The last couple weeks, something exciting has happened. Sometimes, I can remember three or four intended actions, in sequence, for multiple hours. My partner and I can decide that first we'll have lunch, then one of us will fix the weed whacker while the other watches our kid in the backyard, and then we will all go pick up our groceries. And, we actually do all those things in order, without having to write them down or set reminders.
Perhaps this sounds like a basic skill and you're not sure why I'm celebrating it. Or perhaps you, too, recognize having this lack, either currently or in other times in your life. Either way, we're talking about working memory.
I learned about working memory when I first began making sketchnotes. While some folks take up sketchnoting to get better at drawing, I took it up to get more proficient at moving ideas from my head to the world.
When I took visual notes while listening to a presentation, it was inevitable that I would be drawing something from moments before while listening to what was happening right then. Plus, I needed to remember whatever was happening in between, so I could draw it, too, if it turned out to be important enough.
At first, I would miss points pretty frequently. There'd be a blank space in my notes, and nothing in my brain from the talk to fill it. As I practiced, though, I got better at holding all those things—past, present, and recently-present—in my head, and most times, I could capture what I thought were the most important parts of a presentation.
Sketchnoting was exercising my working memory. It helped me get better at remembering things that had just happened until I needed to use them again, even while I was currently taxed with taking in new information.
Unfortunately, practice with working memory did not prepare me for accessing it during the sleeplessness and exhaustion of caring for a newborn during the first weeks and months of the pandemic.
Despite names being so important to me, and having picked it out only days before we returned home from the hospital, our precious child's name often eluded me. After some time of struggling and feeling terrible about it—it could have been hours or days, I honestly can't recall—I finally put sticky notes with his name on them above his changing table and co-sleeper, so I could burn it into what little of my brain was working.
I worried about what kind of parent I could be if I couldn’t even remember the name we ourselves had picked out. But loving him wasn't what would fix the problem. Reminders and repetition and sleep did. That's just how working memory works! Or doesn't, as the case may be.
In the meantime, though, I was doing something that was using the strengths I still had. By making and posting the sticky notes, I was utilizing a different brain function: externalized memory.
Because, you see, I didn't only know his name when I could see the sticky notes. I could also remember that the sticky notes existed, and I could choose to go look at them when I was somewhere else and struggling to remember his name. By using something in the world to store information I might otherwise store in my brain, I was using externalized memory.
Being able to distinguish between these two different ways of remembering information, and how they each work, has been immensely useful in my research practice. Knowing that my working memory struggles when I'm tired makes it easy for me to justify scheduling thirty minute breaks between research sessions, so I can focus while I'm listening to participants. Knowing that I can free my mind of tasks with externalized memory makes it easy for me to decide to use checklists for my setup protocols, both so I don't forget to do any key steps and so I can keep my mind clear for the sessions.
By knowing about these two types of memory, I'm able to choose when I use which. Working memory is convenient and sometimes unreliable; externalized memory requires materials and action and is often reliable.
Most days, I'm able to use a combination of both. And in the times when my brain isn't excelling at working memory, I can know that externalized memory will get me through—even if it means I have to write that down so I can remember it.
Mentioned in this issue: Working memory (here explained by Understood.org), and externalized memory (here considered in a piece by Julie Beck for The Atlantic), and also sketchnoting (here illustrated by my sketchnotes).