Memory improvement experiment!

I've come up with an experiment to improve my memory. I came up with the idea whilst in the shower, a place where many good ideas manifest.

Background:
Over the years I've read bits and pieces of information from memory champions, psychology papers and blogs etc. I'm not entiely certain this idea is original, but it likely has it's roots in the reading I've done. As many people know, memory is relational - much like a relational database.

It's broken up into tables called 'schema'. For example, a table for "animals", which has a record of each animal we're aware of. The animals table contains a record for "dogs", which has the 'standard' characteristics of dogs and links to the table for "dogs" which has a record for each breed. When something is learned that doesn't fit within the currently established schema, a new one is created. In this way, information is stored logically and, as stronger relationships are built with repetative use, the pathways become easier to access.

Hypothesis:
My theory is that, while this is the 'default' storage method of information in the brain, the brain can get out habit of storing information; thus things don't get stored from working memory and are simply lost as more information comes in from our surroundings. That being the case, my idea is to get into the habit of storing information again, and I will discribe this below.

Method:
To begin with, I will be using a physical box. This box will be used to physically store information that I wish to remember. I will become familiar with this box until I can picture it effortlessly in my mind. This box will be used to represent my brain, storing information in it to be recalled later.

In order to measure my recall, I will quiz myself on what's in the box. In the first week, I will quiz myself every day and the number of items in the box will be few, no more than 7, and I will simply need to recall what information is in there, not what that information is. For example, I will recall that I have put in there a recipe for making a chocolate cake, but not the recipe itself. I will score myself in two ways: speed of recollection and accuracy of recollection. Speed of recollection will be recorded in seconds with a maximum time of 60 seconds and accuracy will be a score from 0-2; where 0 means not recalled, 1 means partially recalled and 2 means fully recalled.

In the next week, I will continue to quiz myself each day, but will attempt to recall the information as well as what the information is, for example; For example, I will recall that I have put in there a recipe for making a chocolate cake and the ingredients and method. I will score myself the same as before but with an extra score for the contents, for example, 36 seconds to recall, 2 (complete) for recalling that there is a recipe for a chocolate cake, 1(partial) for the ingredients and method.

From here, each week I will quiz myself less frequently, every second day, third day, and finally once a week. If improvement is not seen, I may repeat a week. For example, I fail at recalling information in the first week of quizzing every third day so I try again for another week until I am able to recall the information.

After quzzing myself once a week for a month, I will remove the box and store the information in a 'mental box' and repeat the process, again recording my results as before.

Rippling Reflections

First and foremost, this blog is for myself. I've no other reason for writing it than self improvement. The idea of doing it as a blog is to encourage me to write; having a writing space where I can essentially store my thoughts and reflections is a key starting point to getting it flowing. Simply having the space will encourage me to write by allowing me to feel like there is a special place where these things can all go. If anyone reads this, and I've no reason to believe they will, anything they get from it is unimportant to me.

This has been coming for a while. I've done some reading and research and the result of that research is that one of the most effective ways to resolve issues is to write them down; studies have shown it's actually far more effective than talking about things with a close friend. This seems counter-intuitive but it's actually not. Why?  Words in your head are transient and lacking clarity but because writing things down is, essentially, 'permanent', you can go back over it and more-or-less debate with yourself in ways that thinking alone don't quite allow. Talking with friends doesn't help because you're getting their point of view, not yours, and it is your point of view that matters when resolving internal conflict and/or problems.

The name of this blog is an attempt at visualising what I will be writing about. It is a fact that memories are reconstructed; it's not like a photo or video of an event, it's a number of key features that are recalled and formed together to reproduce the scene. Some people are better at it than others, those with so-called eidetic memory are meant to be able to recall an image, for example, as if they were currently looking at it. However, for most of us, these images are very unclear and we can sort of remember what they look like and pick out a few key details - this lack of clarity I compare to ripples upon a pond. Reflections refers to both the analysis of recalled events [self reflection] and also the perception of current events.

Hence Rippled Reflections represents the way we we poorly recall and interpret events.