With a scarf dangling from your coat pocket and those gloves left behind at the coffee shop, there are simply more things to lose in winter. That鈥檚 not counting your misplaced keys at home or those exasperated moments looking for your phone when you say, 鈥淚 just had it!鈥�
Try not to beat yourself up. Even Mark McDaniel, who has been studying for almost 50 years, left a hat under his chair recently at a restaurant. He doesn鈥檛 usually wear hats, so he forgot it.
鈥淚 should know how to remember to remember, but at the moment, you don鈥檛 think you鈥檙e going to forget,鈥� said McDaniel, professor emeritus of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
Luckily, there are strategies. If you can remember to implement them, here鈥檚 how to stop losing things.
A breakdown in the brain
Daniel L. Schacter, a Harvard University psychology professor and author of 鈥淭he Seven Sins of Memory,鈥� said losing things is something , to varying degrees. It depends on life circumstances that pull the mind away from the present.
Rather than having a bad memory, it might be 鈥渁 breakdown at the interface of memory and attention,鈥� Schacter said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what’s responsible, based on research, based on personal experience, for a lot of the memory failures that would result in losing things.鈥�
Memory occurs in three phases in the brain: encoding, storage and retrieval. Schacter likened losing your keys to drivers who arrive at their destination safely without remembering how they got there.
In both cases, the memory of the action is not encoded because people were thinking of something else, which makes it harder to retrieve the memory later.
鈥淵ou have to do a little bit of cognitive work,鈥� Schacter said. 鈥淎t the time of encoding, you have to focus your attention.鈥�
For things you use regularly
It helps to not have to remember where some things are.
Schacter suggested identifying problem items such as your phone, wallet or keys and creating a structure that becomes automatic with practice. He always leaves his reading glasses in a specific spot in the kitchen. When he goes golfing, his phone always goes into the same pocket in his golf bag.
鈥淢aybe not always, but, you know, a very high percentage of the time,鈥� he said.
If there is a noticeable increase in losing things compared to the recent past, accompanied by other memory problems that interfere with your normal function, it might be time to , Schacter said.
For things you don’t use regularly
McDaniel said that the brain does a better job at remembering things when it receives several bits of information that can later be connected. Among memory researchers, it鈥檚 known as elaboration.
One way to stop losing objects you don鈥檛 habitually use 鈥� but often lose, like a hat 鈥� is to say out loud where you put it when you put it down. Verbalizing does two things that help with retrieval.
鈥淪aying it out loud creates a better encoding because it makes you pay attention, and the verbalization creates a richer memory,鈥� McDaniel said.
The more detailed the elaboration, the more connections in the brain there will be to help you remember.
An extreme version of elaboration is the 鈥渕emory palace鈥� that memory competitors use during championships. To remember a series of numbers and other challenges, they visualize a familiar, structured environment like a house or route, imagining the numbers in particular places.
For something like your hat, imagine it in the location and connect it to a reason and a consequence: 鈥淚 put my hat under the chair because I didn鈥檛 want to get it dirty on the table, but I left it behind last time.鈥�
You might not remember to grab it when you leave, but you鈥檒l probably remember where you left it.
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EDITOR鈥橲 NOTE: Albert Stumm writes about wellness, food and travel. Find his work at
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