Memory Management in Humans 1.0

by James Wallace Harris, Thursday, November 26, 2020

Even though I often bitch and moan about my memory problems, I don’t feel they’re a sign of early dementia. Humans just have poor memory management compared to computers. If Homo sapiens sapiens ever have a spinoff species I wonder if it will have better memory management? Science fiction writers often imagine Homo superior with superhero superpowers but I tend to believe whatever traits that sets our descendents apart from us will be rather mundane. I hope improved memory is one, but it will probably be the adaption to hotter weather and resistance to toxic pollutants.

Today I felt the need for the specific kind of memory if I was Jim Harris 2.0. I belong to a small group of people who discuss science fiction stories by email. This week we’re discussing “Utopian” by Mack Reynolds, which came out in 1970 about the problems people would face in the year 2000. I read two or three short stories by Mack Reynolds this summer and I wanted to reference them in my comments about “Utopian.”

However, I couldn’t recall anything about those stories – at first. Slowly, as I strained my constipated mind, I shat out a few rabbit turds of recollections, that eventually allowed a few larger memories to flow out. The results looked unrecognizable to what I had consumed. It’s a shame. We have rich experiences and all we retain are little piles of memory shit.

What would it be like if everything I read stored perfectly in my mind and I could recall it whole later? Yeah, I would be a computer then, wouldn’t I? But I’m not, so what’s the best work around?

I’m currently reading a novel, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig that’s about a young woman, Nora Seed, who commits suicide at 35. On the road to oblivion she is offered the opportunity to live a different versions of her life, ones based on paths she had not taken when younger. On one path she became an Olympic swimmer, but Nora realized once she was in that successful life just how much she had to give up to become an elite athlete. It required such a single-minded focus that she had to drop everything else she loved.

If I wanted a mind capable of remembering and writing about the work of Mack Reynolds in the kind of depth that I’m fantasizing about, I’d have to have ignored a whole array of other writers and stories I’ve been enjoying. The reason why I’m not great at anything is because I’m half-ass at everything else. I’m not finished with The Midnight Library, but one of the lessons I’m wondering Nora learns is the virtue of being a dilettante at many things.

I’ve tried diaries, journals, blogs, spreadsheets, databases, text editors, note taking software, 3×5 cards, clipping files, mind mapping tools, and so on trying to organize my thoughts and memories. Nothing works. I’m always surfing on a foamy wave of chaotic fragments of memories that I wished were whole. My mind craves the autistic trait of compulsive organizing but I can’t put everything in visually appealing stacks.

Each day I get up thinking of a new project to pursue. Whatever memories I can dredge together and hold in my mind for the course of the day become my entire set of tinker toys to build that project. Once I go to sleep at night, everything gets reset. I feel like Leonard Shelby in the 2000 film Memento waking up and starting over. I can carry a project over to another day, but I must rethink everything about it the next day. Often that takes me in a completely different direction. This explains why on a number of occasions when researching on Google I found articles I had written on the very topic I was thinking about writing that day, but had forgotten I had written. That really produces an eerie feeling.

What I keep searching for is a external tool or a mental discipline that would allow me to build a larger project by not having to restart everything the next morning. I marvel at people who can create large complex creative works over weeks and months. How do they keep everything in their head day after day? I have to assume their minds have laser focus ignoring endless distractions. I’m always seduced by distractions. I love distractions. I can’t resist squirrels and shiny objects.

Even knowing that distractions are keeping from doing what I really want, I can’t ignore their siren calls. There seems to be two kinds of people in this world. Those that get things done, and those that don’t. And it doesn’t appear that memory recall is the key difference between the two types. I’m guessing it’s more about limiting the amount of items the head juggles that’s more important. That managing a smaller set of data is the key to focusing. Which makes me wonder if Walter Isaacson had to forget all about Steve Jobs to write about Leonardo di Vinci?

If I could only think about one project until it’s finished. Maybe that’s the key to managing memory. I sit here thinking about all the interests my mind would have to ignore in one day, and that makes me feel like Wile E. Coyote trying to walk on air high above the canyon below.

JWH