For me, the best way to remember things has always been to write them down somewhere. When I was in high school, I was that kind of student always taking notes on his notebook - furiously jotting down stuff fearing I might forget some important detail. With MacStories today, I try to keep my to-do list neatly organized in OmniFocus by quickly entering anything I have to do at any given time of the day or the week – OmniFocus makes it incredibly easy to enter tasks with a few keystrokes, and I “trust” the system to remember, collect and sort tasks for me so my brain can focus on getting those tasks done or something else entirely. I try to keep my memory in good shape, but when information becomes too much to handle I know I can rely on OmniFocus, Evernote and Dropbox to store all my tasks, notes and documents – the great thing about apps nowadays is that I’m not forced to exercise my brain for this kind of activity.
There’s one thing I never really considered storing in a digital archiving app – memories. I’m talking about things like “what did I enjoy doing today” or “I decided to take a walk with my girlfriend” – specific moments that matter in life, that are important, but which our brains often blur and forget after some time to make room for new data to process and maintain. Let’s be honest: do you remember the exact day and context when you ate that fantastic Italian pizza seven months ago? You probably have a vague recollection of what it tasted like and maybe you even remember the restaurant owner’s Italian accent, but you can’t quite get your mind around every single detail that made that moment so special. Either that, or you were busy tweeting a photo of your pizza while you were eating it.
I try to enjoy every moment, but there’s so much the human brain can remember and it’s perfectly normal something will get lost in the process of assimilating thoughts and processing them to turn them into memories and experiences. Read more
