A neuroscience tip to make your message stick

How’s your memory?

Mine’s a bit uneven these days.  

I can still remember the lyrics to Neneh Cherry’s 1988 hit ‘Buffalo Stance’, but often not why I’ve walked into a room.

So I was relieved to hear the neuroscientist, memory expert and author of Why We Remember, Dr. Charan Ranganath, explain:

‘Our brains are designed to forget.’

He says forgetting things is a sign of a healthy functioning brain.  It allows us to cope with the volume of information that hits us each day.

It made me feel a lot better.  You too?

And what a brilliant mantra it is for our communication, too.

If we assume that people will forget, not remember, what we say, we’ll be more likely to:

1. Work harder to make it more interesting and memorable

   
   

2. Repeat our message so it sticks

   
   

3. Check people have digested and acted on what we’ve said/written

All important stuff if we want to cut through the noise and connect with people.

So stick Dr Ranganath’s mantra on a Post-It note before you, well, forget…

And tell me what weird stuff you still remember against all the odds!