The myth of perfect memory 🧠

Have you ever looked up a word for the tenth time and thought in frus­tra­tion: “My mem­o­ry is ter­ri­ble. I’m just not retain­ing any­thing!”

This is the myth of per­fect mem­o­ry, the false belief that you should learn a word once and remem­ber it for­ev­er. It treats your brain like a hard dri­ve instead of a mus­cle.

But this makes you feel like you’re fail­ing at a nat­ur­al part of the learn­ing process.

What if for­get­ting was­n’t a fail­ure, but a fea­ture? What if every time you for­get and re-encounter a word…

✅ You’re actu­al­ly strength­en­ing the neur­al path­way for that word?

✅ You’re send­ing a sig­nal to your brain that this word is impor­tant?

✅ You’re cre­at­ing anoth­er lay­er of con­text, mak­ing the mem­o­ry more robust?

✅ You’re active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the nat­ur­al cycle of learn­ing?

The truth is, learn­ing is not a sin­gle event. It is a process of encoun­ter­ing, for­get­ting, and re-encoun­ter­ing. For­get­ting is a nec­es­sary step.

Imag­ine learn­ing not as a pass/fail mem­o­ry test, but as the slow and steady work of build­ing a rich men­tal net­work.

Trust the process. Every time you look up a word, you’re not fail­ing; you’re rein­forc­ing.