Ensure you get adequate and quality sleep, as it is a critical lifestyle factor strongly correlated with better memory performance and overall cognitive health, significantly impacting your ability to learn and recall.
Follow a healthy diet, such as the Mediterranean or DASH diet, emphasizing non-processed foods, leafy greens, fruits, vegetables, olive oil, fish, and limited meat, as this dramatically preserves cognitive performance and memory.
Incorporate regular physical exercise, particularly cardiovascular activity, into your routine to elevate heart rate and increase blood flow to the brain, which facilitates the release of neuromodulators crucial for enhancing learning capacity and overall brain health.
Actively cultivate a strong sense of purpose in your life, as this is crucial for healthy brain aging and contributes significantly to cognitive reserve, helping to maintain mental function and motivation.
Identify and prioritize your core values, then consciously connect your daily actions and tasks to these values, as this provides motivation and strengthens cognitive control, especially for tasks you might otherwise avoid.
Prioritize intention—your internal goal for why you are directing your focus—over mere attention, which can be easily captured by external stimuli, to ensure you are actively engaging with what is truly important to you.
Actively seek out and engage with things that stimulate your curiosity, as this drives the dopamine system, which is crucial for energizing you to seek information and facilitates plasticity for better learning and memory.
Be open to opportunities where your beliefs might be challenged or proven wrong, and actively expose yourself to new people, places, and situations, as this stimulates curiosity, engages neuroplasticity, and is preserved even in older age.
Refrain from smoking and limit alcohol consumption, as these are significant lifestyle factors that negatively impact cognitive function and memory, increasing the risk of decline.
Actively manage your blood sugar levels to prevent diabetes, as high blood sugar is associated with white matter damage, hippocampal damage, and a dramatically increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Screen for and address hearing loss promptly, including using hearing aids if needed, as this is strongly linked to reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and preserving cognitive function and memory as you age.
Promptly treat vision problems like cataracts as you age, as maintaining good vision is an important factor in preserving cognitive health and memory.
Practice excellent oral hygiene to prevent gum disease, as it is linked to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s and negatively impacts overall cognitive brain health.
Minimize exposure to air pollution, as it is a significant environmental risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease and can cause hippocampal damage, negatively impacting brain health.
Take precautions to prevent traumatic brain injury, as it is a significant risk factor for cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease.
Focus on completing one task at a time before moving to the next, as constant task-switching saps cognitive control, fragments memories, and increases stress, hindering effective learning and recall.
Proactively engineer your environment to minimize distractions, such as putting your phone in another room or using a separate device for social media, to prevent even the thought of checking it from siphoning cognitive control and disrupting focus.
Use an old, separate phone exclusively for social media, keeping it physically separated and using a timer to limit daily usage, which can significantly improve focus and productivity by segregating distractions.
Adopt the mindset that you will naturally forget most details over time, rather than questioning your memory, and instead focus on intentionally deciding what specific information or experiences you truly want to retain.
When taking photos, do so mindfully and selectively, focusing on distinctive and important elements that will serve as effective retrieval cues later, rather than mindlessly over-documenting, which can impoverish the memory of the actual experience.
Use photos as active retrieval cues to recall the full context, emotions, and details of past events, rather than just scrolling through them, to effectively test yourself and integrate memories.
Engage in mindfulness training to cultivate curiosity about mundane things, such as your breathing or ambient sounds, as this practice helps you pay attention to subtle differences and fosters an open, curious mindset.
Find ways to make exercise enjoyable and engaging, perhaps by incorporating activities you genuinely like or by seeking external guidance like a personal trainer, to overcome inertia and ensure consistency, especially if you struggle with motivation.
Incorporate daily outdoor activities like walking to ensure regular exposure to sunlight, which contributes to establishing a healthy sleep-wake rhythm and overall well-being.
Limit consumption of sugary drinks, as studies in rats show that daily intake equivalent to a can of soda can lead to memory problems and hippocampal atrophy in adulthood.
Protect your hearing, especially when exposed to loud environments like concerts, by using custom earplugs or other protective measures to prevent damage that could contribute to cognitive decline.
Actively avoid rumination on negative memories, as repeatedly recalling them can reinforce negative moods, make it easier to access more negative memories, and strengthen their detrimental emotional impact.
Engage in positive reminiscence by focusing on gratitude for past positive experiences, as this can have beneficial effects on mental health and prevent memories from becoming toxic or contaminating the present.
Seek professional guidance to reframe traumatic memories, as therapies that induce neuroplasticity or shift perspective can create opportunities to update and integrate these memories into a new, less distressing narrative.
Share your experiences, even negative ones, with others to gain new perspectives and potentially reframe them into positive or humorous narratives, as this social interaction can help update and integrate memories in a new context.
When performing under stress and you know the task well, aim to enter an automatic, “flow” state rather than overthinking or applying too much cognitive control, as this can prevent “choking under pressure.”
Consciously frame memory not as recalling the past, but as selectively using past information to understand the present and project to the future, which helps in decision-making and planning.
Actively look for and embrace surprises or unexpected information, as this allows for the detection of non-redundant and informative aspects of the present, enhancing understanding.
Actively engage in cognitive activities, as this is one of six key lifestyle factors shown to significantly improve memory performance and reduce cognitive decline over time.
Actively maintain social engagement, as it is a crucial lifestyle factor strongly linked to better memory performance and overall cognitive health, helping to offset age-related decline.