Things I Recall Not At All

by Colin Wright
on July 20th, 2010
1 Comment

Remember the guy we met up in…ah, it was a few days ago? Yeah, he was awesome. What was his Twitter handle? How did he end up there?

It’s funny, because generally when I travel my memory is going full blast, taking in every little piece of information and logging it away for later, ready to be written about and told in story form to a gathered audience of hundreds or just a few people at a cocktail party.

At the moment, however, I’m on a road trip across the US with two other people, and because of this fact (and the nature of the trip), I’ve found my memory to be flagging a bit, and I’m not sure how to stop it.

What was I saying again? Oh right. Memory. Travel. Science. Here goes.

There’s this wonderful sociological premise called ‘Distributive Memory,’ which refers to the tendency of people in groups to remember some things while trusting that others in the groups will take care of other things. The groups can be as large as an entire culture or as small as a dating couple, but it almost always happens, and the results can be dramatic.

In this particular instance, I find that I’m recalling more factual details relating to scheduling – where we’re going to be when, who we’re staying with, where the gas money is coming from – while Ash and Andi are taking care to remember the times and places we’ll be meeting with people when we arrive in town and their contact details so we can catch up with them again after that initial meeting.

Complicating things further is the fact that each of us are pseudo-in charge of different stops, and each stop is organized (or disorganized) to a wildly differing degree…some are just casual drinks with online friends, while others are elaborate tours of towns, complete with activities and dance lessons and presentations by local businesses.

If I were the only one doing this road trip, I would had methods for remembering all these details. I would know that I HAD to keep track of everything, so I would take fastidious notes and be up to date with all the goings-on at each location. Because there would be no one else to depend on, I would make it work, and my brain would make room for it all.

Because there are two other people involved – and my brain knows it – I find that I’m okay with leaving some details to them while I focus on my lot.

Where we come up short is when each of us thinks one of the others is handling a particular piece of the puzzle, when in reality no one is taking the lead. We all know that it exists, but it’s being ignored because we feel over-prepared and the information is not unified.

This is not good.

We’re in even more danger just living in the future like we do! More and more devices are taking on the same roles that partners and business associates used to fill, and we’re forgetting (or not even trying to remember) birthdays (we’ve got Facebook!) and phone numbers (just type it in the phone!) and factual information (Google it! Just Google it!) so that we can apply our brainpower to more important tasks (like eating Doritos…no wait, I meant to say ‘creative endeavors’).

What I’m going to attempt, and what I recommend to you, is to create a holistic ‘spine’ of any complex task or trip you end up taking. If you have the broad strokes written down, you can then expand upon these ideas with little offshoots (mind map style, like so) and it is much easier to keep track of complex information in a way that allows you to keep track of who or what is handling what bit of information while still keeping the entire thing together in one place.

Travel is all about learning, and this is just one of many things I’ve already learned a mere week into our road trip across the US. Oh wait, it’s been a week and a half. MAN, I really need to get a handle on this!

Colin Wright

Colin Wright is a minimalist, branding expert and serial entrepreneur. While running his blog Exile Lifestyle ,his branding studio Colin Is My Name and his e-publishing business ebookling. Colin travels the world (moving to a new country every 4 months), meeting up with amazing people, giving talks (to audiences ranging from tech industry professionals to college students to Catholic school girls) and hunting down new and interesting experiences.