I do the opposite of the author. I tend to add names to the Phone contacts of people I interact with, even if briefly. Sometimes, I text/call a fixer-upper and realized that we had interacted 10+ years ago. Similar to emails, at time, I go back and reply to the same email thread from 15+ years ago.
On the phone number thingy, I use the rhyme-ish way of remembering it by saying it aloud, and then using it on the phones and I remember quite a few phone numbers. Besides the numbers of my immediate family, I can dial my sister, a few friends from school and some of our neighbors (most of the number do not seem to exist anymore) back home on the keypad from muscle memory.
I try to teach my kids to remember some numbers and I try and test them once a while. They do think, I’m an irritant.
During School days, amongst friends, our tactics of remember historical dates were to prepend phone number patterns and associating them to the events/person etc. My wife is usually surprised when I recite phone number of recent visits to clinics, places, etc. This one are usually ephemeral and I usually forget them after a while. I like to pretend play Sherlock and look around things, remember them when visiting new places. :-)
I went the other way. I do not memorize anyone's number, just mine. Or, how it used to be before we had to know every incoming number (versus just outgoing numbers, which was pasted right next to the phone on the wall).
I almost never pick up the phone. If someone wants to reach me they will send me some (insert tech) message or leave me a voice message. If it is an emergency they should not be calling me in the first place - rarely in place to respond to the emergency.
I do keep family and friends' numbers in my contact lists and have a phone numbers in my wallet to contact when they find my body.
Tangential but I was thinking recently how odd it is that nothing digital decays.
(Catastrophic loss aside, but that's not the same. It goes from pristine to gone in an instant.)
You open a file from decades ago and it's rendered exactly the same as something from this morning. There's no indication of staleness.
There's no natural pruning or decay. The whole thing begets endless hoarding.
In physical systems there's a natural friction, and it takes time/space/Energy to keep stuff. With digital it's the reverse.
My contacts list is 99% crap, half of it from decades ago.
90% is people I met once (e.g. to buy/sell something), then never again.
I've been wondering if every digital bit of info should have an expiration date. At which point it asks "is this still relevant?" and if not, self destructs.
Or at least renders old stuff as progressively more gross, inviting me to clean / remove it.
I've been teaching my kids to memorize my phone number as well as their mother's number! And I've been working on memorizing numbers of other people close to me. Because it isn't "if" I lose my phone some day, it is "when". So, preparing for that is really important to me!
I like the technique of not having the name saved in the phone but having the number, then when caller ID comes in I see the number more often.
I’ve done this by making every passcode a phone number for someone important. Mom’s phone number unlocks the computer, Dad’s phone number unlocks the tablet.
The default contacts app on Android has an export/import feature that will let you backup all the stored numbers into a .vcf file that you can then copy to a backup site.
Speaking from personal experience, you should have the phone numbers of your attorney and your family members tattooed to the backs of your eyelids. And keep bail money under the insoles of your shoes. Cops never look there.
Laugh it up, but it just might happen to you one day.
You do if you plan your estate. It's not just for assets, it's stuff like an advanced health directive (ie, what do you want if you're in a coma for a year?), and power of attorney (who calls the shots while you're incapacitated?). You want this stuff even if you're married -- perhaps especially if you're married, it could save your spouse a lot of trouble during a very difficult time. If you ever make a big transaction, or sign something that deals with $100,000 or more, you want an attorney to look it over first.
You don't need to pay them every month...just have them do estate documents and touch base with them once or twice a year so they remember who you are. You'll get their cell number.
Important to call your attorney instead of family because you might only get N number of calls before the jail cuts you off, even if nobody answers. Your family might be asleep or have lost their phone or whatever, but if you call your attorney they'll make sure to get ahold of somebody that can bail you out. (IIRC your attorney cannot bail you out themselves)
I can recall more phone numbers from my first 18 years of life than the most recent 18, even though I haven't dialed those numbers in a very long time.
And at the rate I'm going, I doubt if I'll memorize more than 3 phone numbers in the coming 18 years.
personally I do something like 0 egg 1 pen 2 swan 3 butt 4 sailboat .. etc.. and then make a little story for the number using the interaction of those things. This is not for long term memorisations, but just for recall in the mid term.
The combinations I use are probably not as good for you as ones you would come up with for yourself. I would suggest just drawing out the numbers 0-9 and looking at the shapes and sketch a few things under each one, that look like that. If need be, rotate or flip the shape, or embellish slightly so long as they are all distinct. They should be easy to imagine objects that can be used flexibly. Salience for memory can come through things that give emotional response, so don't be shy about it.
and then use these to make simple stories like .. 13250 .. pen poked into the butt of a swan who yells grumpily and throws an egg..
If you don’t memorize numbers and call your family from your usual phone (via saved contacts), they’ll answer because they recognize the number.
But if your phone breaks and you have to call from another phone, memorizing their number won’t help much—since most people don’t answer calls from unknown numbers.
> But if your phone breaks and you have to call from another phone, memorizing their number won’t help much—since most people don’t answer calls from unknown numbers.
My memory is generally crap and hasn't gotten better with age. Though I've recently noticed I have acquired quite a skill for memorising longish random passwords and number sequences quite well, getting better at it over the years. No deliberate technique to it, just consistent practice forced by paranoid security and compartmentalisation.
A friend passed on to me the knowledge that the skill of "what were we just talking about" can be improved dramatically with effort. (Indeed even under the influence of certain substances which significantly impair short term memory!)
The secret? "Just try remembering a little harder."
I went from being totally crap at keeping track of conversations, to significantly above average, by just forcing myself to try and remember a little harder, every time I forgot what we were talking about.
(I don't know about other types of memory, but one proved Surprisingly Trainable.)
Yeah it happens naturally with anything you use a lot.
When I was in high school I knew dozens of phone numbers. Today not so much (though I still remember the number we had at the house where I grew up, and a few others that were for my good friends).
> I still remember the number we had at the house where I grew up
One of my earliest memories is of my mother drilling my brother and I on our telephone number. She did a good job. I'll never forget it: AMherst 3-7004.
I don't know if it's really that remarkable .. I don't think we can really attribute losing one specific type of memory over an entire civilization in about one generation such a "bad" thing.
The phone wasn't a household staple for pretty much the whole of humanity. It's really only been about a single generation (well, maybe 2 generations at this point) that the telephone to which you had to remember phone numbers was an important thing. Even in the early 1900's you would pick up the phone and an operator would answer and you had to ask them to connect you to a specific place/person.
And given that there 21 year olds alive today who never had a land-line (or even cable television) in their house or have even seen a dial phone, across the world, and that's only increased, it's not that surprising that we don't choose to actively remember phone numbers anymore .. it's just not "built in" to our core abilities yet because it was never something we needed to do on any type of evolutionary or generational scale.
I don't necessarily disagree that, on a whole, many people rely on technology so much that it has made them blind to the world around them (like so many who can't even read the map on their phone without blue lines telling them where to go). But I do think that not remembering every single phone number isn't something to really be concerned with at the human level .. not to say we shouldn't be teaching the importance of remembering certain numbers for emergency purposes though.
I've been thinking about that actually. it wasn't so long ago that the entire education system was based around repetition and memorization. Overlearning, in positive terms.
Especially when it came to the classics and the fundamental knowledge.
Yet these days, not even our machines, on whom we rely to teach us things, are exposed to more than a single training epoch!
The "algorithm" is kinda backwards. Like, you need something besides the connection you have with a person to indicate to you the status and nature of that connection?
When I got my first Android phone in 2010 or whatever, I skipped setting up a phone book because I wanted a secure solution for syncing contacts instead of uploading plaintext names to Google (how quaint of a threat model). I still haven't gotten around to it. The biggest inconvenience is when I want to text/call someone I haven't spoken two in a year or two, don't know their exact number, and I've got to scroll way down the list until I see it.
Then there are the funny coincidences like my usual Fedex Freight guy's phone number is one digit off from a friend's. That one really threw me the first time.
It's funny how the brain works. I don't even remember my girlfriend or my mother's number, but I can recognize it when I see it.
Nicer ambulances, faster response times, and better looking drivers.
The bizarre things that our brains choose to remember. It must be that catchy jingle.
On the phone number thingy, I use the rhyme-ish way of remembering it by saying it aloud, and then using it on the phones and I remember quite a few phone numbers. Besides the numbers of my immediate family, I can dial my sister, a few friends from school and some of our neighbors (most of the number do not seem to exist anymore) back home on the keypad from muscle memory.
I try to teach my kids to remember some numbers and I try and test them once a while. They do think, I’m an irritant.
During School days, amongst friends, our tactics of remember historical dates were to prepend phone number patterns and associating them to the events/person etc. My wife is usually surprised when I recite phone number of recent visits to clinics, places, etc. This one are usually ephemeral and I usually forget them after a while. I like to pretend play Sherlock and look around things, remember them when visiting new places. :-)
I almost never pick up the phone. If someone wants to reach me they will send me some (insert tech) message or leave me a voice message. If it is an emergency they should not be calling me in the first place - rarely in place to respond to the emergency.
I do keep family and friends' numbers in my contact lists and have a phone numbers in my wallet to contact when they find my body.
(Catastrophic loss aside, but that's not the same. It goes from pristine to gone in an instant.)
You open a file from decades ago and it's rendered exactly the same as something from this morning. There's no indication of staleness.
There's no natural pruning or decay. The whole thing begets endless hoarding.
In physical systems there's a natural friction, and it takes time/space/Energy to keep stuff. With digital it's the reverse.
My contacts list is 99% crap, half of it from decades ago.
90% is people I met once (e.g. to buy/sell something), then never again.
I've been wondering if every digital bit of info should have an expiration date. At which point it asks "is this still relevant?" and if not, self destructs.
Or at least renders old stuff as progressively more gross, inviting me to clean / remove it.
I like the technique of not having the name saved in the phone but having the number, then when caller ID comes in I see the number more often.
Laugh it up, but it just might happen to you one day.
How does this work? Is everyone supposed to have a designated attorney throughout their life? I feel like I must've missed some memo growing up.
You don't need to pay them every month...just have them do estate documents and touch base with them once or twice a year so they remember who you are. You'll get their cell number.
Important to call your attorney instead of family because you might only get N number of calls before the jail cuts you off, even if nobody answers. Your family might be asleep or have lost their phone or whatever, but if you call your attorney they'll make sure to get ahold of somebody that can bail you out. (IIRC your attorney cannot bail you out themselves)
And at the rate I'm going, I doubt if I'll memorize more than 3 phone numbers in the coming 18 years.
personally I do something like 0 egg 1 pen 2 swan 3 butt 4 sailboat .. etc.. and then make a little story for the number using the interaction of those things. This is not for long term memorisations, but just for recall in the mid term.
and then use these to make simple stories like .. 13250 .. pen poked into the butt of a swan who yells grumpily and throws an egg..
If you don’t memorize numbers and call your family from your usual phone (via saved contacts), they’ll answer because they recognize the number.
But if your phone breaks and you have to call from another phone, memorizing their number won’t help much—since most people don’t answer calls from unknown numbers.
So then you text or leave a voicemail?
The secret? "Just try remembering a little harder."
I went from being totally crap at keeping track of conversations, to significantly above average, by just forcing myself to try and remember a little harder, every time I forgot what we were talking about.
(I don't know about other types of memory, but one proved Surprisingly Trainable.)
When I was in high school I knew dozens of phone numbers. Today not so much (though I still remember the number we had at the house where I grew up, and a few others that were for my good friends).
One of my earliest memories is of my mother drilling my brother and I on our telephone number. She did a good job. I'll never forget it: AMherst 3-7004.
The phone wasn't a household staple for pretty much the whole of humanity. It's really only been about a single generation (well, maybe 2 generations at this point) that the telephone to which you had to remember phone numbers was an important thing. Even in the early 1900's you would pick up the phone and an operator would answer and you had to ask them to connect you to a specific place/person.
And given that there 21 year olds alive today who never had a land-line (or even cable television) in their house or have even seen a dial phone, across the world, and that's only increased, it's not that surprising that we don't choose to actively remember phone numbers anymore .. it's just not "built in" to our core abilities yet because it was never something we needed to do on any type of evolutionary or generational scale.
I don't necessarily disagree that, on a whole, many people rely on technology so much that it has made them blind to the world around them (like so many who can't even read the map on their phone without blue lines telling them where to go). But I do think that not remembering every single phone number isn't something to really be concerned with at the human level .. not to say we shouldn't be teaching the importance of remembering certain numbers for emergency purposes though.
I think there is in general lot less memorization going on in our lives.
Especially when it came to the classics and the fundamental knowledge.
Yet these days, not even our machines, on whom we rely to teach us things, are exposed to more than a single training epoch!
ps - definitely teach your kids your number.
When I got my first Android phone in 2010 or whatever, I skipped setting up a phone book because I wanted a secure solution for syncing contacts instead of uploading plaintext names to Google (how quaint of a threat model). I still haven't gotten around to it. The biggest inconvenience is when I want to text/call someone I haven't spoken two in a year or two, don't know their exact number, and I've got to scroll way down the list until I see it.
Then there are the funny coincidences like my usual Fedex Freight guy's phone number is one digit off from a friend's. That one really threw me the first time.