You’re not alone if you sometimes lose yourself in work and forget to join a meeting or blank on a client's name. These are honest mistakes. You don’t mean to be forgetful, but with so many things on your mind, it’s hard to keep track of everything.
When these memory lapses become too frequent, they can negatively affect your work performance, team collaboration skills, and, ultimately, your professional reputation. Luckily, while external factors can affect memory, you can also learn how to improve your memory by implementing lifestyle changes and testing different strategies.
What causes memory loss?
The National Institute on Aging (NIA) states that memory naturally weakens with age. The ability to remember new information is highest in your 20s, and age-related memory loss becomes more noticeable in your 50s and 60s. As you get older, age-related changes in the brain impact your executive brain function, which helps you plan, organize, and regulate your thought process.
While less common, the NIA states that memory can also deteriorate because of several health conditions, including:
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Head trauma or injury
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Tumors, blood clots, or brain infections
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Medical conditions like thyroid, kidney, or liver disorders
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Medication side effects
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Emotional conditions like chronic stress, anxiety, and depression
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Emotional trauma
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High blood pressure
If you believe you’re experiencing memory loss due to an underlying medical condition, consider seeking a professional healthcare provider’s help.
Certain daily habits and lifestyle choices can also cause forgetfulness. These include:
How to improve your memory: 8 strategies
Although you can't stop the aging process, several daily habits can improve your memory and have positive long-term effects on slowing or reversing natural memory problems.
Here are eight methods for boosting your cognitive abilities and memory function.
1. Exercise regularly
Push-ups, a morning run, and weight training aren’t only beneficial to your body. They work your brain out, too. Exercise stimulates better blood flow to the brain’s hippocampus region — an area vital to your memory.
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) stimulates parts of the brain that control executive functioning and memory, leading to better brain health. And if you’re not interested in a HIIT workout, moderate aerobic training works, too. It improves cognitive functions like your working memory (retaining information without losing track of what you’re doing) and multitasking.
The CDC recommends 150 minutes of moderate physical activity per week or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise split between aerobic and muscle strengthening.
2. Cut back on sugar and fat
If you’ve ever experienced a crash that leaves you groggy after drinking caffeine or an energy drink, you know firsthand how your food choices impact how you feel.
Nutrition and mental health are intrinsically linked and profoundly impact your ability to form memories. Studies show that high sugar and fat exposure causes inflammation in areas crucial for memory. Reducing sugary drinks and high-fat meals in your daily diet can make you more mentally sharp and improve your long-term memory and overall health.
3. Prioritize a healthy diet
It’s easy to stay glued to your desk and forget to eat a proper meal, order take-out, or skip a meal altogether.
But a consistent nutrient-rich diet helps your body turn food into energy. When your energy levels are more stable, you have the fuel necessary to approach your day with more clarity. And diets high in fruits and vegetables are associated with reduced cognitive decline.
Plan your food strategically to avoid feeling overwhelmed and missing a meal. Meal prepping, a practical cooking course, and identifying healthy replacement foods to improve the quality of your snacking are great places to start.
Here are some foods to prioritize in your diet to improve your memory:
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Flavonoid-rich foods (vegetables, fruits, tea) have neuroprotective properties
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Complex carbohydrates (oats, barley, brown rice) are full of B vitamins that boost memory functioning
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Omega-3 fatty acids (found in fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, and cod) contain essential antioxidants that influence memory function in adults and can reduce the onset of Alzheimer’s disease in older adults
4. Develop a healthy sleep routine
Sometimes life gets busy, and you feel like you must stay late to meet deadlines. It’s normal for your professional life to demand a little extra time every once in a while. But when a busy schedule or stress regularly interrupts your ability to get enough sleep, staying up late may counteract the work you do when you’re deprived of healthy sleep.
Sleep is integral to memory consolidation. Slow wave sleep improves declarative memories (facts, names, events), and rapid eye movement sleep improves procedural (skills and know-how) and emotional memories.
So if you’re trying to learn a new skill or complete a complex project, it’s better to work when you’re well-rested rather than pull an all-nighter. As a rule of thumb, experts recommend seven hours of sleep and sleep hygiene routines that promote healthy sleep.
5. Manage your stress
When you feel stressed, your brain pumps the body with cortisol, which temporarily blocks your ability to retrieve memories and impairs your declarative memory.
Practice stress management techniques like getting fresh air or organizing your workspace to reduce stress and improve your memory functioning.
6. Practice mindfulness techniques
Mindfulness involves consciously bringing your attention to the present moment. When you practice mindfulness, you set emotional reactivity aside and become fully invested in your surroundings, thoughts, and feelings. And studies have shown that mindfulness techniques can help you focus your attention and improve your working memory.
If you’re struggling with memorizing a sales pitch or keep forgetting important work information, try mindfulness techniques like concentrating on your breathing or scanning your body and relaxing each area you come to.
7. Pay attention to your alcohol consumption
Excessive alcohol consumption can negatively impact your cognitive functioning. Alcohol affects your ability to form new long-term memories and your ability to access your working memory. And repeated episodes of excessive binge drinking can damage the hippocampus, producing long-term effects on your cognition.
While the occasional drink or glass of wine with dinner is likely fine, avoid frequent excessive drinking to protect your mind and memory.
8. Be social
Social ties are crucial to your brain health. When you interact with others, be it cracking a joke with a coworker or talking up a new client, your brain is engaged and strengthening neural networks.
Over time, socializing pays off. As you get older, strong social ties lessen the likelihood of cognitive decline and dementia, so hit the RSVP button when that next networking event invite pops into your inbox.
Brain training and memory exercises
Now that you have some lifestyle hacks, here are a few more daily habits and fun mind games to improve your memory abilities at work:
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Try the association game: Mixing up a coworker’s name or blanking on important information during a client presentation is embarrassing and may even create conflict. If you struggle to remember names, facts, or numbers, try associating new pieces of information with existing knowledge or creating a story in your head.
If your coworker's name is Jamie, imagine them cooking a fragrant fruit jam, jamming out at a concert, or getting stuck in a traffic jam. These associations might help you retain their name.
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Use visual cues: If you’re a visual learner, break down information into charts and graphs to better conceptualize information. You could even carry around a small notebook to create quick sketches to help you retain a meeting or conversation’s details.
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Write it down: Research shows that writing is more effective than typing when learning new ideas. Since it takes longer to write something out by hand, your brain must carefully curate the information it focuses on.
The same research found that writing verbatim leads to less information recall. Take notes of words and concepts that stick out to you or you know you must remember, refining your notes later if you like.
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Group information: Chunking involves organizing your thoughts by breaking down complex information into smaller, logical groups. To recall the product development life cycle, for example, you can list all the departments it moves through.
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Make a to-do list: No one can keep all their meetings, deadlines, and tasks in their head. A to-do list helps you stay efficient and alleviates the stress of forgetting something important. Find what works best for you: maybe a calendar or to-do list app on your phone or an old-school physical planner.
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Play games that improve your memory: Support your memory and problem-solving skills by regularly playing games that require you to remember information, like a crossword, which can improve mild memory problems.
Consider buying a crossword book to improve your memory outside of work, like when commuting or on a break.
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Rehearse: Practicing answers to common interview questions, an important PowerPoint, or how you’ll negotiate a raise are all great ways to strengthen your memory. The repetition helps you stick to important information and avoid getting lost when recalling what you want to say.
Remember to practice
Learning how to improve your memory won’t happen in a day. It takes repetition and resilience as you try different strategies, dropping those that don’t work and practicing those that do.
To find something that works quicker, first, identify your improvement areas. If you often feel mentally cloudy from a poor night’s sleep, miss deadlines because of a lack of organization, or can’t concentrate on the here and now, work on what negatively impacts your memory the most. Over time you can add more healthy habits.
This work is worth it. Eventually, you’ll show up better at work and enjoy improved emotional, mental, and physical well-being. You’ll avoid missing that important meeting with your boss — and you'll also find more joy and direction in your daily life.
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