Tips for memory difficulties
Strategies for memory difficulties which may be caused by dyslexia, medical conditions, mental ill-health or side effects of medication
- Reduce sound distraction - wear headphones;
- Reduce visual distraction - turn your desk to face a blank wall; use screens; keep your desk tidy.
- Book a quiet room for a period of concentrated work.
- Minimise interruptions e.g. warn your colleagues that you are trying to concentrate on a piece of work, and ask them not to talk to you until lunchtime.
- Write things down, so that you don’t have to keep remembering them. ‘Buy birthday card!’ ‘Milk!’
- Collect a list of questions to ask your manager, rather than constantly interrupting.
- Put a note where you need it e.g. for things to do on the way home, put the reminder on your bag; put notes for a particular meeting with the papers for that meeting.
- Use apps such as Toodledo https://www.toodledo.com/
- Diary reminders (you can use these to schedule tasks as well as meetings).
- Avoid multitasking, and try to complete each task before starting the next.
- Put all appointments in your Outlook calendar (you can adjust the warning times).
- Set phone alarms.
- Set reminders of forthcoming deadlines.
- Depending on your role you may want yearly, termly, monthly or weekly plans.
- Make a daily task list (you may have a standard list, to which you add extra items).
- Schedule work for particular times. Some people like to do the most complex tasks first thing in the morning, when they are freshest.
- Schedule time for particular tasks, if you find it difficult to get the time for them.
- Remember to keep checking your plan, and record any new tasks.
- Improve your ability to judge how much time to allow by recording how much time jobs actually take.
- In many administrative and finance roles, it is helpful to set up systems (or use existing systems) so that you can easily check what work has already been done.
- Before you deal with an item, check what has already happened (to avoid paying the same invoice twice).
- Create a record of what tasks need to be done for recurrent activities e.g. those that happen on a monthly or yearly basis. This will prompt you next time.
- Give your resources a permanent home, and always put them back in the correct place.
- Take regular time to do your filing, so that you can find materials again.
- Use trays and folders (physical and electronic) to organise your flow of work.
- Talk to your colleagues to create systems that work for everyone.
- Make sure that when you are dealing with something you also record what you have done, and put it in the right place e.g. the file for paid invoices.
- Break your overall plan into smaller sections, then when you are ready to work break those sections into manageable chunks, then concentrate on one at a time. “The way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.”
- Some people make a visual overview of the whole, so they can see where their current chunk fits in.
- Find out how long you can concentrate for (which might be as short as 15 minutes). Design chunks to last that long.
- Set your timer, concentrate on the chunk, and when the timer goes stop and take a brief minibreak to allow your brain to recover.
- Tick the chunk off, then start the next chunk.
- This technique helps you to make progress, even on days when you are struggling. You can revise your work next day.
- Photocopy your standard daily tasks list, and add any extra tasks.
- Tick things off as you do them.
- If you have difficulty following a list, cover up the items you haven’t yet done, so that you can only see the next task.
- Train yourself to keep returning to the list, if you can’t think what to do next.
- Check that you have understood correctly e.g. ‘So the first thing is for me to …’
- Do not rely on remembering verbal instructions. Ask for a written reminder, to which you can refer.
- Some people make audio recordings, to which they can listen again.
- If the instructions are about an activity in the future, you may want to create a reminder that you will see when you come to start the task. E.g. Put a post-it on a form ‘waiting for authorisation from X’.
- Take the time to write down answers, and create reminders for yourself. Most people don’t like being asked the same question over and over again.
- For important information, you may need to work to get it into long-term memory, for example by repetition.
- Some people find it easier to learn by doing, so will want to carry out the new task several times, not just know how to do it.
- Taking regular breaks allows your brain to recover.
- Sitting at a computer all day isn’t good for you, walk around regularly.
- Drink enough water to remain well hydrated.
- Take a proper lunch break. If possible go outside for natural light.
- Eat healthily to maintain steady blood sugar levels.
- Try free Workrave software workrave.org to prompt you to take a break.
- First mind dump all your ideas (by writing or using a mindmapping software), so that they aren’t lost.
- Secondly start to think about how they fit together.
- Keep things short and easy to read.
- Use colour, pictures, flow charts.
- Print of screenshots which you can annotate.
- Keep examples of completed forms. Highlight key fields.
- You may want to ask a colleague to check that your notes are correct and that you haven’t missed anything out.
- Make an overview and keep it by you so that you can see where you are in a process.
- Use mindmaps to map a subject and see the connections.
- Use colour, pictures, icons.
- Use screenshots and photographs in instructions.
- Use flow charts.
- In Outlook use colours to mark status, and flags
- Use crib sheets, screen shots, check lists.
- Think of a visual image and also visualise words beneath it e.g. when trying to remember someone’s name, think of their face with their name written below.
- Record instructions or notes to yourself on your phone or a digital voice recorder.
- Ask if you can record meetings if you are unable to make effective notes.
- Use rhythm and song.
- Telling someone else will help to fix information in your memory.
- Group numbers in threes, so that there is a beginning, middle and end, and repeat them aloud.
- Rehearse a presentation out loud.
- Practise a new process. “Walk through, not talk through.”
- Learn by doing and repeating. It may take several times to get it embedded in your long-term memory.
- It may be helpful to think of a process as a journey, which requires you to go (either physically or virtually) to a number of different places.
- Interact with information – write it on cards and move it around; make diagrams; ask questions.
- Make it multi-sensory: see it, touch it, hear it, do it.
- Make sense of it – it is hard to remember something that you don’t understand.
- Make it stick – we remember things we are interested in.
- Make it memorable – make it unusual or exaggerated (see a word in colour, or very large)
- Make it organized – groups, patterns, categories.
- Review and practise information to get it into long term memory.