This year hasn’t quite shaped up to be the 2020 we’d all planned for in the New Year. Most of us have had to sideline our plans, goals, and resolutions. Now, on top of all the lingering uncertainty and anxiety, we have another cause of concern for you: your memory.
With the lockdowns and social distancing measures that have redefined life as of late, most people have found themselves working or studying from home with little else to do. These days it’s become hard to keep track of the time, date, and month. Remember how March never ended?
As our days are becoming less eventful with little moving about and socialising, life is starting to feel like one very long blur. Which is an apt way to describe 2020.
Apparently, our memory works in mysterious ways and there are a few key things to make a memory stick such as distinctive cues.
“Distinctive cues for a particular event might include the physical surroundings, people, tastes, sounds, smells, or the weather,” lists Celia Harris and Catherine J. Stevens in their article for The Conversation.
Memories also have a much better fighting chance if it involves doing something new and important. Things like graduating, moving out, getting married. Most people can look back on their lives and link time with these big markers.
The more ‘big marker’ moments you squeeze into your life the more you will remember. Between lockdowns and working from home requirements, it’s a bit hard to have these experiences. Even birthdays are taking a backseat to the coronavirus.
This doesn’t mean you should go back to school or marry someone new just to improve your memory. Instead you can turn the mundane into memorable just by getting creative.
Find simple ways to separate the days, try having a fancy breakfast on Mondays, wear a fun outfit on Tuesdays. Re-decorating your desk on Thursdays and concocting a fancy knock-off quarantini on Fridays. Celebrate birthdays again! Even over zoom.
Another memory trick is to pay more attention to your external memory. Write yourself notes or crack open that 2020 planner you didn’t think you needed. Hopefully, you didn’t throw it out. Fill your calendar with all the tasks you achieved for the day or all the random ideas you had. Take a photo every day for a year, or go for a walk.
If all else fails, pick up an instrument. They say learning to read music improves our memory, and since your morning commute is no-more, it shouldn’t be too hard to use that time for music lessons instead.
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