Everyday life in my Memory Palace

I went ahead and moved into my Memory Palace.  Figured why not?  At least I know where everything is there. 

It started with a plan to “Keep [my] Memory and Thinking Sharp with These 20 Everyday Activities” I read about that have been linked to reduced risk of developing mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

MCI includes problems with memory, planning, language and attention which we are most ardently trying to avoid even though they are relatively subtle in comparison to dementia, which of course, we also eschew.

OK.  Good.  “Everyday” implies easy, routine, middle-of-the-road kinds of things that even the average schmo can work into her daily habits.  And, with any luck at all, she’s already doing them, thereby accounting for her sparkling presence in the household and around town.  

Feeling confident. 

Heck, I can probably do all 20 with little to no exertion!  I especially appreciate that considering I’m a founding member of the Lethargy for Procrastinators club.  Meetings whenever.

And, even though I am quite sharp already in the memory and thinking departments, as you now doubt have observed, I figured, why not go ahead and zip through some everyday activities that might further sharpen my considerable wit and hone my laser-like focus?

I mean, I can’t remember the last time I lost my car keys, or my car.  Really.  I can’t remember. 

I haven’t raced into a room only to stop short with a quizzical look in gosh knows how long.  But still. 

Here we go:

According to PsyBlog, new research published in the journal Neurology suggests that regularly engaging in arts and crafts, socializing and computer use during middle age may help preserve memory in later years. 

Hooray!  This is a perfect time for me to get started as I am middle-aged.  Exactly in the middle, in fact, presuming my life expectancy is 128.    

Yeah, that’s about right because the study asked 256 “seniors” (the new code word for middle-aged; 60 is the new 40, after all!) to report how often they took part in various everyday activities

Now get this:  At the start of the study none of the participants had memory or thinking problems.  Four years later, less than half of these everyday folks had developed MCI. 

I compared myself on the list of activities they participated in routinely that saved their brains:

Artistic activities including:  Drawing, sculpting, or painting.  Nope, no and uh uhn.

Crafts including:  Pottery, quilting, woodworking, ceramics, quilling and sewing.  Negatory down the line. 

But hey…  What is ‘quilling,’ anyway?  Who ‘quills’?  Benjamin Franklin?!

At first I thought they had repeated ‘quilting’!  Hahaha!  In a memory exercise!  They forgot they already said ‘quilting’ earlier in the same sentence! 

But of course it wasn’t quilting twice.  One of the ‘everyday’ activities is actually quilling.  It’s entirely different.  I looked it up.

Socializing included:  Socializing with friends, trips to the movies, theatre or concerts, book clubs and travel.

At last!  Activities that come naturally for normal people!  These are the very pastimes I suspected were doing me the most good.  I plan to redouble my movie-watching efforts.

But wait!  Using the computer can enhance a person’s memory and thinking too!?

Hallelujah!  Conducting web searches, online purchases (!), using the internet and computer games are all good for the noodle!  We’re having pasta tonight!

Finding myself already in the upper echelon of mental acuity, with excellent prospects for my dotage, I never-the-less pursued one more strategy for memory enhancement:  The construction of a Memory Palace.

This is a mnemonic device in which a person places objects she wants to recall in strategic locations around an imaginary palace she builds in her mind.  Easy peasy!  I’ve been constructing castles in the sky since I first read Cinderella!

Then, when this princess needs to remember the items on the list, or better still, when she wants to relive the care-free, youthful, skinny times associated with those objects, she simply closes her eyes and takes a tour of the palace!

It’s like Beach Front BargainHunt and the budget is unlimited! 


So I’ve built my imaginary Memory Palace and I’m thinking I’ll just live in it.  After all, it’s where I do my best work:  watching movies, socializing, making online purchases and of course, quilling.

I left it in the living room

The scene:  Baby Boomer working diligently at her desk.  She’s concentrating, writing, editing, rewriting, working toward deadline.  She’s a master.  A wizard.   

Then, a pause.  She pushes away from her keyboard, jumps to her feet and dashes - dashes mind you - downstairs into the living room to get … something.   

Something very important.  

Something warranting a dash for goodness sake. 

What the heck did she go there for?!!! 

Then, because the room looks familiar but the goal remains enigmatic, resignation sets in.  Shoulders sag.  She must turn and climb the stairs with a little wrinkle in her brow while reviewing the circumstances of her journey.  She retraces her steps in faint hope of regenerating the same urgency she felt so … urgently just moments ago. 

Let’s see…I was sitting right here.  Writing my column.  Then I jumped up and ran to the living room for…for…Dang it!  Why did I get up and run out of the room?! 

She tries to calm herself.  It’s no big deal, she says.  Everyone does that, right?  We’re all jumping up from our desks, hurrying around the house pointedly seeking something, only to have to shrug, abandon the mission and settle down again.   

Perhaps it’s not material, but an esoteric sort of metaphysical thing we seek.  Inner meaning.  Purpose of life.  No need to prowl the world, thank God, when peace of mind is within your own home, your metaphorical self.  Perhaps our built-in internal yearning for depth of experience compels us … OK.  I’m not buying it either.  

Pretty sure it was more mundane than that.  I was probably looking for that new pencil with the fresh eraser I just bought at…where’d I get that thing?  More important, where’d I put that thing?  I don’t know.  Doesn’t matter.  Look!  A squirrel!  

But so what?  Everyone misplaces her car keys now and then.  No need to worry until you misplace your car!  Let me just check.  Yep, it’s there, safe in the garage. 

I’m OK, I tell ya!  

But you can see why I glommed onto “brain games” with millions of other Boomers.   

Thank God, I thought.  These intellectual games will save my withered walnut of a brain from further shrinkage!  If I race around these mental agility wheels frantically enough I won’t have to careen around the house like a pinball.  Sign me up.  I’ll do it! 

I jumped in with both lobes.  I couldn’t wait for the “positive and often remarkable results” including “better face-name recall, faster problem-solving skills and a quicker memory.” 

Oh yeah, just 10-15 minutes a day of synapse gymnastics will “reorganize my brain by confronting it with new challenges,” thereby improving my ability “to dynamically allocate attention,” not to mention split infinitives.  

I began to feel top heavy in a hurry. 

But wait.  What’s this from the NewYorker?  “Brain Games are Bogus.”  

Uh oh. 

See that headline’s a problem for me.  I’ve devoted some serious time to feeling all good and smug about my calisthenics for neuroplasticity.  I have an emotional investment in brain games.  These brain games may be the final fragile filament holding my pale gray matter intact!  You can’t take away my brain games!  

And what does the New Yorker know anyway?  

Oh, right.  They collected information from analysts at the University of Oslo and Georgia Tech who investigated claims made in the multi-million dollar brain game industry and came up with a pretty big goose egg.  

Sure, they say, diligent hours of playing games supposedly designed to improve “working memory and fluid intelligence” does produce growth in one’s performance on those games.   

But that’s it.  The scientists who gathered all of the best research—twenty-three investigations of memory training by teams around the world—and employed a standard statistical technique (called meta-analysis) conclude:  "The games may yield improvements in the narrow task being trained, but this does not transfer to broader skills like the ability to read or do arithmetic, or to other measures of intelligence.” 

In short, “Playing the games makes you better at the games … but not at anything anyone might care about in real life." 

Well that’s just great.   

Excuse me for a moment.  I have to get something from the living room.