I have too many passwords and the iron trap memory that I pride myself upon is starting to ask me why we are not taking advantage of other resources.
In a perfect world I’d consider hiring Baravelli. He might not be the best gatekeeper but anyone who makes you smile is worth keeping around or at least thinking about.
Take a gander.
The Impact Of Cellphones On Memory
Those of you who remember life before everyone carried a cell phone will appreciate why when some people called me a walking white pages was a compliment.
Telephone numbers and random trivia were always easy for me to remember. If I called you once there was a good chance I remembered your number, definite if it was twice.
But that was then and this is now and things have changed slightly.
Instead of dialing your number and benefiting from the repetition of tapping it out on a touch tone dial pad or even sticking my fingers in the number hole on a rotary phone I just touch your name/photo and the phone does the rest.
In concept, if I enter your number and information in my contacts there is a good chance I might remember it, or at least a chunk, but even that doesn’t happen as often as it used to ‘cuz tech has made it simple to just beam information over.
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My kids will tell you I have gently lectured them about learning how to read maps because sometimes the map function on phones or the navigation systems in our cars don’t work.
They have heard me say “if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. Exercise your minds, think.”
What I haven’t heard them say is “I can’t remember the passcode to my phone or I can’t remember the password to XYZ”
Does that mean their memories are better than mine or alternatively that mine is going?”
Absolutely not.
It means I have stuffed more than 47 years of information into mine and they haven’t. The giant hole between their ears isn’t filled with as much stuff as mine is.
Or more accurately, I have many more things to worry about and be distracted by than they do.
If they were to ever bust my chops about this memory thing I’d smile and say I love you and then tell them I follow the advice of a very smart man.
Eat Your Words
Since I share DNA and a bit of an attitude with my children I would expect to hear some kind of retort about how they’ll use that line in school upon their teachers.
Can’t say I would be completely against the idea of complaining about being asked to regurgitate information because I am not convinced being able to do so is of benefit.
I suppose there are some good discussions to be had about what things you should memorize because there are benefits and what doesn’t but I’ll save going down that particular rabbit hole for a different day.
And I’ll confess that I had to erase my iPhone because I forgot the passcode.
That is what led me down this path and started this post.
I didn’t completely forget it or totally screw it up, but I botched it enough times that I got irked and decided to start over.
Since I back up my phone daily I didn’t lose any data, just a few minutes of peace.
And I know for certain that what is behind this is my not being present.
Be Present Where You Are
If you juggle enough balls in the air and are constantly multitasking it is easy to miss things.
That is what happened to me.
Got a ton of stuff going on now, some of which is very taxing and I wasn’t focused on some things so I screwed up the passcode.
If I had given myself a day or at least slept on it I probably would have come up with the code and been fine but I was tired and frustrated.
Some of this crap is wearing me out so I said screw it and just started over.
It worked out because of good planning and being prepared for stupid things happening like tech failure or brain farts like just not remembering something I had done a million times.
I don’t like it and am not particularly fond of struggling to remember some things.
But I am not going to panic about forgetting stuff when eight million other things are happening, that is normal.
Still it makes me think that maybe the great brain could use some simple assistance in some areas, maybe I ought to get a password manager.
I’ve had a password manager since the palm pilot days. Now I wonder WHAT I needed passwords for so long ago. I think it started with “the internet”. Anyway should I have forget the main password I’d be locked out of a lot of things. Now on the iPhone the password manager app works with signing in with my fingerprint so that’s another password that I’m going to manage to forget unless I have to use it.
II had a couple of Palm Treos but I don’t remember if I used a password on them or not. I know until somewhere between the last 5-7 years I didn’t worry much about passwords.
I used them but I didn’t think twice about what people could do if they got my phone. Now it is tied into so much of my life I’d rather not find out.
Technology makes some things easier and some harder.