Use Your Brain for Thinking, Not Memorizing
By: Dr. Faisal Jamshaid
Tags: Think, Thinking, Memorizing, Life Lemons, Memorising

Use Your Brain for Thinking, Not Memorizing

Use your brain for thinking, not memorizing — Image created by Author

Have you ever been told to memorize something and thought to yourself, “Do I really have to?”

No, really…

Do you have to?

🙇🏽‍♂️ Why bother?

Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash

As a medical student, I had to memorize heaps of information for my exams.

My problem with that? Most of it wasn’t necessary.

Do I need to know the milestones of a child’s motor skill development if I’m not going to be a pediatrician?

Do I need to memorize a non-emergency drug’s exact dosage when it’s readily available on my ‘BNF’ app?

If I didn’t know these things for the exam, I’d earn significantly lower marks.

If I couldn’t recall them immediately at the request of a senior doctor, I’d be scolded for it.

Memorizing half of the things we do is unnecessary and based on an outdated understanding of knowledge.

💡Is there a better way?

“Paper is to write things down that we need to remember. Our brains are used to think. “ — Albert Einstein

Why do we create tools to outsource information storage if we’re still going to dedicate large amounts of time and value to memorizing that very same information?

Having the ability to memorize in the short and long term is an amazing feat of the human brain.

It just isn’t crucial for the world we live in anymore.

Aside from emergencies and situations where you wouldn’t want to delay the retrieval of that information, why should those things be memorized?

Emergency drugs for anaphylaxis? Yes, memorize it (don’t risk delaying). The names of friends and family? Yes, memorize them (would be awkward if you didn’t). The best route to drive up north? Look it up (you’ve got Google Maps, right?). The latest treatment for high blood pressure in a 70 year-old south-Asian male?Look it up (Five seconds won’t make a difference, and guidelines are evolving all the time!)

We need to focus on delegating the task of memorizing to computer hard drives and notebooks rather than our brains.

Only then can we utilize our cognitive power towards higher-level thinking and problem-solving.

Now, as a doctor, I retrieve most of my information from a Google search, my Evernote library, and one of several medical apps.

Nice and easy.

It also saves me from the stresses of recalling incorrect information and the time needed to ensure it stays in my head.

The brain expels non-essential and infrequently accessed information.

Why should we force it to work against itself?

⏳Change is coming.

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

If something crops up frequently, that’s the world’s way of enforcing spaced repetition. You’re more likely to remember it now.

If it causes you immediate stress to forget something when you needed to know it, your brain will help consolidate that information so as to not experience that same stress again.

Doesn’t that sound like a healthier, more efficient use of the brain?

There’s a radical shift brewing in the way that we process and memorize information.

People will tell you that you’re incompetent and unsafe for not committing everything to memory.

They’ll come around.