Same here. I've always had terrible personal memory since I was young, despite dramatic lifestyle and diet changes over time. Distinctive characters in fiction stick with me, but not order of events: I couldn't tell you anything useful about the plot details of my favorite films and books despite revisiting them many times.
It applies to short-term memory, too. I give myself very specific places to put things, because if I didn't I would lose track of my keys and wallet literally every day.
Weirdly enough, these issues don't seem to apply to logical or spatial memory at all, which is probably the only reason that I'm an effective programmer.
> Distinctive characters in fiction stick with me, but not order of events: I couldn't tell you anything useful about the plot details of my favorite films and books despite revisiting them many times.
I can usually slowly work my way back through a book, maybe with a couple prompts from someone else to help me piece it back together, but only for stuff I’ve read in the past few years. Farther back and it’s gone. Character names rarely stick. I did watch the Star Wars trilogy so much as a kid that I could replay it in my head, every frame, sound effect, and line, every cut perfectly timed. Not anymore, but that part of me’s not totally broken, I guess. I think I’m not far off average on that stuff, maybe a bit below.
> Weirdly enough, these issues don't seem to apply to logical or spatial memory at all, which is probably the only reason that I'm an effective programmer.
It applies to short-term memory, too. I give myself very specific places to put things, because if I didn't I would lose track of my keys and wallet literally every day.
Weirdly enough, these issues don't seem to apply to logical or spatial memory at all, which is probably the only reason that I'm an effective programmer.