Moving into a new home prompted me to go into a massive declutter mode. It was so therapeutic to donate or recycle lots of unused stuff and put everything in its new place. As you can imagine, my mind was spinning from all the things that I needed to do. You know the feeling. You walk into a room and forget why you went there. Or, your mind goes blank mid-sentence. In other words, it felt like my mind was overloaded and had reached its capacity.
The ability to actively hold information for short periods in our minds is known as working memory. This is a critical function for learning, making quality decisions on-the-go, and most task performance. In other words, working memory is essential in guiding our behavior. The most critical thing to remember is that working memory has a limited capacity and is susceptible to stress. When it begins to reach its capacity, we are highly likely to experience memory failures. The good news is that we can take active steps to keep our working memory functioning by learning how to “refresh” information and “delete” irrelevant or outdated information. Here is what that looks like:
Periodically refresh task-relevant content. This involves having control over your attention. When you notice that your attention is not focusing on the task at hand, you need to “refresh” your focus to secure the information you need. For example, you get in the car and notice you left your keys in the house. As you go back inside to get them, your phone rings and you answer it. Once you finish the call, you may have to “refresh” your memory by focusing your attention back on the task at hand.
Delete distracting or outdated information. Once information is no longer needed or relevant to the task, we need to disengage our attention from that information. Using the previous example, if we continue to think about the phone call, we may forget why we came back into the house.
How Mindfulness Impacts Working Memory
Mindfulness helps us build the “refresh and delete” skills we need to maintain a fully functioning working memory. This is because when we practice, we hold specific instructions for the practice in our working memory. And, during mindfulness practice, we also learn how to disengage from internal distractions such as thoughts and sensations, or external distractions such as humming from our heating and cooling systems. This skill is similar to the “delete” function for removing outdated or irrelevant information that is necessary for high-quality working memory. We also learn to periodically “refresh” our experiences after our mind wanders and return to the object of our attention, typically using our breath.
My memory failures were likely due to overload and stress. Once I slowed down and reminded myself of the “refresh” and “delete” functions of my memory, I could at least remember why I went into the room. :)
To give you a jumpstart, I have included two practices below to help you build the refresh and delete functions for your memory.