I was in a Seeing My Time® private session last week with a high school student and their mom. We were discussing one of the executive skills, working memory.
Working memory is memory you use in the moment; it’s different from long term memory in that it disappears quickly.
I explained to my client that your working memory is like a workspace in the brain that has a specific amount of room. The amount of storage cannot usually be increased – most adults can hold around four chunks of information at a time.
If someone gives you a 5th piece of information, one of the previous four must be replaced. Whoops!
A Trick for Getting Bonus Working Memory Space
As I explained to my client, you can increase the amount of information with a little “hack”: linking the information together.
For example, in the case of a mnemonic: “My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Me Nine Planets.” It’s one sentence to remember the names of nine planets. (Yes, I grew up thinking Pluto was a planet…silly me.) It’s a kind of workaround to this very natural limitation.
After this explanation, the student’s key idea was “Wait…I thought that was a “me” problem!” Imagine their relief realizing it was a function of the brain and not something they were doing wrong!
We Need to Shift Our Mindset
In truth, there are a lot of people out there thinking, “it’s a “me” problem.” Since we can’t see the brain in action, we assume we just aren’t trying hard enough. Or worse, people around us assume we won’t instead of can’t.
That’s the shift I want for every family I work with: from “I thought it was a “me” problem” to “oh – this is just how my brain works, and here’s what I can do about it.”
Poor working memory is NOT a character flaw. And it’s not due to a motivation issue either. It’s just a brain function with a fixed number of slots! Once you know that, you stop fighting your brain and start working with it.
You learn to write things down before they disappear. You learn to chunk information the way we chunk phone numbers or planet names. You learn tools that support your brain’s working memory, instead of expecting it to do what it can’t do.
This is Why We’re Here!
The work we do together at Executive Functioning Success is all about teaching the brain science and the systems that make daily life easier. Whether you’re 12 or 82, whether it’s homework or a work project or just keeping track of your own day, week, month and year, understanding how your brain works is the first step to working with your amazing brain instead of against it.
If any of this sounds like your family (or like you!) we’d love to talk. Schedule a discovery call with me and we can figure out what YOUR brain needs to thrive.
