"Worry less and sleep more!"

Swedish sisters Ylva and Hilde Ostpy have written a book entitled, Adventures in Memory — the Science and Secrets of Remembering and Forgetting. It’s not just good to forget, it’s essential.

You’re introduced to someone and a second later, you’ve forgotten their name. It’s mortifying, and makes you feel stupid, but it shouldn’t. Your brain has merely focused on the more vital aspects of this social interaction. “It’s so common,” Ylva says. “We meet someone for the first time and forget their name shortly afterwards. But we’re actually using our working memory, which only has space for a limited amount of information.”

Our working memory keeps hold of information for only a few seconds, or for as long as we keep thinking of it. “When we meet another person, we’re filling up our working memory with a lot of other information,” Ylva says. “How we might appear to them, what we’re going to say next, who this person is in terms of personality, which is more important than a name, which is a random label. That’s what the brain clings to.” She adds: “It should be OK to ask their name again. It shows you take an interest.”

Stuart Schneiderman adds,

As for improving our memory, the researchers suggest that we should worry less and sleep more.

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