I had to reboot my memory last week as this process of remembering every day that passes went into meltdown. It happened just as I reached the 1000 day milestone.
I was having a hectic time and was unable to complete my daily review of memory tags for the same day of the month stretching back to 2011.
Whenever this happens, I catch up by reviewing consecutive days the following day. For example, today is 17 September, so I will review the 17th of each month. If I hadn't completed the review yesterday, I would call up the images pinned to my mental calendar for the 16th and 17th of each month.
Last week the missed days piled up so I was faced with reviewing not two, but three then four days of each month, which began to feel overwhelming. If I didn't complete the review, the next day I'd have even more days to run through.
The solution seemed obvious: full memory reboot.
I did something I have not done for a long time. I ran through every day from the start of this process on 17 December 2011.
It took several days as I had to fit it into spare moments, just as with my usual day-per-month review.
My day still began with a more detailed review of the past 6 months, though here too I was experiencing problems as I explained in my last post. I only fully recovered all the memory tags for the last month yesterday.
Once the 6-month review was out of the way - or as much of it as I could manage - I picked up the full run through from where I had left off. There was something comforting in this. The feeling of being overwhelmed at having missed several days of reviews left me. Even though I knew this would take some time, I would still be revisiting past days with less than the month-long gap my established method involved, so could stop worrying that images would fade away in the time it took for me to reach them.
The advantage of a sequential run through is many of the images for consecuitve days are linked. I put to one side any days that did not immediately come to mind and went back to them later. After four days I had gone through the 1000+ days since I began this process without losing a single memory tag.
As I passed the day of the month I would have been reviewing in my normal method, it gave me a boost to see I could soon switch back to it.
It did occur to me that a sequential review could become my new refresh technique. Instead of a day-per-month review, I could review say four consecutive months per day. In my present technique the same day comes around about every 30 days. Covering four months per day would give enable me to review 10 years of memory tags before the time between reviewing the same day hits 30 days.
I am not switching to this method just yet for a simple reason. Reviewing sequential days put me into that time period. I was reliving the past.
The day-per-month review is very different. It gives me perspective over time and links today to past days. That feels much more healthy.
Even so, I now have a memory reboot method should I need it.
I was having a hectic time and was unable to complete my daily review of memory tags for the same day of the month stretching back to 2011.
Whenever this happens, I catch up by reviewing consecutive days the following day. For example, today is 17 September, so I will review the 17th of each month. If I hadn't completed the review yesterday, I would call up the images pinned to my mental calendar for the 16th and 17th of each month.
Last week the missed days piled up so I was faced with reviewing not two, but three then four days of each month, which began to feel overwhelming. If I didn't complete the review, the next day I'd have even more days to run through.
The solution seemed obvious: full memory reboot.
I did something I have not done for a long time. I ran through every day from the start of this process on 17 December 2011.
It took several days as I had to fit it into spare moments, just as with my usual day-per-month review.
My day still began with a more detailed review of the past 6 months, though here too I was experiencing problems as I explained in my last post. I only fully recovered all the memory tags for the last month yesterday.
Once the 6-month review was out of the way - or as much of it as I could manage - I picked up the full run through from where I had left off. There was something comforting in this. The feeling of being overwhelmed at having missed several days of reviews left me. Even though I knew this would take some time, I would still be revisiting past days with less than the month-long gap my established method involved, so could stop worrying that images would fade away in the time it took for me to reach them.
The advantage of a sequential run through is many of the images for consecuitve days are linked. I put to one side any days that did not immediately come to mind and went back to them later. After four days I had gone through the 1000+ days since I began this process without losing a single memory tag.
As I passed the day of the month I would have been reviewing in my normal method, it gave me a boost to see I could soon switch back to it.
It did occur to me that a sequential review could become my new refresh technique. Instead of a day-per-month review, I could review say four consecutive months per day. In my present technique the same day comes around about every 30 days. Covering four months per day would give enable me to review 10 years of memory tags before the time between reviewing the same day hits 30 days.
I am not switching to this method just yet for a simple reason. Reviewing sequential days put me into that time period. I was reliving the past.
The day-per-month review is very different. It gives me perspective over time and links today to past days. That feels much more healthy.
Even so, I now have a memory reboot method should I need it.
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