In my ten-year update on this process of remembering every day that passes, I described the recall procedure I used to refresh the images pinned to my mental calendar as memory tags.
I changed approach in July.
I now aim to recall a week from each of the past ten years, encompassing the current date.
I have learned that dates 10 years ago are two days later. In other words, today is Monday, 19 September 2022, so I begin by looking back to the week of Monday, 17 September 2012 and run through the images for every day of that week.
The pattern as I move on a year, is the date decreases by one, so:
Monday, 16 September 2013
Monday, 15 September 2014
Monday, 14 September 2015
Then drop two days for the leap year, so Monday, 12 September 2016, but as this doesn't include the present date, I move on a week.
Monday 19 September 2016 (the same date as today, making a quick reference point).
Monday 18 September 2017
Monday 17 September 2018
Monday 16 September 2019
Another leap year.
Monday 14 September 2020
Monday 13 September 2021
Which brings me to last week, Monday 12 September 2022.
The beauty of this system is I review these seven-day windows seven times, so have time to search around for any missing images. I also have a longer context to help me remember what was going on in my life.
It is also generally possible to complete these historic reviews before I get up.
This gives me sufficient time to complete a current review of the past month and a selection of days from the past 6 months or so (I currently go back to January considering a two or three-day window).
The great disadvantage is I'm not reviewing other images from the past ten years and I won't return to these images until next September.
That's an enormous gap.
Previously, I found that I really needed to refresh images once per month for them to be easy to recall. But there are now too many and I was overwhelmed. I have tried to come up with some method to bring in other days to a daily routine, but nothing has worked so far.
The good news is that I am generally able to recall most or many images for the more distant years, having refreshed them so many times. I struggle with the recent years of 2020 and 2021, particularly as much of this time was constrained by lockdowns and I might have only captured a detail such as an old friend I called up, a film I watched, or an online course I completed. Events were simply less memorable.
However, I don't know how long the more established images will last if I'm only recalling them during one week per year, instead of once per month, as at the outset.
I don't want to admit defeat and let them go, but gaps are appearing. I sometimes resort to looking back through photos as a reminder and have even considered digging out the diaries I wrote retrospectively several years into this process.
As I've mentioned, I now make a daily entry in a diary with a memory tag at the top of the page. I do sometimes have to look back through the current diary as it is always the recent tags that have been most elusive, until they have been sufficiently reinforced. Given the difficulties I have with 2020 and 2021, I am trying harder to embed this year.
I had hoped this process would trigger hyperthymesia, the ability a very small number of people have to remember every day without memory tricks. It hasn't, so I need the tricks.
Routinely recalling where I was and what I was doing in past years continues to be immensely satisfying for all the reasons I've addressed before. And being able to recall events is also very impressive to many friends and relatives who struggle to place them.
