Granted, everyone has those memory lapse moments at work such as completely forgetting about a vital task, turning up at a meeting at the wrong time or being unable to name an important contact.
However, the most common cause of memory fails is associated with working under intense pressure and stress. Luckily, you can overcome these types of unpleasant moments in the future with the help of personal resilience training.
Building personal resilience is not only a crucial resource you can rely on during challenging times, but also a practice from which you can learn viable methods and practical steps that ensure your memory does not let you down again.
Following is a list of tips and tricks you can use to try and improve your memory at work.
• Cut down on multitasking
While efficiency is often associated with the ability to do several tasks at the same time, in reality the brain is not quite proficient at multitasking.
In fact, when you attempt to do two things at once, the brain does not approach them simultaneously, but rather switches from one to another.
Swapping from project to project has a negative impact on memory and, even if you learn something new during the process, you are less likely to remember it later on.
• Break the information into clusters
When you are giving a presentation, splitting the chunks of information into clusters makes it easier for everyone. Not only will you be able to remember it easier, but you can also be sure that the audience can follow you, pay attention and remember the key points.
• Practise to remember relevant information
Because people are programmed to recall information that is relevant for them, an efficient method to boost your memory implies associating the new info with what you already know.
In other words, you will need to train yourself to look beyond the facts and figure out whether the new data is important for you. Furthermore, do not forget to pay attention to the information presented and make an effort to remember it.
• Make use of associations and imagery
Perhaps the most common memory-related problem is failing to recall the names of people you just met. While for some repeating the name as often as possible could work, coaches claim that associating an image to the name is more efficient in this case. In addition, the more vivid and striking the visual image, the more likely you are to remember the person’s name.
• Associate info with context
In case you are having trouble remembering a particular piece of information, then it might be useful to think of the context where you heard it. Ideally, it would be really helpful if you were able to return to the room where you first heard the information. However, since this is not always possible, an alternative is to try to picture with the situation you were involved in. Moreover, thinking of the emotional context or recalling the mood you were in is also helpful in these particular circumstances.
These may sound like small things but with stress and stress related problems on the increase – particularly at work – minor steps to increase memory and boost personal resilience can provide big and worthwhile benefits to an individual.
Featured images:
License: Image author owned
Lucy like most individuals has suffered with memory problems at work as a result of personal and work-related stress – she’s read some of the articles on the site Personal Resilience to get some tips and has found them useful.
