The fate of human memory

Clive Thompson writes on a phenomenon I think about constantly: if you really do start entrusting all your ephemeral memory work to external systems, might your wetware start to atrophy?

Apparently, yes:

Even the most diligent among us can't always remember to pocket a pen and paper everywhere we go (or, shhh!, won't admit that sometimes we just don't want to), but of course that's always when our best ideas hit us. Last night when I was walking my dog, I'm convinced I came up with the answer to global warming, but before I got home to write it down, I had a conversation with a neighbor, checked my mail, and watered the plants, so I might as well have been thinking about the lyrics to "Sussudio" for all I could remember. And try as I might, I couldn't bring it back.

You've probably heard the advice to photocopy your wallet's contents; in the event that you lose your wallet, this makes it easy to know what you need to cancel and replace. Smart.

I recently received a new credit card and had forgotten what a hassle it is to change the info across all my various online accounts. Here's a few suggestions based on things I did this time around that should make it easier (or at least more interesting) the next time this happens.

I sometimes think that one factor in success as a business or as a human being has a lot to do with what kind of problems you're comfortable solving -- and how you get better at addressing the stuff that falls outside that comfort zone.

History is littered with revolutionaries who couldn't run the country they'd overthrown, Generals who've insisted on re-fighting the last war, talented programmers who were promoted to becoming ineffective (and very unhappy) managers, and, of course, there's the countless companies that just couldn't make the leap when technology or cultural change rendered their comfy old business model moot.

Seems like there's a thread here that's worth thinking about.

How do you get better at knowing when you’re trying to solve the wrong problem?

• The day the music industry died - Times Online - “The truth now is that a rudimentary cotton garment with a band logo stamped across it that has probably been manufactured for pennies in a Third World sweatshop costs about twice as much as an album recorded in a state-of-the-art western studio.” Related, don’t miss Yahoo!’s Ian Rogers’s post “Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses”
• Abused Workers Fight Back by Slacking Off | LiveScience - “Employees toiling under an abusive supervisor often rebel quietly and indirectly by slacking off on the job and handing in sloppy work.”
• What’s next, no potty breaks? [AskMe] - “My company just instituted a “no headphones” policy…how can I deal?” I don’t know how you can expect someone to do a data-entry job without headphones. That’s just inhuman.
• 43 Folders [Chris Glass] [PNSFW] - “Backstory: Merlin and I met years ago when we were teenage girls on LiveJournal.” Chris Glass talks a bit about he ended up redesigning 43f. Love that guy.
• HollenbackNet - BigCityBaby - If you hadn’t put the pieces together yet, I’m about to need advice like Phil’s. And, wow!, did I ever dig his long article on big-city baby-having.
• You Tube - Inbox Zero - My Google Tech Talk on Inbox Zero is now available on the YouTube — previously it was only on the Google Video (now clocking in at 186,000 views)
• Five rejected Spice Girl personalities - “5. Emotionally-Unavailable Spice.” A long overdue 5ives update. One of three.
• I’m not usually one to get squeamish, but this wigged me… (kottke.org) - I’m not too squeamish either, Mr. Kottke, but this bastard crab is literally haunting my dreams. Dear Lord.