Planning to Remember

Do you have problems remembering birthdays and anniversaries, appointments and errands?Do you sometimes find yourself in a room, and wonder why you're there?Do you end up doing things twice because you've forgotten you've already done them?Of all the memory failures that plague us, forgetting our intentions -- birthdays, appointments, errands we mean to do -- is the greatest, closely followed by those moments of absentmindedness when we lose track of what we're doing.The special problem of these common memory failures is that they are failures that are often very obvious to others. More than any other memory failure, forgetting the future makes others feel hurt and annoyed, causing us regret and embarrassment. And absentmindedness can not simply be irritating, but dangerous.Many people think that these sorts of problems are inevitable -- a natural consequence of getting older, or going through menopause, or because of some 'natural' personality flaw. But remembering future events, and remembering what you're doing or have just done, are memory tasks that, like any other memory task, are subject to your skills. Skills can be learned.To learn or improve a skill, you need to know effective strategies and how to practice them. This book helps you understand these memory and attention failures, and shows you how to overcome them.As always with the Mempowered books, this fully referenced book, based on the work of cognitive researchers, helps you permanently improve your memory skills by explaining what you need to know to use these strategies effectively and appropriately.