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recent
How can I improve my memory of facts and figures?
Today I had my last "final group presentation" to give. It was an agonizingly presumptuous report about how the International Labor Organization can be improved by doing no less than revising their entire vision, core purpose, core values, and strategic goals to be more in line with a systems view of sustainability. Aside from the fact that our presentation was based only on what was on their web-site, an hour conversation with a part-time contract employee, and pure imagination, it went pretty well. No thanks to my extraordinary ability to forget even the most basic ideas when I have to present them in a certain set order.. not to mention my uncanny ability to retain not only three, not only two, but zero, count them ZERO dates, facts or figures regarding... well, anything. Luckily my group-mates are amazingly adept at recalling impressive sounding numbers and dates. (thanks guys).
Thankfully, it's something I realized quite early in school life (which saved me from a lot of wasted time trying to memorize worthless dates), and it showed in my grades (maybe sixth from the bottom of my high-school class). When I got into university the tests were less rote memory based and more conceptual, so I was able to graduate with a fairly respectable record. In the real world, of course, there are walks of life one can pursue that don't require such a skill, and I have never needed to recall a figure or date for the past six years. I'm not ashamed to say that I lived in my apartment in Tokyo over four years and still had to keep my own phone number written on a cheat sheet in my wallet (I couldn't recite Tomoe's number, but if I have the touch-tone phone I can dial it)
Anyway, I do realize that this inability to recall such ordered, structured, factual information hurts me at some times. Today for example, after the presentation, the other students asked the usual barrage of questions (as if we actually knew anything about the inner workings of the ILO). Even simple questions that we do have the answer for... "How many countries does the ILO have offices in?" Had I been alone, my answer would have had to been "I can't remember the exact figure, but it's a bunch." My capable group-mates however were able to rattle off the number of countries, and an impressive barrage of other facts.
This lack of ability to recall facts manifests itself in my writing for this blog as well. If anyone actually reads the posts, you may notice that I rarely if ever write about any specific facts. This may be a combination of laziness, since with the blog I could , if I wanted to spend the time, look it up, but usually, I simply shy away from topics that would need any kind of factual back-up. Even though I "know" the facts, from my readings or lectures, writing about it on the blog would require me to search through all my notes, or worse yet, an entire book, to find an exact number or two.
Part of me says "hey, logically, we don't all have to be able to remember everything... so long as one of us can." but the other part of me doesn't like sitting there like a dumb stump while the others answer. How can I improve that little weakness?
It must be hereditary. I just defended my thesis yesterdy and for something that i spent 1.5 years of my life on, i remembered surprisingly few numbers and detailed information. i alos have the worst time trying to remember the populations of cities i've lived in...and you know how people like to ask things like that...always embarrassing.
Kelly, Don't worry about the memory failure. It will only get worse. Don't clutter up your mind with some of this useless data (like city population of cities that are constantly growing. How do you measure it anyway with artificial boundaries ect). Keep you mind clear for the more important things that you need to remember.
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