Memory is associative. I have a really, really good memory, but it's mostly because I know how to exploit that associativity.

If you asked me what I did for the last two weeks, I'd have to find "anchor" memories to relate to other memories. E.g., I remember a conversation at work on Friday, which I know was the result of a thing I did earlier that day, which I had talked about doing on Thursday, etc. I can reconstruct things, but part of that is "digging" through memories to find anchor points.

Stress can wreck memory.

I am not great with faces, apparently, because people recognize me but I don't recognize them, a lot. Like, no shit the FedEx guy bringing stuff to my work recognized me from grade school. Some people are REALLY good at recognizing people.

In general I'd say I am much better at figuring things out, than remembering them, and it has ever been so. Even in school I passed algebra by remembering the quadratic formula and just figuring out the rest of it each time. I don't do things the same way every time. When I try to do things by rote, without thinking I fuck them up.

If it's bothering you, try mindfulness - throughout the day take a breath, relax and become more aware of what you are doing and hearing and seeing and feeling. Get in the habit of paying close attention.

But I do think it's normal to sort of discard a lot and only remember a little.

I feel like I know the answer to something, and it's usually right, but I don't have a recollection exactly of how I know it.

If you asked me about last Wednesday or the one before, I could probably tell you eventually. You might get a lot of detail about the rest of the week along the way, because I'd have to piece together what I did and which day Wednesday was.

It would be about the same if you asked me about the current weather moments after I walked inside. I might be able to tell you, but I'm going to have to build the memories on the spot.

Recently, my life feels like a blur, like I dont really remember what happened even in the past 2 weeks, and this has cause me some anxiety. […] How much of your life do you remember, like do you only remember major events in your life, or do you remember like what you have been doing for the past 2 weeks. […]

I experience the same sort of feelings. What I find helps me a little bit is to journal at the end of the night and document what I did during the day and what happened during the day. This helps me reflect and ground myself on what goes on around me. Instead of me just existing with events passively happening around me, it forces me to sort of anchor events to my life. Having this sort of stuff documented also allows me to reflect on it in the future.

If you need someone to remember completely useless trivia like Pokémon type matchups and the years of video game releases, I'm your guy.

If you want me to remember what I ate yesterday, I couldn't tell you. If you want me to remember what cities I visited on my trip to Europe two years ago, I'd literally have to look at my notes; the specifics of my autobiographical memory, even for major events, quickly dissolve into a blur of impressions and images.

Once my boss, looking for someone to blame for some infraction, asked me "Did you work yesterday?" I couldn't recall what I'd done the day before, so I started to "umm" while I thought about the schedule and tried to remember if I'd already had my days off that week, but I couldn't bring it to mind... so I had to admit that I didn't know. My boss said, disbelieving, "You don't remember if you worked yesterday!?" I said, "You know, the days all blur together..." and he just shook his head and walked off to bother someone else.

People tend to look at me funny when I tell them that I don't remember my childhood all the way up through highschool.

Certain big events in highschool I can remember of course. But for most of it is just vague impressions of "Yeah...I must have done that at some point, but can't recall specifics".

For Childhood it gets even more nebulous; again, a few things I clearly remember, and much of the rest of it I can't decide if I actually remember it, or if I'm "filling in the blanks" from old photographs (the brain is funny that way...implanting a fake memory is pretty easy it turns out)

People have told me that that's a reaction to childhood trauma, but since I'm kind of stupidly good at holding useless trivia in my brain, I just think I pushed it all out to make room for random facts about ancient history and star trek lore.

I'd say... wait, what was the question?

My memory has been somewhat blurry/fuzzy since 2011, so yeah. After coming out from a surgery where I was under longer than the surgeons thought I was gonna, it's been a bit fuzzy. I can remember things from a long time ago, but ask me pre-2011, middle of tweenhood and below, is hit or miss what I remember. Even after then, it can sometimes feel a little hit or miss whether I remember an event that happened.

Fire at a nearby apartment building a couple years ago? Remember. The song I was listening to 10 minutes ago? Absolutely no clue. Name of someone in my ENGL 101 class I've been attending all quarter? No clue for almost all of them. The time my parents got a Sonic Mega Collection game for me and my brothers when I was 4-5 years old? Absolutely remember that!

I have very few memories unless something triggers them. I was worried about this so some years ago I started writing down what I did that day, every day, in the hope I would train my memory to remember things.

I make a new text file each day with the date and have about 6 years' worth of them.

In case you're wondering, my memory didn't get any better but at least I can look up what I did if I forget. No joke this comes in handy more than you'd think.

BTW my armchair diagnosis is that my lack of memory is probably ADHD related.

Hey do you dissociate a lot? My dissociation ruins my memory in a way very similar to yours. This questionnaire can kind of give you a guideline on how much dissociation you may have
http://traumadissociation.com/des

Yes, both.

• I’ve always been bad at remembering who I met or what we talk about
• I can doom scroll for hours without recalling anything of note
• when things are hectic the daily details disappears
• ask me a technical question and I’ll vomit entire manuals at you

I can remember dates oddly well.

However, where the fuck are my keys???

Longish term cannabis dependency chiming in - not great.

I tend to remember what I need when I need it, to the point where it's creeped out my friends.

In high school I was talking to my friend and over the phone I hear his dad asking where his favorite cup is and I remember that 2 weeks prior when I was over I briefly saw it in the top left cabinet over their stove, so I told him.

It was still there.

Kind of bit me in the butt though because his dad became uncomfortable and didn't let him invite me over anymore, lol.

I have the most minmaxed memory of anyone I know.

I can't remember faces. Names. Barely remember people. Events? Psssh. My coats go missing. Jackets, hats, scarves, you bet I need to attach stuff to myself and keep a gruesomely detailed calendar.

But in school, I could remember concepts really well. Not individual facts, mind you, but concepts. So I had to learn in this sort of concept-first way to "guess" what the individual facts were. I don't remember the name of the dinner I ate last night but I knew stats geometrically/sum-ly enough to re-guess the formulas I needed to know. History classes definitely got weird with this minmax though.

Tbf I think this style is actually an emerging phenomenon. Salman Khan spoke of an "inventing math" type of learning, and 3 Blue 1 Brown and that one MIT prof forgot his name made a brilliant repetoire for geometrically/conceptually training linear algebra. Makes me wonder what pedagogy will be like in two or four decades. Hopeful c:

The more unique a bit of knowledge is, plus the more interesting it was at the time, multiplied by how frequently you have thought about it since, is basically the formula for the strength of a memory. So a relatively uninteresting thing, you have done some minor variation of hundreds of times and haven't really thought about since, is gonna take alot of effort to willfully recall. You would need some sorf of trigger to easily recall it, as triggering a memory is a much more powerful way to recall it.

You are normal, as you get older, even just early adulthood, more and more of your life will feel that way in hindsight. You don't do as many super memorable things as you used to, and you just have more and more stuff packed into your brain. Makes it harder for individual memories to compete, more and more of them will just fade out as unimportant things you don't prioritise remembering, or even recording in the first place.

You probably have heard people older than you remark that life goes by faster and faster as we get older, this is mostly the cause of that feeling. Obviously, time is moving the same speed, you are just making fewer important memories worth recalling.

If you went to a concert this week, you would probably have an easier time remembering what day it was, or what the drive to and from it was like. But if the whole week was TV shows, videogames and meals primarily designed to be thrown together for sustenance, none of it will be super memorable.

You can technically put effort into remembering even mundane stuff, just focus on it more as you are doing it, and repeatedly practice recalling it as you go. It might be a fun exercise for a week just to prove you can do it if you want to. But it would be alot of effort to keep up for longer. If you are otherwise happy with how things are going, no real need to change though. And if you do want things to be more memorable, find ways to do more unique things that you have an interest in and that are worth spending time thinking about afterward too.

Edit: me personally, As with most people in this thread, I have a very good long term memory, but a very bad working memory, and almost no willful recall, I generally leave visible reminders or set alarms for stuff I need to remember "tomorrow". If someone asks me to do something, and I don't do it within 15 seconds, I won't recall that I was asked unless something triggers the memory. So I generally do stuff right away, but I am also easily distracted. And I don't always remember that I need to warn people to re-ask me if it has been a minute or so and I didn't do it, but I have slowly gotten better as it works into my rote/routine memory to sequentially trigger that response based on the incoming cue. Needs to be more consistent to become rote.

And yeah, Autism for sure, ADHD probable but haven't checked.

I have repeatedly described my memory as 'an etch a sketch held by a Parkinson's patient'.

Every time I eat, I forget what I last shit. Every time I shit, I forget what I last ate. It's a very simple system called FIFO (First In First Out). Very low memory requirements..

I’m probably wrong but:

Check your house for Carbon Monoxide.

My memory is poor and my facial recognition is zero.

I remember broad timelines, and I try to take pictures of my life so I can look back and jog my memories. Sometimes weird memories randomly bubble up to my consciousness though.

I remember a lot of stuff but tying it to a specific day can be hard sometimes. Something I thought happened yesterday mightve happened like 3 days ago and a week out I'm pretty unsure unless it happened on a holiday or rent day or something. I can remember major events and random things from a long time ago though. Earliest memory I can muster up is crawling on some red carpet in my grandparents trailer. They moved out of that place when I was 1 year old

My memory is pretty bad, I'm dyslexic and it affects my short term memory. So I take a lot of notes for things I need to do. If it isn't written down it didn't happen, or in my case won't get done. My long term memory as a consequence is mostly big events and fun/bad stuff though I generally need a prompt to remember specifics. I usually have to check my phone if someone asks what I did last weekend and we are past Monday or Tuesday, I've slept since then you see.

Its a mixed bag.

I don't remember a lot of specifics from my childhood, but I also wouldn't say I don't remember my childhood. I don't remember the names of all my elementary schools, or exactly where they were, but I can remember most of my friends and what we did together. Like at my first elementary school I can remember that I basically just did normal kid stuff. I know at my second elementary school I got into videogames, because a lot of my friends from that school had gamecubes. But I can only remember a few actual individual times we were playing gamecube, even though we played together several times a week for literally years. I know mario sunshine was my jam but can't remember any specific days I played it on. I know when I was homeschooled I spent more time on neopets than doing actual school (thanks mom), but I have literally no individual memories of playing neopets.

So like... I do know my own history well enough, but just not specific days unless it was something really noteworthy. I have no idea if thats "normal" or not.

I can remember medical facts really well. I want to get into the medical field in some capacity, because for whatever reason that shits sticks in my head. Special interest I guess? Idk.

Mostly spatial. I can often find a passage in a book by where it was located on the page (I hate audiobooks and ebooks for this reason). I can't remember a lot of my experiences later, unless someone can tell me where I was or what I might have been looking at. I'll probably remember exactly where everyone was standing, but not what any of us said. Sometimes I wonder if I lost my eyesight if I would still be able to make memories at all.

Ummm

My memory is pretty good; my ability to recall that memory is absolute garbo.

I remember extremely accurately almost every significant detail from my life from a very early child. Everything thats ever happened to me of significance I remember in almost completely as if it just happened. I can't remember every conversation word for word, but I can remember their general gist and key snippits of the conversation. Even the super emotional high energy ones don't blur much.

I can keep track of every single one of my possessions and know exactly where they are. I spent much of my life learning and internalizing large amounts of knowledge with relative ease. Why yes I do have a STEM background how did you guess?

It gets incredibly exhausting keeping track of so many minute details, knowing so many general concepts and facts spread across most aspects of human knowledge. Having decades worth of old memories resurface every day as if they had just happened with the same emotional weight.

My ability to remember reserves a lot of space in my neural network. My mind feels taxed and spent in a way thats hard to explain. Every step of my existance from childhood to now a constant feeling of ever present continuity. I can 'feel' how the present iteration of my experience is intrinsically connected to everything I experienced the moment before.

Cannabis helps greatly with forgetting and getting into a meditative mode of being in the moment. Its so good to just be, pure meditative blissful vibing with here and now.

If I need to remember something then it's terrible. If I never need to remember it then it's burned into my brain and can be retrieved with zero effort and without even knowing how I learned it. Maybe I'm one of them idiot savants.

Might want to include your age as a benchmark also. Plus, how engaged you were at the time affects your recollection. I can't remember exactly what happened two weeks ago without some effort and only with low precision, but can remember the numberplate of the jerkface bentley driver that brake checked me for several kms a decade ago. Over 50 yrs old.

Variable.

In general my working memory is shocking, and my long term memory is very good. I presume it's an ADHD neuroplasticity thing - my brain probably had to over rely on long term memory due to major short term memory deficiencies.

But it depends on topic as well. One of my coworkers pointed out that I had 4 rough guesses when asked how long my wife and I have been together but answered immediately and at length when asked about say, the Indo-European language family or bronze age societies.

When I’m high? Pretty bad. When I’m sober? I need reminders for things lol.

I can only remember what's in front of me. Reminders in my field of vision or conversation trigger my brain to pull up whatever it can think of that relates to whatever is happening.

As far as how good? Very bad on my own, but excellent with the right direction.

No joke, I opened this thread to comment on it last night and forgot until I saw it in my feed again today.

I started keeping a diary, and I found that helps. Something about writing things down helps encode memories, but then if you do forget you have a reminder.

In particular my gratitude journal is helpful. I often find myself in a state where I can't think of a single good thing going on in my life. But then going through it I read about how a stray cat came to sit in my lap in the garden, and while I didn't remember that before I read it the memories come flooding back.

Not nearly as good as it used to be that's for sure

Not that well. At least not accurately. I give my memory a lot of credit, but the majority of my memories are the equivalent of how you might be watching TV and a person's face is blurred out. The "memory" in this case is there but with aspects fizzled out. I often have to triangulate lost recollections from the memories that do exist.

I remember only what I need and I don't need much. Some things are good to forget.