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Memory can be a frustrating thing, as I often struggle to find the answers that I know I have somewhere in my head. The more frustrating thing is that even if I have a clear memory of something, that memory might not be accurate. More specifically, the clarity of your memory doesn’t mean that it’s accurate. The event that you remember from 20 years ago “like it was yesterday” may have been nothing like what your memory is telling you.

There have been a number of studies over the years to prove it, like this study on memories of 9/11. I remember hearing a podcast related to a while ago, and (if memory serves…) some of the stories went like this:

• Asked during the days immediately after 9/11: Where were you when you heard about the attack? “At my friends house, getting ready for work.“
• Asked again two years later: Where were you when you heard about the attack? “In my car on the way to work.”
  • When pressed for clarity on why the story changed, they insisted “I know I was in my car on the way to work, I don’t know why I would have told you that I was at my friend’s house“.

From an outsider’s perspective, it’s clear that they were at their friend’s house, but hearing stories and reports and other things over the years caused their memory to shift. It’s not their fault, and the memory of being in the car was likely very clear in their mind, but it was simply wrong.

Save Brian Williams

Another great example of this was with Brian Williams and his inaccurate story of being on an aircraft in Iraq that was under attack. Perhaps he made up the story to try to look good, but Malcolm Gladwell lays out a compelling argument in this podcast episode that Williams was telling the truth as he knew it, and his memory was simply lying to him about what happened.

It’s a humbling thing to think about. We all have memories from years gone by, and sometimes we’ll be chatting with a friend that has a different recollection of the day. How could they? “My memory of that day is super clear“. Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong, but without a literal recording of the day to review you’ll never know.

Enjoy your memories, but don’t always trust them.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

If you’ve built a business of any size, you probably have quite a few memories about the journey to get there. Some are good, some are bad, but they all helped to build the story of where things stand today. Beyond memories, though, did you actually record anything? Probably not.

Many of us are good about capturing those moments in our personal lives, thankfully, but we often skip recording those moments as we’re growing our businesses.

In his book “Shoe Dog”, Phil Knight laments the thought that he never recorded anything from the early days of Nike. In his words:

I struggle to remember. I close my eyes and think back, but so many precious moments from those nights are gone forever. Numberless conversations, breathless laughing fits. Declarations, revelations, confidences. They’ve all fallen into the sofa cushions of time. I remember only that we always sat up half the night, cataloging the past, mapping out the future. I remember we took turns describing what our little company was, and what it might be, and what it must never be. How I wish, on just one of those nights, I’d had a tape recorder. Or kept a journal, as I did on my trip around the world.

For the story of GreenMellen, while I didn’t record much along the way we were fortunate to be in a slightly later era than Phil so we have the benefit of technology that saved a few things for us.

For example, in the early days of GreenMellen, Ali and I used Google Chat quite a bit and so many of those text conversations are still in my email archives. For example, here’s a snippet from September 21, 2009, just a few days after we started the company:

It’s nothing shocking, but it’s fun to see our communication from way back then. In the years since, I’ve tried to do a better job of grabbing little snapshots in time. Here are some of us in 2019 when we were doing some volunteer work:

Or here is a funny outtake from a social media photo we were trying to capture:

Technology today makes it easier, and this is just a reminder (to myself as much as anyone) to take a second and record a few meaningless moments today, because the meaning will grow into something big as the years go by.