Why do we forget movies & TV shows we watch

I’ve pretty much gotten used to not remembering movies and TV shows I watch after a span of a month or two. Its also one of the staunch reason to why I don’t watch TV shows until I know its either a limited series or the show has ended, so that I won’t have to wait an year for the next season. I have been telling myself it’s not so bad because unlike other folks, I can enjoy a good movie again as if I’m watching it for the first time. Ofcourse, I do remember bits and pieces so its not exactly the same, but I’m just trying to convince myself about a lie anyway, so…

Sometimes this raises the question of Did I even like it if I can’t remember anything about it? Ofcourse yes, but maybe I’m not doing anything with it for my brain to feel that its important to hold on to.

So I thought of looking it up on the internet

Asks google: You show deadly symptoms of Dementia & Alzheimer’s. Its over for you

Casually ignores

Now, different people will always have different calibre in any skill. Memory is not any different. In fact even under the umbrella of ‘memory’, different people are good at memorising different kind of information. Some people are really good at remembering dates or numbers, some are good at visual memory, some can remember a large piece of information, some have photographic memory (scary) & some people (like me) are good at spatial memory. I can remember routes easily. I think :/

There are two interesting theories on how you forget things:

Decay theory: When the information has disappeared from your memory.

This theory poses that memory decays over time. When you learn something, a neurochemical “Memory trace” is created. With the passage of time this chemical disintegrates and you eventually forget. This theory mainly affects the short-term memory system. Older memories are often more resistant to the decay theory.

Interference theory: When the information is stored, but you can’t retrieve it.

This theory argues that time-related decay of memory can’t explain all forgetting. Instead it says most of your daily forgetting happens because of other information in your long-term memory interfering with your ability to retrieve a memory. It pictures forgetting as a direct result of competition among memories associated with a similar retrieval cue.

Decay theory is sort of still debated upon and might be for a long time since its really hard to validate. Interference theory is more or less a solid bet.

Some things that directly impact/improve your ability to remember things.

1. Your attention while consuming content matters. I have a monkey mind that randomly starts jumping from one thought to another in between the movie. Sometimes I even get distracted by my phone.

2. Due to the transience property of our memory, if you don’t recall the information enough, your brain will discard it since it thinks that the information has no use in the future. There is this concept about [[Spacing effect]] where it asks you to have a time gap in between consuming and recalling the information because the information has to fade away from your current working memory to be actually considered as a recall. Otherwise you are just pulling it from your current working memory. So talking about that TV show with your friend tomorrow should count as recalling and synthesizing the information so that it can last longer.

3. How much you relate to the information you consume will also contribute to your ability to recall it.

4. There are researches showing promising aid from Mindfulness practice. I recently attended a Vipassana retreat which I figured was simply a form of the same practice where you are intensely attentive about your natural breath and sensations.

Now, ofcourse you don’t have to remember every bit of detail about most of these entertainment related things. The point is to just have fun.

The same doesn’t hold true for your learnings. If you can’t remember all the useful information that you learn then ultimately the time you invest in it goes for a toss. While a little osmosis of knowledge might still happen, it’s not giving you the value for your time. I might as well have played a match of League of legends instead of reading an article about memory loss, or watching a ted talk on how to influence others :/

I’ve recently started exploring a Personal Knowledge management method called Zettelkasten Method, the logic of which I was instantly able to relate with. I’m not sure if you have seen this image but it speaks a lot about how data transcends into insight or wisdom, that helps you create knowledge for your long-term evolution.

Most of your free-flowing, siloed piece of data or information will hardly be of any use to you when you look at the larger picture. I see two benefits of linking your thoughts and learnings:

1. As shown in the above picture; it helps your knowledge to be a lattice work, or a web that is linked to each other through multiple nodes. This gives a structure to your thoughts and you can discover new pathways to make use of your learning and synthesize new knowledge out of the existing ones.

2. Just how a single yarn is so much weaker and easy to break than a fabric made out of the same yarn, as you link your learnings together it tends to stay in your memory longer. It is bound to each other in some capacity. The stronger the links pointing to a certain idea, the longer that idea will stay. The Lindy Effect is an interesting theory related to this. It tells us that the longer something has been around, the longer its likely to persist in the future. Ofcourse its talking about non-perishable things like ideas, books, etc. Ms. Lindy doesn’t give a damn about perishable items like you and me :)