I understand well where this woman is coming from. Most people who succeed in school succeed because they can memorize. This means most of you on this comment board likely are in the roles you are because you can memorize. Success in school is like that. It rewards memorization more than understanding (yes, it really does...)
For me, I often struggled in school because try as I might I can't remember facts unconnected to other facts (I'm thinking of you particularly 6th grade Latin) but excelled in certain subjects where understanding (making connections between ideas) means more than memorization (FWIW I have a PhD in Physics.) I build up a web of understanding where I know fact A because it is supported by facts B, C & D that surround it. If I distrust my memory of A, I reconstruct that it has to be true because without it B, C and D would fall.
Early in life (45 yrs ago), I gravitated towards computers where the software I wrote became my long term memory. How do I understand XYZ? It's there in the code. What is the value of ABC? It's there in the code. Code is still my crutch.
That is somewhat concerning for myself, I do offload to my notes and to my code my memory, but I started having problems memorizing in high school, somewhat related to my complete rejection of somebody asking me to memorize something just because they said so, instead of being useful.
But then, I do remember programming language libraries that I use often, so it can't be ADD
> But then, I do remember programming language libraries that I use often, so it can't be ADD
Hahaha. But seriously - remembering some things does not disqualify you from the diagnosis, just like not remembering doesn't confirm the diagnosis. If you're actually concerned, maybe talk to a professional.
That's a good point. Maybe, but I'm also able to perform all the functions I need to in my life, so I'm not sure I would be open to take any medication (that could potentially affect my life negatively).
Just because you've gotten a diagnosis doesn't somehow obligate you to use medication. If your life is on track as-is you can skip the medication. Might be worth pondering if getting a diagnosis is even relevant, What will you do differently if it turns out you have ADD? What if you don't?
It would have helped in school, at this stage in life I'm good. I'm successful and happy (by my standards), I don't see a reason for changing anything.
I could probably go higher in the career ladder, but that could affect happiness negatively
I built up an association graph kind of like you. If I remembered about A it reminded me of B, C, and D (or vice versa). One of the tricks I learned was too condense the beginnings of these graphs into their own set of keywords that were relatively short.
Then I kept repeating these keywords in my head over and over until we were handed our test papers. First thing I did was too scribble out the beginnings of each graph. That way if I do forget something I can refer to it. Usually that was enough to remember the details that I forgot.
I believe most memorization in school comes from using a concept so often you end up just knowing. Memorization for the sake of memorization does not work in my opinion.
Most people you know who are good at remembering things like your kids names are usually just good at journaling.
I recommend journaling your conversations . If your friend tells you his kids got sick, write it down so you can ask him about how they're doing the next time.
Your friends and family are many times more important than your bills and appointments, so treat them with the requisite level of attention.
Dumb question, but what do you do when they go e.g. "oh wow, you remembered/good memory!" to something you wrote a reminder for that they didn't expect you to remember? Nod and pretend it was your memory? Just disregard the comment? Or tell them you wrote it down...? It feels a little bit awkward for people to think you remembered them only to realize you just wrote it down and forgot until your notes reminded you.
Edit: Also, if they never realize what you're doing, then doesn't it become even more awkward when you suddenly forget something that you didn't happen to write down, especially when that thing seems easier to remember than what you normally appeared to? (e.g., "how did he remember the party I was going to a month ago but not the fact that my dad was in the hospital last week??")
Responding a compliment is a skill in itself. Less is more. A simple : "thanks for saying that" , is adequate.
I assure you nobody is keeping score. People are so self-concerned that they honestly won't remember what you said, only the feeling they had when you said it.
The kind of situation I'm worried about is exactly what would affect this though. Like say your friend went on what was supposed to be a fun trip they'd planned for months, but then their dad died in the middle. And you didn't write it down and just forgot it. So they come back and instead of "how're you doing?" or "I'm sorry to hear about your dad" you instead go "did you have fun partying?" or "how was the celebration?" or whatever. They probably wouldn't feel so great hearing you remembering the wrong thing?
This is a good example of when saying less is better. Having journaled or written things down doesn't mean you didn't remember. If they compliment your memory, accept it! You did remember. If you missed something later, for any reason, well then you just didn't remember, it happens to everyone.
I personally keep notes on my friends and if they mention something, a like, a dislike, a desire or aspiration or goal, I write it down. In years of doing this, I've never had anyone think it was anything but very flattering if they found out, and I'd let them read theirs haha. Being friends means thinking about them, and putting in effort.
If I found out a friend journaled each day and thought enough of our conversations to include them, well I'd be flattered too.
This is absolutely the case with me. When I need to remember something I'm reading I'll read a part then write a summary. It makes me slow down for a bit and think about what I've read. Same thing with meetings.
Going back later and re-reading the notes is something I rarely do.
I use org-roam in Emacs. It is extremely easy for me to find things I am interested in in my collection of 3000+ notes. The key features you want to look for are hyperlinking and backlinking.
> If your friend tells you his kids got sick, write it down so you can ask him about how they're doing the next time.
there are limits that should be set to this kind of behavior.
some people, my parents are good examples, will tell you about the distant great-cousin of their favorite liquor store attendant who once met the hair-dresser of a long-past rockstar that was big in the 1940s.
it's not all journal-worthy is what i'm getting at. I already have RSIs.
But I agree that it does tend to delight people when you remember the stuff that's actually important to them.
you'll realize even the minutiae has value . About 6 years ago I started assembling a family tree & biography for my mom and logging these stories helped.
It only seems tedious because we're trained to value the wrong things.
Think of how much pointless and transient time is spent on fleeting trivia .
If someone is telling you something, that means it matters to them, and having it matter to you as well is what matters.
Is there a good App that anyone can recommend to do this with speech to text? Something simple; just a searchable daily log that records bullets and timestamps with whatever I recorded. Ideally something that requires one click, tap, or shortcut to immediately allow transcribing to the correct entry page.
I have not found anything good yet, and I too am on the edge of my seat waiting for this. I google every couple of weeks to see if there is anything new, but I tried most easy to find solutions including looking around HN for solutions, and found nothing high quality out of the box. My interm solution is a tula recorder and a kinda version of this-ish: https://thomasjfrank.com/how-to-transcribe-audio-to-text-wit...
No exaggeration; I know things happened and I remember emotions and feelings but rarely specifics, like what a person said or other details that make the event more memorable.
isn't this like most people? this is why witness testimonies during trials are considered unreliable.
I once witnessed something and was interviewed about an hour after it and the police said "yeah, that's not what happened" - and i was so sure i asked to see the video (the following day) and sure enough, that's not what happened. Although i thought a car was going in reverse when it was going forward - and part of it was contextual based on how the car ended up after colliding with parked vehicles.
However i can remember extremely detailed and accurate things otherwise. Unless it's people's names. Or "hey remind me tomorrow ..." or that i need to shut something off in 45 minutes. basically my memory is fine unless i get distracted, or experience anything greater than "mild trauma". Except names. I am so bad at names that Dale Carnegie got mad.
My watch has a timer. Whenever I have something to do in a short to medium amount of time, whether it's for me or someone else, I just set the timer to something appropriate. Doesn't have to be exact. I don't add a note.
For example, when my wife is going to bed and asks if I can put the laundry into the dryer when it's ready, I just set a timer for 30 minutes. When it doesn't matter much when something happens, I just set it to whatever I feel like.
If the laundry isn't done, or I just don't want to interrupt whatever I am doing, I repeat the timer (a single button press with my watch), or set a new, shorter one. Sometimes I "snooze" 5 times or more, maybe all evening.
But the invariable thing about it is: I never ever forget the thing I wanted to do when the timer goes off. And by setting the timer, I free up my mind until then.
I tried this and proceeded to lose hours trying to figure out what I needed to remember. It's a horrible feeling, because I know I needed to remember it
That is nice if you have a need for overlapping timers, but if you don’t, I wouldn’t complicate things to much. The good thing about is that it is very easy to set a timer. (A few touches on the watch, or just saying “timer for 45 minutes” to Siri.)
my watch is cheap and therefore menu driven. my android phone though has sets of timers for things i do weekly. For nearly everything else i use the oven timer, at least, when the power is on.
The difference here, I think, is a matter of degree. A perfectly normal trait can be a pathology when taken to an extreme. Consider the difference between feeling sad sometimes and suffering severe depression.
Also "working memory" is short-term storage, like registers, the details of what you're thinking about right now. Not memory of past events, like your wedding day.
Yeah I have no idea what definition the OP had in mind. Nonexistent working memory must be devastating:
Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily.
It is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior.
Interesting. I’m bipolar and I can absolutely say core training does not work for me. My working memory has a hard limit on the number of tokens it can store.
What does work is encoding complex ideas into longer term memory so they become one token instead of many. I typically shove them into visual memory.
The best way I can explain it is a terrain map. The map has trees which are flow charts, lakes which are distillations of many ideas into a small pools of concepts. Valleys of questions. Eventually everything is in my “mind’s eye” and I can figuratively fly over the data.
Now take that image and remove the visuals. My brain “sees” the map without needing to describe it. It exists as pure, untranslated thought. Intermediate steps, like language, would only get in the way.
Not a fan of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. For myself my brain clearly functions at a lower level of abstraction. Language is an imperfect translation of my actual ideas.
If the hypothesis has any truth at all, it cannot be universal. It doesn’t apply to me.
If someone has thoughts they cannot express in words, are they truly limited by the language they speak?
As another person with low working memory (but decent long term memory) I can posit things aren’t that simple. Working memory has to be wired for recall, and my guess is that wiring may be different from what connects to longer term persistence. Someday soon perhaps we’ll understand just how complex it all really is…
When I try to journal during the actual live conversation, I feel like I'm not fully there in the moment, not as responsive, not as realtime...
So far, only chat history and email history serve that purpose well.
I wish all the journaling would be done automatically for me - for all my calls, all my in person interactions (wearable pin/headphones/glasses with recording func?) - but ASRs/LLMs unfortunately are still not there to fully grasp all the terms and words from different languages, to make the transcript/summarization fully useful (my current experience for transcribing the calls in non-English language, with mixed terms from English, is that over 50% terms are not captured correctly for a specialized conversation).
Somewhat related - highly recommend "The Final Cut" movie on this topic where the recording of everything (audio, video) was implanted at birth for everyone - and ramifications of that.
Notebooks and journaling are great, but only for people whose memory is good enough that they can remember to do it, remember to set aside the time needed for doing it, remember where they left their notebook/journal, and remember to bring the books/pens with them wherever they go. It seems like a valuable tool, just not one I'd expect to work for everyone, especially those with ADHD which is where I see it brought up most often. This is something that cell phones could really help with, since most people have one on them most of the time, but some people don't like the idea of always carrying one or putting highly personal things into a device that's managed remotely by someone else and is designed to collect data about them which will later be used against them.
I've jumped around a few different applications and such, settled on Joplin. (Mobile & multi-platform, still own/sync my data, etc.)
The key for me is that it's the first thing I open, and create a journal note for the day right off. Make the one simple thing the habit, and then it's right there whenever I think of something to add. If I want to copy or move a piece off to a separate note later, it's right there. Worst case, the document search will find it on the random day anyway if I need it.
I suppose paper is good with the right habits too, but my handwriting is cryptic at best, and I can't search paper.
Well, this person can remember songs or lyrics at least.
I wish there was a real prospect of something like artificial hippocampi becoming commercialized in our lifetime.
Maybe we will get AR assistants or something that can reduce experiences into some summarized model with streamlined recall prompting through sensory input.
Order it from a Czech online pharmacy, where it's an OTC medicine (which have better quality controls than supplements). It's not a controlled substance in the US (heck, not even phenylpiracetam is), it's just not registered there.
