The Record Retention of Your Own Mind: Remembering Important Concepts

With Sarbanes Oxley and governing record retention compliance laws, it's hard to avoid the issue of business record retention. After all, if you have a large business then record retention processes are required, but what about a record retention topic you may not have considered?





What about your own mental record retention process?





Your Mind: Your First Resource for the Most Important Record Retention and Extraction


Your mind is the guide map and initial innovator for your business and is therefore a reservoir that should store valuable ideas and information that you can extract quickly for your own applicable interests. Is there a way that you could streamline your own record retention process? The idea behind this article is to present three tips or observations that will allow you to make important concepts become concepts that you remember more often. First, however, let's talk about dart boards.





Little Dart Boards and Big Dart Boards: A Record Retention (think of retention as a form of extraction in this context) Analogy for Your Own Mind


There are obvious events that your brain will remember automatically. A wedding, the first day of school, the first time you met your in-laws, the death of a loved one, the birth of your firstborn, etc. It's not likely you will forget these events; "record" retention is easy when you are remembering a big event but how can you make important concepts just as memorable and as applicable to your life as those events were?





Let's return to the memory of your wedding. You will most likely admit that you do NOT remember your wedding all of the time. In fact, your wedding probably only comes to your remembrance when it is triggered by something that associates itself (for whatever reason) with your wedding. It's a process that I like to think of as little dart boards vs. big dart boards. Little dart boards for instance represent your little memories, which are harder to "hit" or trigger with associations because there is less room for the associations (i.e. the darts) to "stick." In other words, you simply don't remember your little memories very often. The big dart boards however, or your larger memories (a wedding, a funeral, a reunion) are larger dartboards and are more likely to get hit more often with associations, so you remember the large dartboards far more often than the small. So, if you want to make a concept that you know is important return to your mind more often you have to make it a bigger dartboard and you can do that by creating more associations that will expand the size of your dartboard.





Let's say for instance that you go to a seminar that is required for work. You aren't expecting much so when an interesting and engaging speaker comes on the stage and starts to talk about the benefits of creating a business blog--that you contribute to daily--you realize the importance of the concept. Just realizing however that it is an important concept won't necessarily help you remember to write on a daily basis. Creating a greater memory or more associations with the concept can help you.





Here are the promised association creation tips:





Record Retention Observation #1: Big Memories are Often Associated with People


One common factor among the majority of strong memories is that they are often associated with people. Creating an association with people that relates to an important concept can help you remember that concept more often. For instance, if you ask two or three of your co-workers, colleagues and/or competitors to contribute to your business blog, you will find that you remember your business blog more often than you would have otherwise.





If you really want to remember a goal (to be more patient for instance), then get somebody involved and you will be more likely to remember your goal.





Record Retention Observation #2: Create Visual Cues


One of the best ways to exemplify this concept is to think of various religions. Many male Jews for instance will don yarmulkes and other religious clothing to remind them of their devotion to God. Catholics will wear a jeweled cross. These items help them remember important goals, persons or concepts in their lives. Even though blogging may certainly not be a religious habit, you can still remember to do it more often by creating visual cues. The cue could be a daily email reminder or a funny comic about writing-something that would make you remember your initial excitement about the concept would be best.





Record Retention Observation #3: Enjoy the Habit


Memory and record retention is definitely reinforced by habit. Once you have persevered through the initial trial period, enjoy the habit that you have developed.





Your own mental record retention should be a priority in your business. Decide what the most important concepts and principles are and build their importance with associations.





Marci Crane is a web content specialist for Innuity. For more information in regards to business record retention, please feel free to learn more about NextPage.