I used to try to keep all my ‘to do’ plans in my head, but now things have changed. I’m a lot busier—in a managerial role at work. I’m now in my mid-thirties, and I can’t rely on ‘my head’ to remind me, because if I forget something important at work, I’m in trouble! I’ve noticed that I have begun to write ‘to do’ lists on scraps of paper, which I carry around everywhere with me. The only problem with this is that sometimes I can’t find the piece of paper. The other day I left it in a meeting, and when I eventually remembered where I had left it, and went back to collect it, someone told me that they had thrown it out.
Gene, 36
Gene obviously finds that having a written memory back-up system gives him peace of mind. To make it work even better for him, he might find it useful to write his ‘to do’ list in his phone or appointment diary at work, and get into the habit of checking his list regularly. This way he will avoid losing the list, and always remember to look at it because it has become part of his daily routine.
As you have been reading about the many different memory strategies, you most likely have found some that are very familiar, some new ones that appeal to you and others that you could never imagine using. You may also use some that have not been mentioned. Tell someone about these and check if they also use some strategies that are not described here. Talking about memory strategies reinforces the fact that they are as important as any other area of our own self-care, and this will contribute in turn to our developing more ‘memory-wise’ communities.
I listened to a great radio talk-back session on diaries. People were calling in and talking about the types of diaries that they preferred to use. The callers were quite passionate about their diaries. One woman said she buys the same paper diary every year, and will never change. One man said he had given up on his digital diary because he likes to be able to see the whole week ahead, and to visualise this in his head. Other people said they could never go back to paper diaries, as they don’t have a ‘search’ button and they don’t provide text reminders to their phones to tell them to do something. There were some interesting suggestions for combining paper and digital strategies. One woman said that she takes a photo of her paper diary with her phone so that she has a copy with her when she is out and about.
Anne
Everyone is different, and we all have our own preferences for memory strategies. For example, some people find that visual strategies suit them best, while others find that they need to write things down in words if they are to be any use later.
Whenever Rana gives me directions, I have a lot of difficulty following them. She likes to describe the route we are to travel in words, telling me about certain features along the way that I will see as I drive past. I much prefer a picture to guide me—an actual map I can see, and then visualise in my memory as I drive.
Chloe, 65
The type of strategy you use will also depend on your lifestyle and personal interests. What do you need to remember? Are you trying to find your wallet? Are you trying to recall someone’s name? Where are you at the time? Are you driving a car, and not able to write something down? You will probably have found that you need to use a different strategy for each situation.
No one can tell you which memory strategies will work best for you as an individual. Managing your memory is a dynamic and personal process, and may change substantially over your lifetime. General guidelines may be helpful, but even these can only be applied to the extent that they suit your lifestyle. Strategies need to suit you so that you will actually use them.
What is important is that you are aware that there are strategies you can draw on to get the most out of your memory. You will probably find you already have a range of particular strategies for specific situations that you encounter. It may be useful to review your current needs, and decide whether you need to ‘polish up’ your strategies, or develop new ones. Be creative!
Key points STRATEGIES FOR EVERYDAY MEMORY
• Memory strategies can enhance everyday memory and make you feel more confident that you will remember to remember.
• You don’t need to remember everything!
• Tell yourself to ‘stay calm’ because panic will only make remembering more difficult.
• Pay attention to paying attention!
• Use organisation and routine to support memory.
• When you think you need to remember something, do it now, or do something now to help you remember to do it later.
• Use a combination of internal (mental) and external (memory aids) strategies.
• Strategies need to suit you so that you will use them—choose the ones that work best for you.
• As life circumstances change, there may be benefits in testing out new memory strategies.
CHAPTER 7
Working and learning
Not so long ago, people tended to stay in the same job for most of their working lives and retire from that same job. Not anymore! Careers these days usually involve frequent job changes, which means we are dealing with constant change in our workplaces. We are consistently trying to make the unfamiliar more familiar: a new job, a new role, new co-workers, perhaps new technology, or even working in a different country. All this change means an increased load on everybody’s memories—for the old and the young.
If you are one of the few who does stay with the same company and in the same job for many years, you will see the job itself change, as new technology permeates the workplace. Information technology requires constant updating of knowledge, which is much easier for younger workers who have grown up with it. Older workers may require regular training to maintain familiarity and confidence with the technology which seems second nature to younger staffers.
Demands for increased quality and tougher competition force all of us to continually upgrade our skills. We are constantly pushed to learn, improve and adapt. Apart from our own specific work skills, we are now required to learn things not directly related to our job—like emergency procedures, and occupational health and safety protocols.
Often it’s a matter of ‘too much to do in too little time’. It’s easy to become overwhelmed with juggling information, decisions and things to do. We may have too many distractions, too much information and too many choices. We are often deluged with incoming information—texts, phone calls, emails, social media alerts, and still some paper-based mail and information—which we shift to another spot, waiting for the time to respond to or sort through. Unexpected demands are placed on us: we might be requested to prepare a report at the last minute or do the job of two people. A huge volume of work causes anxiety or stress, which often leads to further strain on our ability to remember.
Being an older person at work
We are likely to work to an older age than our parents’ generation. Many people in their fifties or sixties may be happy to retire from full-time work, but still want to remain useful and active. Some seek part-time employment, others may start their own small business. Many want to take up skills and learning opportunities they didn’t have time for before. Older adults may return to study, work from home, work part time, or do voluntary work. They may have to juggle more than one work responsibility, and there may often be family responsibilities too.
‘Old’ is very relative. Being over 40 may be considered ‘over the hill’ in some younger workforces, but in others you’re not considered to be getting older until you are over 65. We might be five or ten or twenty years older than others at work, which may be viewed by ourselves as being senior, more experienced. But not everybody may see it that way; often being older can be seen as a disadvantage, sometimes even by ourselves.
Some people feel at the height of their powers as an older adult, with a world of experience to guide them soundly. Others feel squeezed out of work roles on the grounds of age, or when re-entering the workplace face implicit discrimination, sometimes among fellow staff as well as management. Self-consciousness because of age can have a negative imp
act on work performance. Pride in experience helps to counteract this concern.
I felt really happy to turn 50, so I gave myself a birthday party at work. Never again! After this I was never just Kate, I was Kate who is 50 and ‘different’, and I felt discriminated against because of my age for the first time.
Kate, 50
Older people may experience some mild changes in their memory processes. They may find concentration and attention less acute, and that it takes longer to retrieve names and events from memory storage (as described in Chapter 2)—but strengths in procedural memories (how to do things) and the wisdom of experience usually outweigh these relative inefficiencies. Using strategies to compensate can help to boost confidence.
Be aware of distractions
Being more susceptible to distraction is often a frustration for older people. It shows up when you’re doing more than one thing at a time, or when your attention is being called for by several things at once. It can be hard to ignore distractions, switch between tasks or pick up where you left off. At work, we are increasingly required to do several things at once—like waiting ‘on hold’ on the phone while maybe simultaneously reading documents or checking emails, so as not to waste time.
The workplace has many potential distractions, especially in open-plan offices and staff common rooms, where co-workers often can’t find their volume knobs! Common distractions might come from noise, people talking, alerts sounding on your phone or computer, radio or music playing, buzzing flies, flapping blinds or building works outside your window.
There are always people talking in my shared office. If I really need to concentrate on something, I move somewhere else.
Kay, 42
Our office clown had this annoying habit of walking around in fits of laughter, making jokes whenever he felt like it. Finally I plucked up the courage to assert myself and told him how distracting I found it.
Andrea, 46
Distractions at work throw me off now. I’ll start doing something, like writing an email, and get distracted and go on to doing something else. Ages later I realise that I didn’t send the email that I had been working on before.
Dee, 58
I’ll be in the middle of fitting a tap and my phone will ring. I want to answer it, but I know I’m likely to forget what the person is saying because I’m distracted. I’ve worked out it’s better not to answer the call when I’m in the middle of a job. I return all my calls later in the day, when I can pay full attention to what the person is saying, and jot down any important details.
Ted, 56
We can also be distracted by things we see—people moving in our line of sight, changing lighting, messages coming up on our screens, and clutter. Clutter may be documents, notes, client files or receipts all in a jumble on your computer desktop or your actual desk. It could be unsorted stuff in your drawers or your files. Maybe it is the 67 new email messages in your inbox when you log on to the computer! This external clutter affects our ability to concentrate, and makes it harder to remember where we have put things. It can be distracting and harder to focus, so the aim is to keep it out of sight.
To ‘de-clutter’, it helps to:
• screen information as soon as it arrives
• throw out what you don’t need to read or keep (ask yourself, ‘Will I really use it?’)
• check emails less frequently, and decide whether you really need to be on so many copy lists.
I found if I changed the position of my computer, I was less distracted by seeing people walking past me.
Stuart, 56
Our own thoughts and concerns can also be distracting. You might be distracted by your emotions if you have just returned to work after a disturbing event. You might be a carer, concerned about the needs of a person left at home. Parents at work can often feel a sense of guilt and anxiety about leaving their children in someone else’s care. A colleague at work might be standing over you, making you anxious. You might be in a state of panic because you are running late for an important appointment or job interview. You can also experience stress from highly significant events—you can be just as distracted by an exciting surprise as by something awful.
If we are not able to pay attention, then we can’t expect to get the most out of our abilities to remember. To improve your likelihood of paying attention, think about:
• arriving ahead of time for appointments and meetings, and spending the extra time preparing for the meeting
• avoiding over-scheduling, which makes it impossible to be on time, and easy to succumb to stress, worry and fatigue
• deferring any new learning situation, or making sure it can be repeated soon, if you are really tired from not sleeping well
• building time into your life for emotional emergencies, physical activity and fun!
• planning for 10 minutes a day of mental space, or meditation, or being in a quiet place—even lying in the bath thinking of nothing at all.
Focus on just one thing at a time whenever possible, and work on ways to reduce possible distractions that can make you irritable, anxious and affect your ability to remember at work. A quiet, organised workplace is an asset at any age but, as we get older, may become more of a necessity.
See Chapter 3 for other factors that could be adversely affecting your work performance, and Chapter 6 for more ideas on enhancing attention.
Learning new tricks
No matter what age we are, we do not stop learning. Our workplaces demand that we regularly learn new things and update our knowledge. We might be offered training courses, asked to read instruction manuals, or attend seminars to learn new information. It seems that there is always new technology to master—a new smartphone, new computer software system, or new television with a complicated remote-control device. Many older people engage in voluntary work, and also like to develop hobbies, interests or intellectual opportunities. There are courses for anything and everything—ballroom dancing, watercolour painting, or even training your dog! A new job, technological device or hobby might be enticing, but can lead to anxiety, with a feeling of, ‘I’m too old for that.’ As we get older, we sometimes doubt our ability to learn new things. This makes sense: the research into ageing tells us that it may take longer to learn new things because we are often slower to encode and retrieve new information from memory storage than we were in our younger years.
The important news is that we all can, and do, learn new things, no matter what age we are. We just need to accept that this process may take more time as we age, and be harder to master. All we need to do is adapt our learning by being strategic!
If I do something myself, I remember; if someone shows me, I don’t.
Vera, 62
‘I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand’ is an old saying that captures well how we learn. When learning something new in a group setting such as a seminar, become as actively involved as possible:
• Process the information in as many ways as possible—examine any visual aids, take notes and draw diagrams.
• Ask questions and join in discussions.
• Volunteer to participate in demonstrations or activities, and go over the key points on your way home.
• If possible, run through the points you want to recall with a friend or colleague the next day.
A training course generally offers opportunities to practise newly learned skills:
• Watch any demonstrations carefully and ask questions. The more you understand the new information, the easier it will be to remember it later.
• Actively practise each step of the task yourself.
• If you make mistakes, don’t be overly concerned; mistakes are an important part of learning.
• Keep personalised notes next to any equipment that you are learning how to use.
• Finding a sympathetic tutor is a great help, and younger ones can help imbue enthusiasm and confidence; just make sure they work at your pace! Ask the person
who is teaching you to go slowly, and to repeat themselves if necessary.
• Practise the new skill straight after you have been shown how to do it, following the notes that you have written down. Use ‘spaced recall’ to consolidate the information. Do this by practising the new skill repeatedly, but slowly increasing the length of time between practice.
When learning from reading books, processing the information at a deeper level helps to anchor information in your memory. You can do this by:
• highlighting important information
• making notes in the margin
• drawing diagrams of new information
• writing summaries of the key new concepts or information in your own words, or reading the information out loud to yourself
• linking the information to other related information that you already know well
• quizzing yourself about the information at increasing time intervals after reading it
• teaching someone else the new information, which is a great way to consolidate your learning.
When learning instructions for how to use a new piece of equipment, it can help if you:
• Actively try out each step as you read it in the instruction manual, and even talk out loud as you practise each new step.
• Write out in your own words, or draw a diagram of, the steps required to operate the piece of equipment.
• Check online for video instructions for the appliance.
• Go to the shop you bought the appliance or device from, and ask them to show you how to use it.
• Put personalised step-by-step instructions on, or next to, new equipment, devices or appliances, so you can follow your instructions again the next time you use them.
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