I am a smart person with memory problems. I found out of this problem at 28, and found a way to radically improve my memory. It is not Evernote, if you want to know scroll down or read the article 😉
Background
Since I was a kid, in academic matters I have always been at the top 5%. I am smart, but not so smart. I have always been more of a fan of numbers than of words. I studied industrial engineering and economics and graduated top 5%. The topics in which I had the lower performance were those in which I needed to read, like history and economic history. Despite I liked history my performance was bad.
Instead, I thrived in topics like calculus and programming. I simply did a lot of exercises and somehow I simply memorized everything.
In the university, my study technique was simply cramming 1-3 days before the exam. I never had enough self-organization nor self-discipline to study in a different way. I did not need a different way, I was getting extremely good grades.
Despite my grades, It was no secret for me that after the exam I forgot almost everything. It was not problematic for me since my objective was getting good grades.
The memory problem
However, I started noticing something: though I enjoyed reading (and I read several books), I could not remember anything few minutes after I closed the book. At first it was not problematic for me, for me the sole fact of reading was something cool. Even more, for me the sole fact of buying books, already made me feel good (yes, how dumb).
I continued reading constantly, but I still had the same problem. At the time, I was reading a lot of Gary North’s books. I bought into Reconstructionism, but despite reading a lot, I realized that I was simply a sympathizer and that I did not have the skill to be an activist.
When I finished my master in economics I switch into technology. I was happy because now I felt that I will always be in my strength zone (programming). However I quickly realized that I spent a lot of time in Google searching for the same things. I repeated the same search in Google every week because I forgot what the answer was in the first place.
A preliminary solution: Evernote
It was quite frustrating to acknowledge that I had a memory problem, even when I was in my strength zone. I started to take better notes and to use Evernote. It was a major improvement. I tried to take notes on anything I learned and the problems that I faced everyday in the office with their solution.
However, the problem with Evernote is that I forget the notes that I have inside Evernote. This is, I may have the solution to problem A inside Evernote, but when I have problem A again, I forgot that I have the answer inside Evernote, so I start doing the whole research again.
Answer from heaven: Anki
I was quite sad that despite I was in my strength zone I would not be able to be in the top 20% nor the top 4% of my profession because this memory problem. It was not worth reading anymore if I would forget everything.
Then, I found an article of someone who had the same problem as me. Basically the guy was envious because he had a coworker that was 10 times more productive than everyone in the office simply because it had photographic memory. The author found Anki and it basically turned is life around.
Anki is a free flashcard software. Basically you write down flashcards and Anki will ask them back to you at specific time intervals. For this, Anki uses a technique called spaced-repetition, which basically aims at asking you something before you forget it.
When you add a card, Anki will ask the new card to you. If you had the correct answer it will ask you the same card in 10 minutes, if you have it right again it will ask you the card the next day, if you had it right it will ask you in one week, and so on. If you feel that you have forgotten the card you basically start from scratch.
This sounds very simple but It has been one of the secrets closes to my heart. Now basically whatever I learned I put it into Anki. Then every day when I am in the train to work (in the days before Corona) I spent 40 minutes reviewing cards. When I arrived at my work I was sharp as a knife.
Anki is a variant of one of the study techniques that Dr. North recommends. Dr. North said that you can convert your time in the bus into gold by using flashcards. This is basically the same, but it takes advantage of technology to distribute intelligently the cards to you.
Conclusion
This program returned hope to me. I feel that I have good memory now. I feel that I am more proficient in my job. I feel that now I can learn anything!
Today, my Anki has 4415 cards and grows everyday. I have spent 186 hours studying, I have made around 35K card reviews.
And now I understand some of the aspects of my story that I told you above. Part of not being good with reading topics was that I did not have good memory so basically I forgot all that I read. (I think I also have some reading comprehension issues but that is another topic). And given that I always had good grades, I did not bother to look into the problem until I was 28.
Hope this article benefits you.
