I am a goldfish

They say it has a memory of 3 seconds, 7 seconds, or 9 seconds.

A scientific fact or a myth? The answer is a myth, too. And it draws scientific attention — the 9-second theory is from a Microsoft study that concludes, “human beings may have a shorter attention span than a goldfish.”

Hmm, sounds like another cooperate propaganda, “Focus! A goldfish may kick your ass.”

Why goldfish? We scapegoat goldfish for our deteriorating memories. We forget things all the time. A myth that another myth can explain, especially when the latter one can help us feel better.

Except we don’t know, or don’t care, why goldfishes are so happy. They swim around in the tank or pond, bright, carefree.

I got serious with these two myths last year. I have got a perfect purpose and a lab to study them.

Losing and forgetting are different

I work at a sorting station in a warehouse. I use a scanning device to scan a package, be it an envelope or a cupboard box, before putting it into its designated container (a large nylon bag). Then out they go to the customer’s front door.

My right hand holds the cell-phone-shaped device all the time, while the left carries the package around. Sometimes I have to put down the device and engage both hands when, for example, the package is too heavy or I need to Tetris in the nylon bag to make more room.

Then it happens — the device is gone when I come back. It’s not there where I remember I laid it down. Such a short time, spooky. So a warehouse elfin? Amiable yet mischievous, coming to cheer up my dull, plodding hours?

It’s just 10 seconds or 15 seconds. She can’t hide it too deeply.

I move to second place, well, according to my memory. I don’t know why I have a second place in my memory. Maybe it’s just a gut, not a memory.

No luck.

Then the third place, fourth… There is a fine line between mischief and rascal. Apparently, the elfin is always on the other side of the line.

“This is crazy,” I swear, aloud. One of the pros of working at this station is that no one is near you. Only steel racks, nylon bags, packages, and this little elfin, flapping, clapping, laughing.

Swearing, searching. 30 seconds? One minute? My memory is already gone. Only math is still with me: searching every darn inch of this place, I will find it.

Finally, math serves its role. The damn device lies inside a bag at the high-end of the rack, under an envelope or box. (In retrospect, I might stand straight when I put it down and throwing some packages atop while searching.)

The least possible place. How could my memory be so wrong?

When it happens just once or twice, I tease my friend, the little elfin. Then it happens all the time. 50%? (the times that I struggle vs. the total times I lay the device down). Okay, I admit 50% is a convenient number, but you get my point.

Just too much.

“Here you go, again?” every time I shout to the little elfin.

She hovers in the air, never bored.

Sometimes I think I know the trick and rush to the place. But I don’t — it’s always another unthinkable place!

How is it possible? Why is my memory so short-lived? Not only that, the memory that I thought was helping me to retrieve the location was clearly not my memory. It’s a fake. How did it get into my head?

I want to figure it out before it wastes my time anymore, before it drives me crazy.

I am not a reckless guy (hope I have convinced you.) I don’t really lose a lot of things in life, but I forget. There is a difference. Losing an item is like I take the device from the device center and walk to the sort station. Then I find it’s not in my pocket. Poof, it’s gone, forever. I don’t know what happened to it on the road. Forgetting is I put down the device and come back 10 seconds later, poof, it’s not there. In daily life, the 10 seconds can be hours or days. We think we remember what we did to the item, only our memories send us false messages. In forgetting I don’t know how it happened.

I decide losing things is God’s death punishment while forgetting is God’s soft penalty to remind us: focus!

I will try to crack these two tricks at my work.

A Sweet Spot

Maybe it’s really true that goldfish beats us in memory. As a Harvard Health study shows, “you are most likely to forget things soon afterward.” The memory that you think is your trusted confidante is actually not there anymore. It’s your gut veiled in fake loyalty. The first place you look to, even though it’s just 3 seconds afterward, is as random as when you do it one year later. Although it remains debatable, your gut could be a mess, and more often than not, trusting it could be messier.

This makes me feel better. I haven’t slipped into the senior moments, yet.

There are a lot of tips to help us improve our memory — we are luckier than the goldfish. The №1 hack would be “having designated spot.” No surprise, random moves only make our memories more confusing.

After studying the perimeter of the sorting station, I decide on this spot when I have to lay down the device: the outside edge, the right-hand corner of the bag; the bag shall be at the third layer of the rack, to my right side. It’s at my chest height, hard to miss, easy to grab. Yes, a sweet spot. Like I have a labeled cabinet at home for all my mails and the folders with proper names on my computer.

It works right away, enormously. My sorting rate skyrocketed. I beat the workers 20 years younger than me by large. Okay, I am a bit exaggerating — it’s not the key point. I request to stay at the sorting station all the time. Because I like to see my rates climb on the daily working reports. The №1 hack is persistence. Period.

But this trick for sure helps a lot, and it makes me happier. I appreciate the elfin’s companion at the tedious station, but not her pranks.

But she is persistent, too. Time by time, when I come back to the sweet spot, my device is nowhere to find. Much less often than before, but still she comes out, after hiding my device, clapping, laughing.

Like I have named all my folders and files with hundreds of naming tips on my computer, I still forget files, a hell of a lot.

What the hell is wrong?

Don’t get too high

Let me go back to the Harvard Study, which points out another crack in my memory: suggestibility. It slaps me right in the face.

Often at the sorting station, I am far away from the “designated spot”. Well, just three or four steps. In most cases, I would walk back to the spot to put down my device. But work is always full of contingencies, like when the box is too heavy to move around, or when I find a perfect rhythm that I feel I am flying. Then a voice crawls up to my head:

Let me make an exception. Leave it right here. It’s a short time, I won’t forget.

But life always pours you a bucket of ice when you are super high. I come back to grab my device — I come back to the sweet spot! The rest is nothing but cold and pain. What do they say? “Fly high, fall hard.”

“Although little is known about exactly how suggestibility works in the brain, the suggestion fools your mind into thinking it’s a real memory.” This finding blows me away. It explains so much.

Can’t remember how many times I left a file on the desktop and thought I would send it back to its folder shortly. Until the desktop grew into a nebula. When I thought I would take the mails back to the shelf after cooking, they would become little hills scattered around the house. No surprise when I was looking for a specific file or mail, I always thought I have put them back to where they belong, only found they were not there.

No tricks in this part. I have to cut the suggestible moments. I sewed a large pocket on my working vest at the heart position. Whenever I have to put the dam device down, I fix it on my body.

No singular files on the desktop, delete it or send it back to where it belongs right away. No mail out of the shelf. Stop everything to sort them first, or don’t pick up them at all.

In six months, these two hacks earned me over $2000 worth of bonus coupons at work. My name stayed at the top of the sorting rate report like forever.

Find a sweet spot, stick to it.

When you remember you have put your stuff back but it’s not there, fret not. It’s a false memory.

Don’t get high. Because if you do, you would think you can cheat for once, then you get screwed.

They don’t seem to be able to stretch my memory. Lame. I am still beaten by the goldfish. But I can be as happy as they are.