I wrote an article for Sixty and Me in 2020 entitled Don’t Be Afraid to Do Something Badly… At First. It was inspired by the boredom associated with the pandemic restrictions, resulting in having far too much idle time. A friend, also struggling with boredom, suggested the topic for the article, having encountered some resistance to trying something new at this point in her life, when we can be so complacent in our capacity and abilities. We ended up trying watercolors together and discovered, although we didn’t create a masterpiece, we did enjoy the novelty.
Discovering Answers
I haven’t thought much about that article until I came upon an interesting piece explaining that our brains record less details as we age because it disregards old patterns and familiar experiences. With less memories being recorded and stored, life can feel a little empty and mundane, with time seemingly moving along faster than ever before.
The Research on How We Engrain Memories
Adrian Bejan, scientist, researcher, renowned professor at Duke University, and author of 34 books, including Why Time Flies and Beauty Never Dies, in which he explains that part of the reason we perceive a quickening of the passage of time involves changes to the pathways through our eyes into the various parts of our brain.
As our bodies age, our receptors slow down and less of what we see is recorded. He also hypothesizes that the neuro processing centers in our brain predict experiences if they seem familiar, rather than recording them as a new memory. This results in less images being held in the memory and more of our day being labeled as already recorded. It would be like reading a normal newspaper, compared to one with 50% blank pages. We would speed past the empty pages and therefore the activity would go by more quickly.
Creating Experiences Worthy of Remembering
So, what does this mean? How do we mindfully experience our remaining life and retain memories? One way is to expand our experiences, visit new places, try new activities, learn new skills. The more we give our mind to perceive and analyze, the longer it will take to process. The more we engage, the more unique the experience, the more we explore the unknown, the fuller we fill our lives, and the deeper the engagement, the slower the time will pass.
This does not require exotic trips to far off places, it can be as simple as taking a new route to a destination without relying on our GPS, walking in a different park rather than our usual place, taking up a new hobby or enrolling in a class on an unfamiliar topic.
Single Tasking Rather Than Multi-Tasking
Our generation coined the phrase and the practice of multi-tasking, believing we could optimize our time by increasing production. The term was originally used by IBM in the mid-‘60s to describe a computer’s ability to process more than one task at a time. It was never meant to be a human function.
And the irony is we didn’t really accomplish that much more. Conversely, it resulted in more stress and less satisfaction, as we lived our lives at a pace that left us with nothing more than a blur of a memory. In order, to relish our time, we need to single-task, focusing on what is in front of us at the moment, doing it with focus and intention.
This requires being fully in the moment rather than fracturing our attention among many thoughts, tasks and distractions. This calms the mind, reduces stress and allows our brain the capacity to deeply experience where we are and what we are doing, resulting in a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction, and experiences that are more likely to be recorded as memories.
Reflecting for Retention and Including the Emotion
Another technique that can help us deepen the memories of our everyday life, is mindful reflection. It is recommended that we take a few minutes just before falling asleep to recall the highlights of our day, including acknowledging the emotions associated with what happened, as well as the details. This engrains the experience as a long-term memory while our brain slips into REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep.
Our remarkable brains assign our memories into the various regions. Emotional memories are stored within the limbic system, the Amygdala and the Hippocampus, while the Cortex handles conscious experience. The Amygdala tags experiences with emotion, making emotional moments more memorable while the Hippocampus links them to context and the Prefrontal Cortex helps regulate them. By focusing on individual moments of our day, we give them more depth, diversity and a better chance of being recalled later, resulting in a richer, substantial memory that will be retained.
We can’t slow time, but we can fill it differently, make it more enriching and interesting as we live it more fully. It just takes some creativity and dedication, and to me, having a life worth remembering seems worth the effort.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
What’s the most interesting thing that happened to you yesterday? What do you remember about your daily life? Do you think it’s too boring and unworthy of remembering?