Use your memory to find ideas for your projects

For a few minutes I've been trying to come up with an idea for a new article on Steemit. The way I usually do this, and the way a lot of people do it as well is by staying in silence, looking at a bunch of things online, hoping to find something that will give us an idea good enough to write about it.

The downside of this is that most of the time we will get so distracted by all the videos we are watching or by all the images we're finding hoping to get inspired that we waste a lot of time on an useless activity that won't help us make any actual progress. But what if we would learn how to not do that? What if we would learn how to actively think about ideas and come up with topics to approach in our writing?

I learned this "method" a few months ago when I was trying to think of something to create in Photoshop. I was stuck with my design packages and I wasn't good enough to come up with something new and amazing without a lot of effort. Then I realized that before getting to that point I spent years consuming content, going to places, talking to people and living all kind of things.

In that moment I thought "what if I use all those things I learned and saw in the past that are somewhere in my memory in order to find an idea?" And that's how I started. One of the main reasons we think our memory is really bad is because we tend to forget things we don't really care about.

When was the last time you had to do something but you forgot because that thing wasn't extremely important to you? It happens pretty often and it makes us think that our memory isn't good at all. However, if you think about something you really enjoy, something that excites you, there is a lot of information about that particular thing that you remember.

In my case, I remember a lot of information about computers. I may not be able to remember things from high school or the name of every person I meet, but if I'd have to build computers using only the things I remember, I could tell you names of processors, graphics cards, cases, ram, and even their approximate prices.

That's why I believe we remember a lot more things than we realize, and I decided to try and see how much information is actually stored in my brain. Here's how I thought about this - we remember, as we already know, more than we realize. Our brain prioritizes things and lets us access really fast only what we consider to be important, like family, friends and things we really like. But there's more we remember that we just don't know about.

Here's how I manage to kind of "access" those forgotten memories, or some of them, in order to come up with ideas for articles or just remember certain information: I close my eyes, and I stay in complete silence for around a minute, trying not to think about anything. When I'm done, I bring into my mind the image of something I remember, like a place, a person, or a situation.

Let's say I remember my old class from elementary school. I try to picture that class into my mind as well as possible, and then I look at it and I think about similar things. So, I've got my elementary class into my mind, and then I allow my mind to bounce to my high school class, then to the classes I saw in college, the ones I saw in Spain when I was 11 years old, and then the teachers, the people that talked to the teachers, places I had to visit with those teachers, what I loved about those places, what I remember from them, like a cinema, then what movie I saw on the cinema, what movie I wanted to see, what other movie I would've loved to see there, what is my favorite movie I would like to see in a cinema, what I like about that favorite movie, what's the main character, what he does, where he goes, what that place looks like, what it reminds me of and so on.

I allow my mind to bounce from memory to memory and remember little details that I would easily ignore if I would try to think about those things consciously. I spent a few minutes with my eyes closed, bouncing from memory to memory, never holding on to any of them. If you remember something, don't try to stop the process and don't try to imagine "what if".

In case you want to see more from a memory, allow your mind to bounce only inside the boundaries of that memory. Once you learn how to create images of your own memories you will start to see more and more, and you will notice things you didn't notice at the time.

For example, if I now think about one particular thing, like a place where I was waiting for a girl to go to school with her, I can remember more than the girl - I can form images of the sidewalk, the cars passing by, the buildings that are there, trees, leafs, grass, parked cars, some people waiting for someone else, voices of kids playing, talking, and so on, things I didn't pay attention to back then.

Once you learn how to use this technique really well you will realize you can remember a lot more than you think and the images in your mind will become really vivid. You'll be able to remember places, people, discussions, actions, ideas, and many more things without too much effort.

Of course, don't think this is done like in the movies or that is anything compared to what you may see in a fantasy scenario. You won't see a video inside your head with everything that ever happened to you. You are still limited to images and small actions from your memories, at least from what I experienced, and there will be things that you can't really remember. For example, no matter how much I try and no matter how much time I invest into it, I cannot see vivid images of people's faces.

This may be because whenever I talk to someone I usually don't look at their face because I get distracted, especially if I'm just communicating something. There are just too many things to observe and imagine, and unless I want to see if the other person is lying or faking something, I don't want to look at their face.

But I do remember the things I look at the most - sidewalk, cars, animals, people passing by, and so on. This is an amazing technique that I'm sure everyone out there can use, just because we tend to remember a lot more than we actually realize and all those memories are in our brain. We just need to learn how to access them.

If you're interested in trying this, all you have to do is spend 5 minutes a day in a quiet room, thinking about something you remember then allow your brain to bounce from memory to memory until you feel it's enough. Doing this daily will allow you to remember more and more things and in time you'll be surprised by all the memories you have in your mind and the clarity of the things you can remember.