Centuries ago, before we had ways to easily and reliably transfer the written word, memory and storytelling were key, as that’s really all you had. If you didn’t remember what you needed to know, you were done — there was no library to reference, much less a search engine.

Over time, though, that’s certainly changed. Many of us feel that we don’t remember things as well any more (can you recite more than five phone numbers?), and you may not be wrong. While our memory has plenty of room to expand, it’s often given a break because of the vast amounts of information at our fingertips.

As Joshua Foer put it in “Moonwalking with Einstein“:

“Forgotten phone numbers and birthdays represent minor erosions of our everyday memory, but they are part of a much larger story of how we’ve supplanted our own natural memory with a vast superstructure of technological crutches—from the alphabet to the BlackBerry. These technologies of storing information outside our minds have helped make our modern world possible, but they’ve also changed how we think and how we use our brains.”

It leads to an interesting decision of deciding what should be stored in your brain versus what you should leave for reference. As I shared a few weeks ago, we often write things down so we can forget them, but deciding what to forget is tricky.

Our brains should be used more for problem solving than for rote memorization, but there’s a place for both. As you learn and remember more, you’re able to put multiple ideas against one another and find answers to the problems you’re trying to solve.

That said, I don’t have a perfect answer for how much we should be seeking to store and I’m constantly trying to tweak that balance in my life. How do you decide what to remember and what to leave up to Google when you need it?

Your brain will never be “full”. It might feel like it sometimes, but that’s not the case. In fact, it’s largely the opposite; as you learn more, your capacity to learn expands as well.

In his book “Moonwalking With Einstein“, author Joshua Foer shares a few insights along those lines. The first is about your expanding memory:

“Memory is like a spiderweb that catches new information. The more it catches, the bigger it grows. And the bigger it grows, the more it catches.”

This leads to a few advantages, both in terms of seeing the world in a better way and remembering even more of it:

“The more we remember, the better we are at processing the world. And the better we are at processing the world, the more we can remember about it.”

Don’t be afraid to keep learning and expanding what you know. Not only will your brain never fill all the way up, but your work to learn more will lead to greater capacity going forward.

I recently saw a quote that got me thinking, but I haven’t figured out where to take it yet. It’s attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and he said:

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.

I can see it going a few ways.

Evil

Knowing about the hardships of others and working to relieve them is a fantastic trait to have. However, if you were to be wise to all of the suffering across the entire globe, it could potentially be debilitating. Perhaps that’s where he was going?

Poor focus

Another angle could be a lack of focus. I’ve talked before about my use of Anki to help with my learning. If I wanted to learn everything I possibly could, I’d have millions of cards in the deck, never really learn any of them, and be chained to my phone all day long trying to work through them. It’d be miserable. Choosing to stay ignorant helps keep the list manageable.

In researching this quote, I found the second part of it that is often missed with the quote I shared. Here is the full quote:

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant, and these are such. Shun them as you would the secrets of the undertaker and the butcher.

That points to a few other areas, both of which I’ve actively tried to avoid in my life. I appreciate both professions deeply, but I don’t wish to see behind the curtain of either.

What are other areas where it might be beneficial to remain ignorant?