Muscle Memory 🧠

How many phone numbers are you able to recall?

How many do you recall from 10 years ago?

What about anniversaries?

Probably less than six.

I no longer recall how to spell properly. I am simply excellent at coming close enough for software to correct me.

Sometimes it seems that as technology becomes more sophisticated, we think less.
We used to remember how to get around, but today we rely on Google Maps.

How much mental math do we perform?
We used to recall a great deal of information, but now we remember how to look it up.

We increasingly use our phones as a sidekick and occasionally as a boss. They remind us of what we should do and when. This is, of course, great. Now, we are free to recollect other things. To perform further processing and calculations.

However, as technology shifts from outsourcing our memory to outsourcing our thinking to outsourcing our writing, perhaps mental muscle atrophy develops.

Perhaps we are beginning to lose the muscle memory required to recall original thought during idea production.

Both processing power and connectivity are phenomenal. It is a lever for what we can do. It serves as a multiplier for our minds. From our empathy to our creativity.

But let us continue to think. Keep working out our minds. Let us use technology to make us more human, rather than outsourcing our humane judgment and intuition as well.