Remembrance of things past
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget
This is the final instalment in this six-part not-forgetting series. Please Like / ❤️ this article, if you like it.
TLDR: We need to be able to remember the past, without dwelling there. Embrace the multiple methods to keep the door to the past unlocked.
Word count: 1,047 words
Read time: 5 mins
Let’s not forget what we’ve covered so far in this series:
Occurrences. Those precious, fleeting thoughts.
Forget-me-notPersonal items. Wallet, keys, phone, and other errant physical objects.
Finding thingsInformation. Knowledge & learning for performance & capability.
Knowledge on-tapCommunication. Replying to friends & family, colleagues & contacts.
Don’t forget messages - or their sendersFuture events. When the timing really matters.
Remembrance of things futurePast events. Photos, calendars, journals to form a log and jog the memory.
Remembrance of things past
So, today’s post is about what’s already come to pass and why, whether, when and how to remember it.
There’s plenty of caution about the past. Dwelling on or in it is not good for us, they say. What’s done is done, don't cry over spilt milk, let bygones be bygones, the die is cast, water under the bridge, and so on. ‘Now’, ‘today’, ‘the present’ and ‘the ‘present moment’ are in vogue in the West and the East.
But the past is not all bad. What's past is prologue, too. It holds clues for us to carve out a better future. That’s how the human race has adapted to, survived and flourished on Planet Earth. It’s much of the reason that historians study their subject matter. It inspires some of our most cherished music and helps singers, songwriters and listeners to process and heal (there are of course zillions of these but a few of my faves: Harry Chapin’s Cats in the cradle, The Beatles’ Yesterday, Johnny Cash’s Hurt, Tracy Chapman’s Sorry).
The past has a positive poignance. I just looked back at a few calendar entries from the last 10 years of my life:
A lunch with a former colleague. I see the entry and drift off, remembering that it was a monthly fixture…I wonder when and why it started, and both answers occur. I can see - almost smell - the two types of pizza we would order (Padana, Calabrese), and I think to myself: I should be in touch with James soon (and I’ve just timeboxed to do exactly that).
A meeting about a course we (filtered.com) built back in 2015. This memory is less fond! Uncertainty, unrelenting pressure, long nights… and the feeling that we shouldn’t have embarked on this project in the first place — it was a bad business decision. But my very next thought is that we make much better decisions now, from a broader and more solid foundation. And with that thought comes a wave of reassurance.
My son’s 10th birthday at the end of last year. Go-karting. I drank a Corona with my wife on a large, comfy black sofa while Luka and his friends raced. I remember — literally as I type — the photo they all posed for, with such palpable, adorable lack of restraint.
For a long time, I used to go to bed early…
These reveries may not be immediately, directly or obviously useful. But their recollection just now unmistakably brought me some moments of joy. In fact, I had to force myself from disappearing down memory lane — I have 50,000 timeboxes, beckoning. I’d much rather have access to them than not.
And sometimes access to the past does deliver very tangible benefits. The medication your daughter took three years ago, and its name is needed by a doctor, now . The address of a distant relative whose help you could really do with. How much did your last vacation cost? What you did to process and help yourself through the pandemic. Which dress did you wear to your 40th birthday party? And where was that ecstatic dance party in the Netherlands?*.
The past — like any power — can both hinder and help. Of course, we should try to avoid compulsive rumination when it causes us pain or distress. At the same time, the past is important, it’s part of us, it’s relevant, and it can be useful. We do want unfettered access to it, along with fettered use of it.
So, how to set up and retain that access? There are many methods which are common and known. But I suspect we don’t use them with this explicit intention in mind and that we lose something.
Raw memory. If memory serves…but of course it often doesn’t, either by coming up blank or by filling in with false information. Still, it’s the easiest and most natural, and we need it for all the ancillary methods below.
Photos. Evocative and efficient, especially with the smartphones most of us carry around. But beware that the act of recording can limit the experience (presumably why Bob Dylan and others have banned them from concerts). It’s also patchy — how much of your life can you really photograph? And it’s unrepresentative — we tend to take photos of the beautiful / spectacular / unusual which leaves out…most of real life.
Notes / journal. I journal and find the process valuable. But most of us don’t do it very often (I journal roughly once a week). And we tend not to journal when all is well, we journal during or just after emotionally difficult times. So, for many of us, journals are also not representative of the life we’ve been leading.
A timeboxed calendar. For people who timebox consistently, a comprehensive record of what they’ve done is a free, bonus item, a natural by-product of the method. It’s digital so it can be searched, indeed it brings all nine of the benefits I mentioned last week. What it lacks in detail can often be filled in by the memory it triggers — you may see an entry and no recollection is forthcoming…until you consider the context of the day or week it falls in, and the events you see either side of it finally unlock the memory. It’s as comprehensive as you’ve chosen to be with your timeboxing — you might have most of your waking life in there. That means access to the real life you led - not just the Instagramable highs or your journal-necessitating lows — your actual life. As the author Ian McEwan says here, ‘the banalities begin to shine after many years have passed’.
Timeboxing is of course a system for planning for the future. It’s also — along with the other methods mentioned here — a great method for making sense of the past.
Marc
Links you may like
7 days of Timeboxing (the free email micro-course)
Timeboxing, the book (US)
Timeboxing, the book (UK)
My Insta for shorter-form content
Connect with me on LinkedIn (I will say yes!)
*Breda.