improve memory

Stop Losing Your Stuff With These 6 Simple Tricks

Samantha Stauf — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 11:00:09 +0000

People who constantly lose stuff live in a cycle of frustration, lost time, and wasted money. Time that could be otherwise productive is dedicated to frantically seeking misplaced items. Money that could be saved or invested is instead used to replace missing items. It's frustrating and often embarrassing.

However, not all is lost. Absentmindedness is not an inescapable curse. You can decrease the frequency of losing things and increase the chances of finding them. Alleviate item loss with some simple tricks.

1. Increase Organization

The simplest, cheapest way to decrease the chances of losing items is to get more organized. Don't simply throw your keys, wallet, cards, or phones onto the nearest flat surface. Try to nail down an area to store each item. Always place the items there when you return home every day.

2. Don't Silence Your Cell Phone

Vibrate or silence should not be the default setting on your phone. Yes, you might need to silence your phone occasionally, but you should change the device to a setting that makes noise as often as you can. If you lose it, you can have a family member or friend call the phone.

If you live alone and you own a smartphone, you should download Skype or FaceTime. Both are free communication apps you can use to call the smartphone from your computer or tablet. Just make sure you set the communication app to notify you when it receives a call.

3. "Freeze It" Credit Card

Losing a credit card can be a huge hassle. You need to cancel the card and then wait about a week for a replacement card or pay a small fee for rush shipping.

It's a pain — especially if you're 75% sure you misplaced it somewhere around the house. You might find it if you spend a few hours looking, but every second you spend searching, someone might be gleefully embarking on a shopping spree. The end result is canceling cards that might not be lost.

If you switch to a credit card that has the ability to temporarily freeze, you could decrease the chance of fraud and prevent the need to prematurely cancel cards. That can be a huge boon for people who lose track of their cards constantly.

Right now the only company that offers that feature is Discover, but I anticipate in the next few years, more credit card and debit cards will begin to offer it as well. (See also: 10 Questions to Ask Before Accepting a Credit Card Offer)

4. iPod or Smartphone Wallet Case

If you can't (or won't) carry a wallet or purse around, you should look into purchasing an iPod or smartphone card storage device. The storage devices are either covers or attachments that stick to your phone.

This is a great option for people who can't always carry a wallet or purse, especially if they have a history of losing track of their credit or debit cards. The fact that the devices only cost around $5–$25 dollars makes it a fairly cheap solution.

5. Add Device Trackers

There are a variety of key, wallet, or phone finder devices. The devices typically offer the following functions:

An audio alarm to help individuals locate the item;
GPS tracker to find objects that are potentially out of audio range;
The ability to ring the phone, even if it's on silent;
Alerts when you are separated from an item;

The devices hook onto keyrings, slip into wallet pockets, or are adhesively attached to an object. It's definitely an investment, but it could prevent the loss of an expensive item.

6. Wear Clothing With Secure Pockets

Most women's pants either have ridiculously small pockets or no pockets at all. That can make carrying important objects from place to place difficult. And if you prefer not to carry a purse, it could mean that you need to either squash all of your objects into teeny, tiny pockets, or carry them. That can increase the chances of objects falling out of your pockets or placing objects down and forgetting to pick them up. (I've done both multiple times.)

Consider adding clothing into your wardrobe that includes larger and secure pockets (ones that zip, for example). This could be a jacket, cargo pants, or utility shirts with hidden pockets. And then there's always the fanny back.

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This article is from Samantha Stauf of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Best Money Tips: How to Improve Your Working Memory

Amy Lu — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 09:30:27 +0000

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup! Today we found articles on ways to improve your working memory, how other people can affect your health, and some ideas for DIY indoor herb gardens.

Why You Should Do Things You're Bad At

Tara Struyk — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 09:48:36 +0000

As a kid, I wasn’t afraid of the dark, heights, or even, for the most part, monsters. Nope, what really knocked me awake in a cold sweat at night was the thought of my math homework, which, despite the consequences, I avoided doing at all costs. While I’d happily labor away at a reading assignment or spend hours writing and illustrating essays and stories, by third grade, I’d closed the book on all things numbers.

What I later realized was that it wasn’t so much that I was entirely hopeless at arithmetic, geometry, or even algebra, but that while working with words felt natural, working with numbers was like walking on my hands — it would not come easily.

I think everyone has things they avoid because they don’t feel comfortable doing them. Competence is comfortable. And I’ll be the first to admit it — doing things you aren’t good at can really suck. Fortunately, there are some really good reasons to dig in anyway. (See also: How to Improve Your Memory)

It’ll Make You Smarter

Doing things we’re good at makes us feel smart, but the cruel reality is that it actually makes us dumber. Crossword puzzles and Sudoku games are great, but once your brain has made those pathways, doing them over and over is just running over the same ground. Meanwhile, everything else gets thorny and overgrown.

There’s quite a bit of research that shows that new sensory experiences can cause massive rewiring in the brain, even as we age (which, for all the “old dogs” out there, means there’s still hope). A recent study also found that all "this rewiring involves fibers that supply the primary input to the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that is responsible for sensory perception, motor control, and cognition." In other words, by traveling to new places, trying new sports, and learning new skills — perhaps especially the ones that are least familiar to us — we’re actually pulling back the overgrowth that can age our brains. When it comes to finding the fountain of youth, this might be as good as it gets.

Life Will Seem Longer

Remember back in grade school when the school year seemed to be decades long? As we get older, a year can often fly by so quickly we hardly even notice it. That’s because we actually don’t have to; when everything is so familiar, there’s no reason for our brains to take notice. According to research by neuroscientist David Eagleman, the more familiar we become with the world, the less information our brains record. In other words, trying new things can make our lives feel longer and fuller.

No, you probably can’t go back to the days when you were fascinated by a stick or a rock at the park, but you can create a similar effect by introducing new things to your life. And if they’re new, you can bet you probably won’t be a pro at them.

Bye Bye Ego

I think if there’s anything that holds us back from doing things we’re bad at, it’s ego (at least it is for me). I’m competitive, and I like to feel like I can succeed, or at least hold my own. What I don’t like to feel is totally out of my element. But when I do something that doesn’t come easily to me, it does two things: it frustrates me, and it forces me to learn some new things — and some new things about myself.

I took up yoga, for example, because I lack flexibility. And balance. And coordination...and any sense of grace whatsoever. That made spending an hour and a half in a class full of beautifully bendy people really hard sometimes. I got frustrated. I got angry. I tried too hard and hurt myself. Sometimes, I gave up even trying at all. What I (finally) discovered was that before I could get better at yoga, I had to learn to be OK with not being very good at it. The same has proved to be true with other things that aren’t strengths for me, like math (we’ve made peace) and making cookies.

If yoga was an Olympic sport, I wouldn’t make the cut. I don’t think any amount of practice can morph my brain into that of a math whiz. And my cookies, well, Martha Stewart would not approve. But I’m not ready to give up on them yet. At least not until I get to be good at them.

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This article is from Tara Struyk of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

How to Improve Your Memory (and Even Get a Little Smarter)

Kate Luther — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:24:13 +0000

My mother forgets things.

Not everything of course, but a lot. She can still recall the names of her friends from high school for example, and she remembers every embarrassing thing we did as kids... but ask her what we talked about five minutes ago, and you're out of luck.

What's really crazy is that I can't tell you when it happened. In fact, from my perspective, it was almost overnight. It's as if her brilliant mind blew a fuse — one minute she was fine and then — POP — the next minute she wasn't.

And now my mother forgets things.

But we're not beaten yet.

From mental exercises to food, I've been doing a lot of research into what helps people improve their memories, boost their brain power, and even stave off dementia. So whether you just want to get better at remembering names or want to keep your brain healthy for years to come, follow these suggestions. (See also: 5 Tips for Remembering Names)

Diet

The idea of eating for your intellectual health is nothing new, but this new development with my mom caused me to take a second, harder look at which foods do what.

The brain, it turns out, is made up of fatty tissue, so it requires quite a bit of fatty acids to function properly...but not just any fats will do. The popular Omega-3s are a good start, boosting your brain power as well as your immune system (while providing a whole host of other health benefits), so eat plenty of fatty fish (such as salmon, tuna, and shrimp), nuts (walnuts and almonds are wonderful), and leafy greens.

Supplements are good too — certainly better than nothing — but experts still agree that adjusting your diet is the best way to get the nutrients your body needs.

And speaking of leafy greens, the darker ones, such as spinach and chard, do a great job of controlling your homocysteine levels. Homocysteine is a non-protein amino acid that in normal levels apparently causes no harm. But elevated levels have been associated with Alzheimer's Disease as well as cardiovascular disease and a few other serious health concerns. To control your homocysteine levels, you should eat plenty of the dark, leafy greens and take both folic acid and B-vitamin supplements. Incidentally, whole grains are a great source of B-vitamins and give you a healthy dose of magnesium too — an essential mineral that is crucial to living cells. Magnesium deficiencies have been linked to a wide variety of diseases and disorders, including cardiovascular disease, asthma, diabetes, and yes, dementia.

Antioxidants also play a big part in your mental health, so think blueberries, garlic, olive oil, pomegranates, and those popular acai berries everyone is talking about. In general, the darker the fruit, the more potent the antioxidant properties, so eat from this food group as often as you like.

Cocoa power also contains a powerful antioxidant...more powerful than green tea even, so try sprinkling some on top of your coffee or mixing with your milk.

And since we're talking about coffee, having a few cups of java in the morning has actually been shown to be an effective deterrent against dementia and other cognitive diseases. And it's not just the caffeine — coffee apparently has some mystery compound in it, according to Science Daily Magazine, that interacts with the caffeine to protect against Alzheimer's. How much is enough? Studies show that moderate amounts — 4 to 5 cups a day — is sufficient to provide the health benefit.

And last but not least, that daily glass of red wine really does have its perks. In addition to helping ward off heart disease, red wine also contains some very powerful flavanoids that boost blood flow to the brain. Don't like red wine? Opt for grape juice instead.

Exercise

Getting as little as 20 minutes of physical activity each day can help ward off Alzheimer's and other cognitive diseases. Exercise delivers oxygen and nutrients to the brain cells and also increases your levels of BDNF, a chemical that encourages growth and survival of new neurons.

Exercise also improves the quality of your sleep, another must for those delicate neurons.

Stimulation

We've all heard the suggestions that exercising your brain is the easiest way to improve your mental power...and that little tidbit is actually true. But to get the most benefit, you need to engage in mental exercises that require your brain to work.

Learning a new language or a new musical instrument, for example, forces your brain to create new pathways and form new neurons. The result is improved mental capacity. Crossword puzzles and other brain games work equally well, but here's the catch...once you've mastered the task, it's no longer challenging, and your brain doesn't have to form those all-important neurons to keep up.

The key, then, is to keep your brain working by challenging yourself with new puzzles, activities, and areas of learning. The more you broaden your horizons, the better off your brain will be.

And in case you're wondering, yes — video games are beneficial too. In addition to increasing hand-eye coordination, those who play video games at least three to four hours a week have better depth perception, pattern recognition, and overall mental dexterity. You'll also find that you process information a little faster too.

Memory Hacks

Whether you're stepping out to the store or trying to remember the name of the person you just met, these quick tricks can help you remember information faster and easier.

Use Visual Cues

Linking an image to something you need to remember is an easy way to trigger that memory later when you need it. For example, my mother's license plate used to begin with PBJ. I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, so I used that image to remember the number on her plates. And clearly it worked... that was some 15 years ago and I can still pull it up with no problem.

Use Acronyms

When I need a few things from the store, I try creating a word using the first letter of those items. For example, if I need milk, eggs, and tea, I might use the word "MET" to help me recall which items I need to buy. Obviously, sometimes the letters won't cooperate and try as you might, you just can't form an actual word. In those cases, improvise. I once remembered brisket, bread, cilantro, celery, and soda by memorizing BBCCS — as in BB's and CC's. The letters didn't have much meaning for me, but it was enough to help me remember what to buy.

Use Lists

Trying to remember three or four items at the grocery store is one thing...it's quite another when that list grows to 10 or 15. There's nothing wrong with making a list, and in fact, making those lists takes the pressure off of you to remember every little to-do or to-buy that might cross your path. Given the amount of information we process on a daily basis, that's probably a good thing.

Say It Out Loud

When meeting someone for the first time, say their name out loud as soon as you learn it. This helps reinforce the face (image) with the name (detail) for future recall. Incidentally, this little trick works equally well with non-human recall too, so feel free to employ this tactic anytime you need to remember a set of details or specifications.

Write It Down

If you read a chapter in a book, you can probably recite the overall gist of the content, but when you write it down, you'll find that your recall is much more detailed. This trick comes in quite handy when you're studying for a test, memorizing a speech, or just need to remember something important.

Obviously, there's no guarantee that you won't still forget things from time to time, and as of this writing, there's still no fool-proof cure for degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. But we're getting there. And in the meantime, just think of how healthy and happy you'll be when you implement these new habits.

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This article is from Kate Luther of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

improve memory

Stop Losing Your Stuff With These 6 Simple Tricks

1. Increase Organization

2. Don't Silence Your Cell Phone

3. "Freeze It" Credit Card

4. iPod or Smartphone Wallet Case

5. Add Device Trackers

6. Wear Clothing With Secure Pockets

Like this article? Pin it!

Best Money Tips: How to Improve Your Working Memory

Top 5 Articles

Other Essential Reading

Why You Should Do Things You're Bad At

It’ll Make You Smarter

Life Will Seem Longer

Bye Bye Ego

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How to Improve Your Memory (and Even Get a Little Smarter)

Diet

Exercise

Stimulation

Memory Hacks

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