How to Improve your Memory and Reduce Fibrofog by Using Lists

I’ve always been a bit of a list maker. But generally it was just a shopping list, a Christmas list. A list for a specific purpose. A List with a start and an end to it.

Since I started having major memory problems a few years ago and sometimes even lose my basic intelligence and ability to reason, lists have become far more important. As has writing things down.

I make a list every morning, and it includes all the things I need to get done in the day. So What? Loads of people write lists… Buy kids’ schoolbooks, check uniforms… especially at this time of year there are as many lists as there are parents. But I include everything on my list. And I mean everything. Do laundry might sound like a reasonable item on a list. But when you do a load of laundry every day, you’d imaging it might become automatic. And it used to be. But before I started writing lists, I could look at the laundry basket and tell myself to do it. Go into the bathroom to get a pile of laundry for the machine. Stop because there’s towels all over the floor. Pick up the towels. Leave bathroom. And this could happen two or three days in a row. The dirty clothes will have piled its way out of the basket and started invading the rest of the bathroom.

Other things on my list might include ‘eat lunch’. Especially if I’m going to be on my own for most of the day. I have been known to make lunch at about 1, get distracted, and then find it still sitting there at 5. And I’d be wondering why I felt so awful, and tired, and irritable.

But the biggest value in the list is that is saves time. If you check the list every time you leave a room, leave someone’s house, leave the shops – then you may remember a task that needs to be done, and will save you another trip later. Like my prescription. I’ll drop it off, do some shopping, and come back when it’s ready. But sometimes I wouldn’t realise that I’d forgotten to collect it until I ran out of tablets. So another trip to the shopping centre, and an urgent one this time.

So how does a list actually improve your memory, when really it takes away all the incentive to remember by providing a constant crutch? I’m sure there are plenty of scientific reasons that the scientists and neurologists will come up with, but I reckon that if I write something down, and know I’ll be looking at the list later, it goes into the checked file in my brain. I don’t have to worry about it as much. It will get done – it’s on the list. And that clears up loads of space in the rest of my brain. Not just for remembering, but for all sorts of other cognitive tasks. Like adding, making decisions, putting a meal together (yeah, seriously!) All those things have begun being alot easier since I started writing a list every morning, and transferring any items not done to the next day’s list. Fibrofog isn’t gone, in fact in the evenings, when I’m trying to put a meal together, I can still forget what to put into the bolognese I’ve been making for years. But little bits of my memory have been rescued, and confusion isn’t as much of a problem.

Continue reading here for some more tips about coping with poor memory, lists, and some more general fibromyalgia advice.