Management Tips:

Memory power, key component to succeed in business

Dr. K. Kuhathasan, CEO, Cenlead

Excellent memory power! Is it a gift or a reward for your efforts? Is it inborn or can it be developed through your efforts?

Your memory, which you may consider to be poor, is really quite excellent! It is just that you do not have full control of it! It works haphazardly, and it is this hit-or-miss nature that you have to overcome.

You may be able to recall few of the poems you have memorised in school! You may be able to recollect few of the arithmetic tables you have memorised during school days! Wonderful! Your memory is, therefore, in good working order!

When you forget the name of a person to whom you have recently been introduced, or where you kept things, that is simply because you do not file those facts properly in your brain. A good memory is not a gift. It is a reward! Use it in the right way and it will amply reward you!

How memory works

You have two forms of memory-short-term and long-term (technically) there's a third, medium-term memory that sits in between.

Short-term memory is a working store, like the memory of a computer, which is lost when the computer is turned off.

Your short-term memory is very small-in essence you can only cope with a handful of items, typically around seven at a time, in short-term memory.

When you plug something else into the memory, it pushes an item out. You can see short-term memory in action between looking up a phone number in a book and dialing it.

It might seem strange, if short-term memory is limited to around seven items that you can cope with a ten-digit number. Luckily, human memory is more flexible than a computer.

Long-term memory is a whole different ball game. To all intents and purposes the capacity is unlimited. You have plenty of storage for everything.

But registering something into long-term memory is not as simple as short-term memory. Using short-term memory is an act of will that is implemented immediately-Getting something registered into long-term memory requires planned and organized effort.

Why your memory fails

Stress

Everyone knows that age affects memory. However, a little known fact is that stress and negative emotions also influence memory capabilities. The more complex or high-stress the day is, the more likely is the person to forget things. Therefore, it is vitally important to relax and set a normal pace as far as possible.

Alcohol

Smoking, alcohol and drugs can also be the cause for short-term memory lapses.

A healthy body leads to a healthy mind. Therefore, proper sleep, wholesome diet and regular exercise can increase attention span and memory. Even recent research supports that 30 minutes of physical activity most days of the week will slow mental decline. For working people, six to seven hours of sound sleep is essential.

Inattention

Forgetfulness can be largely attributed to inattention or preoccupation. Absent-minded people should cut out probable distractions; try to be more attentive and concentrate on details.

The value of memory

But, is there any reason for having a good memory these days, when everything's can be calculated with ease, retrieved from a database or found on the web? Absolutely. You have a huge wasted memory capacity that will serve you much more flexible and quicker than using a computer.

By using a few memory tricks you can enjoy personal advantage, over others.

If you can remember the names of everyone in a new team or group, you will be more effective and impressive. And in many other circumstances, memory can save you time and add value to your work.

It's not a matter of being an information magpie and trying to remember everything about everything, but about capturing the information that will be of most value to you and having it readily to hand.

Organisation

Organisation is important in memory improvement, and is usually considered essential for retrieval of information.

In some ways, memory can be thought of as filling cabinet, and an organised filing system saves the individual time and frustration in finding particular information. The key is to associate new information with information already in the system. The key organisational techniques include mediation and imagery.

Meditation helps you organise and remember material by making words, sentences, or other connections out of the information. For example, you could insert a word between two words you are trying to remember.

If you needed to remember milk and bread you might insert the word white. Then you can associate both white milk and white bread.

Imagery

Imagery is the technique of making mental pictures of the material to be remembered. It is important to make the images as vivid as possible.

For example, with milk and bread, you might picture a huge water fountain made out of loaf of bread, with milk flowing out of it.

Mnemonics

The third technique of organising material in memory is mnemonics. A mnemonic sometimes combines mediation and imagery, but uses an already existing organisation scheme.

A mnemonic is like a peg on a pegboard in that it allows you to hang information on the peg.

The key to all of these memory techniques is to personalise them and make them work for you.

Theories of forgetting

Sometimes we can remember things that happened to us as children, while at other times we seem to forget what happened to us yesterday.

Are memories permanent, or do they tend to fade with time? And if memories are permanent, why can't we retrieve needed information whenever we want to?

Forgetting refers to the apparent loss of memory. There are several major theories of forgetting. Including decay, interference, and motivated forgetting (repression).

Decay according to the traditional theory, sensory impressions and acquired knowledge of facts leave memory traces that fade away with time or decay. This is commonsense theory, and is believed by many people. But, there is very little experimental evidence that decay occurs to memories in our long-term memory store.

We already know that we tend to forget things after a time, but not all memories fade away like photographs in old newspapers or unused paths in a forest.

Sometimes we can recall a fact today that we could not remember yesterday. And, under hypnosis or through electrical brain stimulation, we can sometimes remember occurrences from our past that we are unable to recall while fully conscious and alert.

Decay might operate in short-term memory, where information fades within 30 seconds if not rehearsed, but that does not seem to be the case with long-term memory.

Memory development is a wital key component for a businessman since his future adoption of business asgenda is base on past experience.

To be Continued