mind in the clouds
two springs ago, i learned the value of keeping a to-do list to stay on top of my responsibilities. until i started keeping my homeworks and chores in a text file (incidentally, one that prints every time i open a new terminal), i always had to wrack my memory to make sure i wasn't, say, forgetting anything i had to do that day. this works great if i couple it with a few minutes every day to review it and load the newly active items into my head, and i don't feel overwhelmed with only a day's worth of stuff to remember at a time.
about a month ago i got my hands on some pocket-sized notebooks, to write in whenever i had an important thought i needed to get out of my head and/or to remember for later. now there's no need to wrack my memory for things i'm forgetting at all - i don't need to worry about something important hiding just out of reach in my memory, because it's guaranteed to not be there.
the sinister result of my clever strategy is that my working memory has deteriorated. if there's something i need to recall at some point when i won't have my to-do list or notebook handy, or if i'd perhaps lost my pen at the time i needed to write something down to remember, i'll cheerfully go on about my day as though it was never there. (sometimes i can make myself remember that there was something i needed to remember that didn't get serialised, and if i'm lucky i'll be able to jump from there to what it actually was, but this is not reliable yet.) this problem became really obvious when i needed to bring rpearl's chocolate to the staff dinner last week, and had him remind me twice a couple hours beforehand, but in the intervening time it had fallen out of my head (and now i have to mail it).
this is the same phenomenon as relying on gps all the time and as a result being unable to navigate around town without one, just for a different type of mental capacity. (how embarrassing, given how adamant i am around my parents about not needing gps to know one's way around!) now, if the parallel holds as far as the way i've developed a powerful and efficient road map of pittsburgh in my head, there ought to be a way to remember everything i need to worry about without relying on externally serialised mental state. obviously it's a different way of thinking (road maps are 'easy mode', i think), and i also don't necessarily want to ditch the writing-down entirely, but i still need some way to keep my working memory in shape and use it properly when it's right to do so.
any tips? or, at least, what's the best way to solve the small example problems above?
about a month ago i got my hands on some pocket-sized notebooks, to write in whenever i had an important thought i needed to get out of my head and/or to remember for later. now there's no need to wrack my memory for things i'm forgetting at all - i don't need to worry about something important hiding just out of reach in my memory, because it's guaranteed to not be there.
the sinister result of my clever strategy is that my working memory has deteriorated. if there's something i need to recall at some point when i won't have my to-do list or notebook handy, or if i'd perhaps lost my pen at the time i needed to write something down to remember, i'll cheerfully go on about my day as though it was never there. (sometimes i can make myself remember that there was something i needed to remember that didn't get serialised, and if i'm lucky i'll be able to jump from there to what it actually was, but this is not reliable yet.) this problem became really obvious when i needed to bring rpearl's chocolate to the staff dinner last week, and had him remind me twice a couple hours beforehand, but in the intervening time it had fallen out of my head (and now i have to mail it).
this is the same phenomenon as relying on gps all the time and as a result being unable to navigate around town without one, just for a different type of mental capacity. (how embarrassing, given how adamant i am around my parents about not needing gps to know one's way around!) now, if the parallel holds as far as the way i've developed a powerful and efficient road map of pittsburgh in my head, there ought to be a way to remember everything i need to worry about without relying on externally serialised mental state. obviously it's a different way of thinking (road maps are 'easy mode', i think), and i also don't necessarily want to ditch the writing-down entirely, but i still need some way to keep my working memory in shape and use it properly when it's right to do so.
any tips? or, at least, what's the best way to solve the small example problems above?