So you’re in your 30s or 40s and you constantly feel forgetful and frazzled: Maybe it’s your first time balancing a high-powered role at work while juggling daycare drop-off and pickup times, or you’re really trying to maintain old and new friendships while also caring for an aging parent. Or perhaps you’re aiming to stick to a consistent workout schedule ever since your back started aching and you’re also trying to cook every meal and go to therapy and be a loving partner. Whatever your personal brand of scatterbrained adulthood looks like, it only makes sense that you’d feel like your memory is a little shot as a result.
Your brain is less capable of remembering things like that one person’s name or even why you walked into a room when you’re being pulled in a million directions. The competing demands of life in these decades can “tax the function of your prefrontal cortex,” Charan Ranganath, PhD, professor at the Center for Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at the University of California Davis and author of Why We Remember, tells SELF. This is the part of your brain responsible for executive functions—things like planning, organizing, and, yes, remembering what’s needed to finish a task. To make matters worse, this section of the brain also naturally begins to shrink (albeit, very slowly) in your 30s, Dr. Ranganath adds, making it even tougher to access those little bits of memory.
Certain lifestyle habits, like getting solid sleep, exercising regularly, and cutting back on alcohol, can help slow that downward memory slide as you age. But according to experts, there are also simple tweaks to everyday behaviors—like how you snap pics on your phone and where you hang out with friends—that can help you feel sharper in the here and now. Here’s how to feel a little less forgetful and scatterbrained as you navigate your 30s and 40s.
1. Work on a single task at a time (and turn off push notifications).
You can’t really do multiple things at once, brain-wise. When you’re “multitasking,” you’re actually just switching between tasks, which strains your brain, forcing it to focus on one thing and then on the other and back again.
The same thing happens with media multitasking, whether you’re popping between your email and Instagram, for instance, or you’re, say, scrolling on your phone while also watching a TV show. You’re putting conflicting priorities on your attention, threatening your memory of any one thing you’re doing.
When you’re task-switching, you’re essentially forming “these little blurry fragmented memories” of each action because you weren’t mentally focused on either, making them easier to forget, Dr. Ranganath says.
The key is to cut out as many distractions as possible when you’re doing something you want to remember (that means silencing any form of ping or ding), so you can lock in on it. The more attention you give to a task now—in brain talk, the more you’re engaging your prefrontal cortex—the better chance it’ll stick with you later, Dr. Ranganath says.
2. Take photos to capture the vibes, not just the facts of an event.
Subscribing to a “pics or it didn’t happen” mentality doesn’t just potentially jeopardize your enjoyment of, say, a concert or a cool trip. When you snap photos of entire scenarios or events, you’re actually less likely to remember key details about them because of the photo-taking impairment effect: Your brain knows it can rely on the camera to “remember” things, so it essentially opts out.
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