741 - How Stress Affects Your Memory
Tiny Leaps, Big Changes
Gregg Clunis
4.3 • 920 Ratings
🗓️ 30 August 2021
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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In this episode, we look at how stress affects your memory. Get excited, because this is Tiny Leaps, Big Changes.
Welcome to another episode of Tiny Leaps, Big Changes where I share research-backed strategies you can use, to get more out of your life. My name is Gregg Clunis.
The Research:
Martina Piefke and Katharina Glienke published a paper in 2017 titled The Effects of Stress on Prospective Memory: A Systematic Review where they look at the effects of stress on what’s called prospective memory.
- Prospective memory is defined as the ability to remember to carry out intended actions in the future
- So basically…
What They Found:
“The present review demonstrates that a short acute stressor may have enhancing effects on PM in healthy humans, depending on the characteristics of the stressor and the type of PM.”
- According to the study, time-based PM, that is, things that you have a limited amount of time to carry out, are more vulnerable to the negative effects of stress.
- Event-based PM is less vulnerable.
- They believe this may be due to the increased cognitive load required for time-based PM.
- It’s worth noting that they found the opposite reaction in people suffering from PTSD
- So what’s the point here?
- Well, this study shows that there can be positive effects of acute stressors in life.
- This particular study shows that short-lived acute stress can improve memory in relationship to the future, but it implies that there are even more benefits to it
Key Takeaways:
- Don’t be afraid of stress
- Don’t give in to the flight part of the fight or flight response
- Stress can be beneficial in the right circumstances and leaning in to it can actually improve your results and performance
- Maybe there is an argument to be made to use stress as a superpower at times
- Obviously chronic stress and extreme stress are different subjects. Like all things, stress isn’t always good or bad. Try embracing it from time to time.
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Readings:
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/pne-pne0000102.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/prospective-memory
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In this episode, we look at how stress affects your memory. |
| 0:05.9 | Get excited because this is tiny leaps. |
| 0:10.5 | Big change. Welcome to another episode of Tiny Leaps. Big changes where I share simple research-backed strategies you can use to get more out of your life. |
| 0:39.0 | My name is Greg Klunis and one thing that's always been a topic of discussion is the question around memory. |
| 0:47.1 | How does it work? |
| 0:47.9 | How is it something that we're able to create memories of the past and how is it that we go about remembering the future. |
| 0:57.0 | It's fascinating when you really sit down and look at it. |
| 1:00.3 | It's this thing called prospective memory and a study found that stress has in effect on that, both good and bad. |
| 1:09.0 | And so one of the things that I wanted to talk about on today's episode is this idea. How does stress affect our memory? |
| 1:17.0 | Specifically, how does it affect our ability to remember what needs to be done? our ability to stay focused on the future tasks ahead of us, |
| 1:26.4 | the future events ahead of us, the things that we know we need to be doing. |
| 1:31.2 | And this is a fascinating question when we look at our personal development because it brings into focus questions around well if we are constantly stressed out if we're holding ourselves to too high a standard, if we're putting pressure on ourselves, is that helpful or hurtful? |
| 1:50.0 | Does applying stress to our own lives in order to accomplish X, Y, Z thing actually help push us in that direction, |
| 1:58.4 | or does it actually lead to us being more likely to forget about that thing, which many of us have experienced, right? |
| 2:05.2 | We start a new habit, we start a new goal, we start a new daily practice, fast forward three, four, |
| 2:10.4 | or five weeks, and we forget that that was even a thing we wanted to do. |
| 2:15.8 | How does stress affect that? |
| 2:17.9 | This is the question of today's episode, and I think it's going to be an incredible one to go through so as usual |
| 2:25.8 | we're going to look at what the study had to say we're going to summarize it and |
| 2:30.0 | then we're going to have just sort of an open discussion about what that could mean for our own lives and how we can use this information to improve our own lives and our goals. |
| 2:41.0 | So this should be super good, but before we go into it, I want to take a moment to thank |
| 2:45.2 | today's sponsors. Now, as you know, our sponsors are the reason that I'm able to keep doing this show for free at such a high level of quality. So if you hear something you like, |
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