I'm in my 20s, and have been noticing that I have a bad memory. I don't forget anything major or concerning, but its obvious my memory is below average. It is starting to cause a bit of a problem at work.
I started to write a lot of things down, but the problem is that I can't always anticipate what I to need to remember later on. So what tools/methods do you use to help you overcome this?
1. Put everything in the issue tracker that you can. This includes notes on what actually happened when you did the work. Include technical details.
2. Try to push everyone else to use the issue tracker. Also makes you sound like the professional in the room.
3. Have a very lightweight note taking mechanism and use it as much as possible. I am gud at vim so I use the Voom plugin (which just treats markdown headings as an outline but it's enough to store a ton of notes in a single .md file). Don't try to make these notes good enough to share as that adds too much overhead.
4. Always take your own notes in a meeting.
5. I will revisit my notes on a project from time to time, and sometimes walk through all of them, but I'm not really treating them like flashcards to memorize. I'm just looking for things that might need some renewed attention. Same with the backlog.
6. In general, I don't try to improve my memory because I don't know what I need to know for a week vs. what I won't look at again for a year. So I focus on being systematic about having good-enough notes on everything and don't really expect to remember anything. (I do remember some things but it's random.)
Second this. I use sublime text almost exclusively for this purpose. I have one file called daily_notes.md that has everything from meeting notes to formal writing to pasted error messages and code.
Each day gets an h1 but that is the extent of formal organization. I’m actually decently organized (at work, at least) but the simplicity is all about lowering the overhead of jotting stuff down. Keeping everything in one doc makes for very easy search.
Otherwise, I try to write reminders right away with whatever is handy. Mainly: Post-its, slack reminders, and Gmail scheduled sends to myself.
Inspired by Seinfeld's "don't break the chain" calendar, but a lot more information dense. It's a big grid, tasks and day of month.
I make a hash mark for every completed task. The boxes are big enough for multiple hashes (eg walking dog 2x daily) and entering values (eg body weight).
If those three fundamentals don't improve anything, you should then consult a professional to help. If the professionals can't help then you can try out personal suggestions from others (like this thread). This is just the path in order of most-likely to least-likely solutions.
It is possible that you have an inherently bad memory. It seems like long-term memory from your post, but some more clarification would be good.
No sweat. Look into Anki flashcards and do all your note taking for things you want to memorize long term. For all other forms of notes, just have them easily accessible via search or time/date stamps. Gotta craft systems using reliable tools as crutches to improve on any innate abilities. I may not be able to dunk on a ten-feet basketball hoop, but I sure can with a trampoline!
Cheers, and I hope you find a reliable solution soon. You deserve it
I am seventy five. I have a very very good memory - for certain things. And a sucky memory for other things.
So, yes, harevesting memories is an issue for sure.
Nonethless: may I posit the other side?
Being able to forget is sublime!!!
I happen to be a person that writes software. The best thing I do these days is to forget the software that has already been written.
The "today" code I write - that even seems crazy - is singularity frequently better than yesterday's code.
My advice:
Forget the past
Remember your future
ox ox
Theo
My solution: keeping a journal handy, writing down everything. For example, when I was doing network engineering on large corporate networks, I would write down every step that I performed, configuration data, etc. Adding page numbers, URLs for referenced tech doco. In my programs I write comments against every class/method to remind myself why I did things the way I did.
From what I've read and also based on my personal experience, writing by hand seems to make things more memorable. I also find it quicker to flick through bound journals than trying to find things on a computer/smartphone -- obviously tried those and they weren't as effective for me.
The bonus for me has been that I always updated design documentation to "as built and installed" state. My managers and clients really appreciated the accuracy.
Everyone's giving you advice about changing your lifestyle so I'll go to the extreme: speak to your doctor and describe your symptoms, possibly a specialist (neurologist). They may want to do an MRI of the brain, or an IQ test (WAIS) to narrow their diagnosis.
At your age these problems are not normal (depending on severity of course, I don't know you). You want to get in front of this problem early if it's serious.
Active - Currently doing/note taking on current task. The idea is not to recall later but for the task at hand. This is physical.
Reflective - After completing a task take the active notes and refine and update them for someone other than you. This is a git repo my team has access to.
Aspirational - Ideas, concepts, all that jazz. For me this is lots of mechanical drawings etc that I want to CAD up, interesting phenomena that could be reproduced with code, far fetched ideas to solve the world's problems, nothing is off limits. This is a physical notebook and the one thing I'd grab if my house was on fire.
Google has some good resources on technical writing[1].
[1] https://developers.google.com/tech-writing
Apps and such have the downside that you have to adapt to them and you have to learn the never ending variety. Also, nothing beats the portability and cost of a paper notebook.