: How do we forget something easily even if we try to remember it as hard as we can, but the same thing comes to our mind when we are not even thinking about it?
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Seems to me that you think of a thing in a certain mindset, and then the act of trying to remember it puts you in a different mindset. Then you slip into the original mindset and think of the thing again.
one day I forgot my banking password. I’d been entering it by memory daily on my iPhone for years but then one day I went put it in an I just couldn’t remember it. I moved to keychain after that to store my passwords, I feel like with age the ability to remember little things can slip with some people, but others they get old and remain sharp for details their whole life. some people are better at recall than others so for them what they are looking for will pop in their head easier than others, people with poor recall may never make the connection and will forget it forever. happens all the time, umbrellas left on the train, appointments forgotten about, forget to pay an invoice, forget the colour of your first kiss’s hair.
Not an answer, but a solution: start listing, preferably aloud, aspects, features, categories, etc that describe what you’re trying to remember and you can basically shake loose the memory. Word association games are fun and practical!
Edit: For names, just start saying random names, or names in alphabetical order. I once remembered the name “Jeremy Piven” just by saying “Chris Pines” and “Chris Evans” (I was on C-names). Pine-Evans got me to Piven. Silly brain games.
The memory you are trying to access is hard to find, your brain is like a filing system so if your filing system is not in order (tiredness etc) or you are trying to find a file buried deep somewhere it takes time to find. Your brain runs a search for the memory, the search continues to run even though you aren’t thinking about it, when your brain finds it you will remember.
I once read somewhere, that we don’t remember things themselves, but rather the last time we remembered the thing. Knowing it helps to not forget basic stuff, like “did I lock the house” – I remember it once a few steps from a for and then I remember the last time I remembered it, and it always works
People will say they understand this, how the mind recalls something you are trying to remember.
I know *this*: They did some Medical experiments once, they stuck probes in different places in the brain of volunteers, illiciting vivid memories the subject thought they had forgotten. IOW, every memory is stored by the brain.
Your brain is like a CCTV camera on the wall, it records everything in the range of your senses, every single thing you experience, even while sleeping.
Those are the ‘books’ that will be opened on Judgement Day.
How come we hit every single red light when we are in a hurry but when we want to answer a text or get something out of the glove box there’s suddenly nothing but green lights… it’s perception. You remember most of what you want… and forget most of what you don’t care about. You only notice it when you’re annoyed.
/r/Iamverysmart subscriber here.
Inside your mind, there’s neurons and pathways connecting them.
Let’s think of the neurons as trees; and pathways as pathways in that forest.
Your train of thought is as if you’re looking at a giant redwood tree, taking your time, studying the detail. You decide to wander, glancing at the plants all around. Then you notice a strange tree. It has three trunks that twist and weave into itself in a complex pattern. It’s not very tall though, and quite thin. You’ve never ever seen a tree like this before and immediately think there’s no way you’ll ever forget it. After a moment you continue down another path. A few paces later you want to look at the twisted tree again but when you look around it’s gone. You know it was not very tall but you can’t remember any more detail about it. So you begin running back down the path you came, frantically scanning, hoping to see it, until you are back at the giant redwood. Then you stop. You’re sure that you saw it after the redwood but as you look into the dense forest you feel defeated knowing you’re probably not gonna be able to find it again.
Lucky you , I was teaching some 6th graders about this last week.
So memory has three parts : encoding (putting the memory in your brain), storage (having that memory in a specific area), and retrieval (getting that memory back)
Most memory issues start at the start [encoding] because we aren’t paying ATTENTION. but you aren’t talking about that even though ATTENTION is the most important thing about memory. You want to know even if we pay ATTENTION, why can we still not remember it as well as something we supposedly didn’t pay ATTENTION to.
Well /that/ comes to [storage]. Have you ever made a word map? Where you write a word, circle it, and then connect a few words that are related to that, circle each of those and repeat the process with them? {I.e. (boat)–(water)–(fish)–(bass)–(guitar)} that’s how our brain kinda works . You take a memory and it becomes connected to related things. So if you think of those related things we can get to the memory. {Think trying to remember someone’s name and going: “oh it’s the same name as that girl who fell down that rabbit hole…. ALICE}
Memories are always connected. When we actively try to give it more connections thats called mnemonics. {Making acronyms, initialisms, songs, etc. } The best memories in the world use things like the peg system or the method of loci.
But sometimes the memory is already connected to a bunch of stuff. I remember the number of Pokémon in the first generation without effort because I have loads of memories connected to it {playing with the cards, watching the show, doing the rap, etc.} So really the foundation was already laid.
Alternatively it could just have been very intense and Thus the mind kind of burns it into your mind like a flash bulb.
TL;Dr Usually it’s cause you don’t pay attention but how you store that memory is important too. The more memories you have related to the thing the easier it is to remember it.
Sooooo anxiety is similar to a computer virus? Like it re routes my brain to forget everything and depression is like a critical system error? Anyone have an anti virus program for the brain…. maybe a new os? I feel like my brain may be running windows vista…. any help?
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