recall

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Write Things Down Or You Will Be Sorry

You should just write things down when you hear them or you may lose them forever.

write things down or you will be sorry

… I know some of you are thinking that you have great memories and don’t have to write things down to recall them later. But it is true that when you get older your memory fails at times. 

Writing things down makes up for the reduced functioning of our older brain cells.

Even younger people with good minds at times can’t keep track of all the things they need to do. That’s why we have to-do lists and to-do apps.

Sometimes there is just so much to keep track of that our brains can’t juggle all those balls without dropping one or two of them. And if you’ve ever seen a juggling act, when the juggler loses one or two balls, all the balls go flying.

For me I have a running to-do list – actually I have an app that contains many things I have to do on a repeated schedule.

I can look at the app and see the things I have before me. I can also add to that to-do list and it can keep me focussed on accomplishing the things I want … without having to rack my brain to remember what else was on my mental list for the day.

However, there have been times – and we’ve all had them – when we forget to do something because it didn’t make it to the list.

There have been times when I’ve been late paying a bill because I forgot to give Lily the invoice. I thought I could remember to do it later in the day but I forgot and then it was gone from my memory. 

Before I started writing things down, I would sometimes forget promises I made. 

One time a guy came into the church looking for some food. I told him I had to go out at noon, would pick up a grocery store gift card then, and he should come back later in the afternoon.

Well, I forgot to write it down and when he showed up, I had no card. I drove him to the grocery store right then and got him a card. 

Now I write things down so I’m not caught in that situation again. 

But the other day something happened and Lily said to me, “That’s a great blog idea.” 

I thought, “Ya, I could write a blog about that.” 

Well, I didn’t write the idea down; I thought I could remember it. But three days later, I’m writing a blog post about not writing things down.

I can’t remember what that idea was. And Lil? She can’t remember either. 

She even washed her hands of it. She said “I mentioned it to you because I knew I would forget about it. And once I told you, I let it go from my mind.” 

It was a really good blog idea, but it is gone forever. You all are missing out on a good one.

Here’s the thing: Sometimes you can read a verse in the Bible that really speaks to you. It was like it was there just for you, at that precise time. Don’t trust your memory to remember that important word from God. Write it down, record what God said to you, so you can recall it later and benefit from it again and again. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you need to write down right now before you forget? Leave your comments and questions below.

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I Wanted To Have A Better Memory

Most people would probably say they’d like to have a better memory.

And in speaking with people in the second half of their lives, most feel having the ability to increase their recall of information would liberate them.

In the spring I read a book on improving your memory. When I sat down to write this piece, I thought I might have written a blog post on my first gleanings of the book, but I can’t remember for sure … ha ha.

How’s that for a memory?

But I have applied some of the principles in the book to my preaching and I’m surprised at how well it works … though I can’t say I know how it works.

Everybody has their way of preparing a talk. I happen to manuscript what I’m going to say, and then go over it several times so it doesn’t come across like I’m reading it.

I usually speak for just over thirty minutes, so that’s a lot of words on a page … it would be difficult to memorize them all. But for a few months now I’ve been using a technique to put a lot more info from my sermons into my brain.

In the book it was explained that we have long-term memory, short-term memory and mid-term memory. They are all used for different purposes.

Long-term memory involves things that are locked in your head, which you don’t even have to think about; you just know them. They’re things like your phone number, your address, your way to work, where things are in your house, etc.

In your short-term memory are thing that are current. For instance, when you read something, you can spit out some facts from what you read for the next few hours or even days. But good luck trying to recall that data a week or two from now. It was just short-term.

Often the names of people we just met go into short-term memory.

For example, you remember a guy’s name for a little while, but later that day when you’re telling someone about the person you met, you can’t remember his name any more.

It’s no big deal. You can just ask him his name the next time you see him … if you’re not too embarrassed that your short-term memory is so bad!

Then there is the mid-term memory – being able to remember something in that gap between long-term and short-term memory.

Sometimes we need to remember something for a few days or for a certain event, or until we write our exam. Then we can forget it.

That’s what the mid-term memory is for.

… This is going to be a two part post so I will keep you in suspense until the next one (read part 2 here).

But the key to remembering something for a specific time and place is combining your long-term and short-term memories together.

It’s like combining the colours blue and yellow; they produce green.

You combine long-term memory and short-term memory and what you get is mid-term memory that you can use for a particular purpose.

Here’s the thing: God’s memory is pretty complicated as well. On the one hand, He loves you with an everlasting love – that’s long-term; he’s not going to forget that He loves you. On the other hand, when you repent of your sins, He forgets about them like they never happened –  that’s great news for us.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What could you use a better memory for? Leave your comments below.

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If It Gets In My Head, I Can’t Let It Go

Have you ever got something in your head and couldn’t let it go? Songs can get in your head and it’s near impossible to erase them from that ram chip in your skull.

kingston-memory-upgrade

And it doesn’t take much to get it in there. You hear a song on the radio and it sticks with you all day long.

You might not even like the song, but there you are in a meeting with your superiors and, just as you boss asks you an important question, you have “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor taking up valuable real-estate upstairs.

While you’re trying to think, you’re tapping your pen on the table and under your breath you’re humming “da da da da da”.

You just can’t shake that thought in your head. You’d like to record over it with something useful but it seems that for an undetermined amount of time that thought, that song is going to stick around.

I felt that way this week as I was writing my sermon. I got to near the end and I was in need of a closing illustration.

I thought of a story to use, but the story has been told many times. As I researched it, I discovered that the story has a couple of variations and it’s not even true!

It’s too bad, because it’s a great story of a boy at a concert who slips on stage when no one is watching and starts playing chopsticks on the piano. The audience starts grumbling, but the maestro hears the boy and comes out. He tells the boy to keep playing while he plays around him making beautiful music.

Yes, I know, you’ve heard that story. And yes, I know, you didn’t know it wasn’t true.

The problem was I couldn’t get that story out of my head! It seemed like the right illustration for me. I didn’t want to use it; I didn’t feel I could use it, but I couldn’t get it off my mind.

Every time I tried to think of something else, that story kept replaying for me like it was on a loop track just behind my eye sockets.

I scanned the internet for stories like it and found none. I looked in books where I’ve found some good stories in the past – again nothing. Just that one story.

It was perfect, but I couldn’t use it.

I got sidetracked but the story came back. Time was ticking by. It was evening; my eyes got heavy. I think I dreamed about that story and I was the boy.

And then I came to, and a memory awakened in me.

It was a real-life instance, a modern day parallel to that story. I had seen it on TV about thirteen years ago and somehow my brain found and loaded that story into my jukebox mind for me to play. Press E-10.

Here’s the thing: What we put in our mind stays there, and it will be recalled as needed at random times in the future. So we need to be sure we are storing God’s truth in those minds of ours. For just when we need a verse to encourage or help us, it can drop right into the forefront of our thinking. God’s truth might un-expectantly pop into our minds, and stay with us for the day … and that’s so much better than, “You know I’m all about that bass, no treble.”

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What has gotten into your mind lately that you can’t kick out? Leave your comments below.