How We Remember and Why We Forget
Why do so many of us forget where we put our car keys, eyeglasses, or cell phones?
According to Readers Digest, the average adult spends 16 hours a year searching for misplaced keys.
What we claim to have "forgotten" we simply never knew in the first place; we never paid attention to it. What we labeled "absentmindedness" is, in many ways, just a function of inattention.
We know so little about our own brains...so it should come as little surprise that we know even less about "memory."
It has been hypothesized that a memory you want to retrieve may have to be "reassembled" from its various pieces, which may help explain why at different times, or in different circumstances, we actually "remember" things differently, too.
If you think something is important, you will retain it more easily. So convincing yourself that you must retain (and recall) something increases your chances of adding it to your storehouse--your long-term memory bank.
In "Master Your Memory", author Ron Fry teaches readers ways to recall or retrieve information so that thought on the "tip of your tongue" or face out of context becomes both available and recognizable.
Memory is a lot like a muscle--you need to work it!
Source: Ron Fry: Master Your Memory