Why do I blog? Memory Management

One of the questions that I get asked from time to time is “why do you write a blog?” it’s a fair question – writing takes time and energy, so why bother? There are a number of answers to this question and today I’m only going to deal with one of them – memory management.

“Memory is a child walking along a seashore.  You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.” Pierce Harris, Atlanta Journal

I’m over 40 now and my memory is not what it used to be. This isn’t some kind of misinformed modesty statement, your brain starts to loose connections from your 20’s onwards, and my brain is going through the same natural cycle. I’m trying to do things to protect what I have, but I can only slow it down. I’m also learning a whole set of management techniques to mitigate for this loss. Learning them early seems like the best way of making sure that they are embedded within my working practice before I really need them.

One of the most powerful ways of managing memory is to write. Once something has been written the brain seems to archive the information and only remembers a pointer to the information. The challenge is then to have a really good pointer or search system available. That’s where the blog comes in.

What I write on the blog naturally gets a pointer, that’s the way that blogs works. Adding tags makes for even more pointers. What’s more it also gets full text search so if my brain pointers aren’t quite correct I can still find what I want. I can then let my brain archive the information without having to worry about finding it again.

Sometimes I’ll meet someone who reads my blog and they’ll make a comment about something I have written and I’ll be surprised by what they have read. I’ve already archived it but it’s fresh and new to them. It sometimes takes me a few seconds to remember what it is they are talking about.

Off now to forget this information.