The Organized Mind

Information and Organization

Throughout history, people have tried to improve their brains so they can do, know, organize and understand more. The invention of writing about 5,000 years ago was a major breakthrough in “neural enhancement.” At first, people used writing for recordkeeping: receipts, recipes, inventories, and the like. Settling in cities around 3000 BC put new demands on human memory.

Since human patterns of thinking and decision making evolved over the tens of thousands of years that people spent as hunter-gatherers, many individuals still experience mental clashes between emerging techniques and older practices. Thus, attempts to augment human memory continue.

Externalizing memory – with computers and cellphones, for example – allows you to focus on something else, beyond memory. However, using external memory opens up the dilemma of organization. Your organic memory is rich and flexible. It has “associative access,” so you can tap into your memories several ways. Yet, organic memory has no organizational plan and runs on several different systems. To use your brain more efficiently, learn how it organizes data. Contemporary society places increased...