagement on ongoing projects, demonstrates that you’re listening and understanding information directed toward you, and shows you’re engaged with friends, acquaintances and colleagues—who doesn’t like having people remember their name?
Last month, Inc. published an article by Bill Murphy Jr. called “Keep Forgetting Things?” about how concern about memory stands out among the habits and pitfalls of highly successful people, and how neuroscience provides support for the idea that there are specific practices people can learn to improve memory.
Some things on his list are mentioned regularly: Doing games and crosswords (showing better brain boosting than a similar time spent on video games), improving diet (eating more fruits and vegetables, perhaps with intermittent fasting), getting enough sleep (interesting finding: sleep-deprived people can’t recognize their diminished brain power) and reading for pleasure (showing even better brain-boosting in older adults than puzzles) are a few examples.
There were three that stood out as being particularly interesting findings.
First is getting better lighting. A Michigan State University study of Nile grass rats found that rats in an environment with lighting similar to a corporate office “lost about 30% of capacity in the hippocampus, a critical brain region for learning and memory, and performed poorly on a spatial task they had trained on previously,” versus rats kept in light resembling a sunny, outdoor day. One of the authors wrote: “[D]im lights are producing dimwits.”
(Maybe those remote workers sitting on their patios on summer days are onto something.)
Second is developing detailed hobbies. A study published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that people with detailed hobbies—bird-watchers, in the study—tended to characterize memories and store them according to more detailed criteria, and were more likely to remember things. One researcher suggested it may be that “the more background knowledge you have, the better you are at learning and retaining new information by placing that information in the scaffolding of your existing knowledge.”
(It may be this blends elements of puzzling and reading—conditioning your brain to make new connections helps it make those connections.)
Third is my favorite, just because it seems so unlikely to work: Walking backwards. University researchers tried six experiments to see if just walking backward could spark a better ability to recall things using short-term memory. All six experiments worked. The university said in a press release: “The results demonstrated for the first time that motion-induced past-directed mental time travel improved mnemonic performance for different types of information. We have named this a ‘mnemonic time-travel effect.’”
(So if you see me backing slowly out of a room, be flattered, because I obviously want to remember our conversation through a mnemonic time-travel effect or MTTE for us in the know.)
Drink Up! Water’s the Secret to Success
We all hope to live long, healthy lives. Longevity also factors in success. Time offers the opportunity to grow a business. So let’s drink to that … with water, of course, because a National Institutes of Health study published in eBioMedicine found that not drinking enough water lessens our brain power and also is associated with a higher risk of developing chronic diseases, dying early and being biologically older than our chronological age.
Amanda Schleede is founder and CEO of Attend Safe, which helps people attend to life with safe, secure and sensible protocols. Her leadership allows important events to proceed with safety-conscious protections. With Tuesday Tutor, she hopes others will benefit from her experience. Visit Attend Safe online at AttendSafe.com.
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