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The rise of the digital age has impacted our ability to focus and remember. We’re living at a time when memorizing isn’t required to get through day-to-day life. Worried about forgetting someone’s birthday? Just set an automatic reminder. Don’t know the route you’re supposed to take to that restaurant you’ve driven to only once? Enter the destination on your GPS of choice. Forget about remembering your emergency contact’s phone numbers. In a 2023 survey of 423 respondents older than 16, 21% admitted to typing “What’s my phone number” into Google.

What is memory? 

Memory is the process by which our brains filter and retain important information, helping us make sense of the world and navigate its uncertainties. Memory allows us to reason, plan, and imagine, and it’s crucial for communication, connection, identity formation, and grounding ourselves in time and space.

Rather than being a perfect record of past events, memory serves as a dynamic resource that evolves based on new experiences and insights, according to professor Charan Ranganath, director of the Memory and Plasticity program at the University of California, Davis. 

The things we usually call memories are part of the episodic memory system, which stores memories of episodes of your life, like having a conversation with a colleague or going to the grocery store, explained Art Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, in a previous Fast Company report. 

When we recall a memory, we don’t simply replay the past as it happened. Instead, we reimagine how the past could have been, adapting our memories to fit the present context. For instance, if someone you trust lies to you, or you get food poisoning after enjoying a meal at a restaurant, you revise your memories based on this new information to better navigate similar situations in the future. This adaptability helps our memories stay relevant as our lives and environments change​. 

“When we look at memory as a resource to pull from, as opposed to a comprehensive archive of the past, we can make mindful choices in the present to curate a rich set of memories to take with us into the future,” Ranganath said in a previous Fast Company report. 

One approach to thinking about how the brain stores memories is based on economics, Markman wrote in a previous Fast Company report. The currency of the brain is energy, and the brain itself is an energy-hungry organ. To build a new memory, structures have to grow that influence the neurons in the pathway that is storing that memory, to ensure that the pattern of brain activity associated with that memory can be created again.

Memories are more likely to be stored when the cost of creating the new connection is likely to reduce the time the brain will have to spend doing something in the future. The brain is investing energy now to reduce future costs.

For example, if you have an important and deep conversation with a colleague, there is likely to be future time savings in storing a memory of that conversation. When you see that colleague again, remembering that conversation will make the next discussion more efficient.

This energy-based evaluation is further influenced by two key factors, according to Markman: desirable difficulty and intense emotions. Desirable difficulty is when a task is challenging but productive, signaling to the brain that it is worth storing the memory to improve future performance. 

On the other hand, intense emotions—whether positive, like excitement, or negative, like shock or pain—amplify the brain’s calculation that the memory will be useful later.

By leveraging these mechanisms, the brain dynamically stores memories likely to enhance our ability to navigate similar future scenarios, rather than simply serving as a comprehensive archive of every experience.

Three situations when you’re more likely to forget—and what to do about it

When multitasking: This one feels obvious. You can’t remember something if you aren’t paying attention.

Multitasking is a major culprit when it comes to memory issues. Studies show that most people are not good at multitasking, despite thinking otherwise. Every time you switch tasks—such as checking emails or responding to messages while in a meeting—you pay a “switching cost,” according to Ranganath. 

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