There are a couple of scenarios where having a bad memory can let you down. One of those is when you are at work. If for example your boss asks for a progress report on the task you are working on and you can’t remember the details, it wastes your time and your boss’s if you have to go away and research this information. Additionally, you will probably feel bad about yourself for having what feels like a failing or a weakness. On top of that there are the worries about what your boss/peers think about your the standard of your work.

However, let’s forget the doom and gloom and look at a couple of techniques that I’ve used with a great deal of success to improve my memory at work. There is no in depth scientific analysis here, just some every day techniques that you can start using straight away.

Improving Memory At Work

I have to admit to having a hopeless memory for details at work. Usually, if someone asks me for a progress report on something I started last week, I can’t even remember what that piece of work is, let alone what progress I’ve made with it! Primarily, this is an orientation problem, in that I haven’t received sufficient ‘cues’ to reorientate myself. However, there are a few little helpers that we absent-minded geniuses can use to speed up this reorientation.

Improving Memory At Work Using A Review System

At the start of the day, review what projects you are working on in terms of:

• what is required
• how you are approaching the task
• how much progress you have made
• what exactly you have done and how long it took
• what exactly you need to do to complete the project, and how much time you estimate that will take

Once you have regained some familiarity with your current project, do the same for all the projects you have worked on in the past month. Often, people will request information about tasks you have completed in the past. It is up to you how far back you go with this review process, but I find that reviewing work I’ve done in the past 2 months is sufficient.

Taking An Interest

You will often find that you remember things better if you enjoy doing them and/or you are actually interested in and engaged with what you are doing. Big problem for me! This can be tricky if what you are doing is difficult to understand or is astoundingly boring. If it’s difficult to understand, in theory you can research the subject to get a better understanding. If it’s boring, you will have to be creative and generate the interest yourself. Ask yourself how this boring is job benefitting the company, or what you can gain from doing it. Where does your task fit into the bigger picture? What can you do to spice up the job? Examine all the details. Is it possible to do the job better and better each time, in a quest for perfection?

Improving General Memory

A bad memory can let you down in other areas of your life too. Forgetting arrangements you’ve made previously is not a good way to win friends and influence people. If your partner asks you what kind of day you had, saying “Err… let me review my notes” is a conversation stopper!

Review

Fortunately, you can employ the same review technique mentioned earlier to train your memory. At night as you are going to sleep, run through the events of the day starting from the moment you got out of bed. It’s difficult to do this if your days follow the same routine, so try and pick out the points that made this day different from yesterday. This is an exercise and should be performed regularly in order to improve your memory.

Experience The Moment

A lot of our time is spent going over the past or anticipating the future at the expense of experiencing and enjoying the current moment. Often, intensifying our focus on the here and now can enhance our memory of those current events. Being lost in reverie makes it more difficult to take in what’s happening around us, let alone remember it in detail! Again, all it takes is practice to be able to do this. Periodically bring your attention to what is actually happening now. What time is it? What is the weather doing – is it sunny? Can you hear any traffic/birds singing? Any people around?