Sleep and Prospective Memory, Simplified

Sleep to Get Things Done

Photo by Eden Constantino on Unsplash

Have you ever wondered why it’s so difficult to remember to complete a task? Do you often forget to do simple things? While many factors may be involved with forgetting, one area to check on is your sleep health.

I sometimes forget small things, like remembering to take my bike helmet with me. Other times, I forget bigger, more consequential responsibilities, like remembering to renew a grant proposal application (arghh). Sleep is not the only factor involved in forgetting, though. Preoccupation with thoughts irrelevant to intended tasks (just wanting to quickly get to the next destination or having other time-demanding projects) can also interfere with remembering to do other tasks. But, sleep is a good place to start for improving memory.

Healthy sleep might help with remembering to do what we intend to do later on, or prospective memory. Several studies have shown sleep may be particularly beneficial for spontaneous retrieval. In other words, sleeps helps us remember our intentions at just the right moment without much prior thought. Think of remembering to wish a new friend happy birthday on the day of her birthday without having an external reminder (no FaceBook alert or birthday calendar). Sleep helps us with those kinds of memories.

Because sleep is only one factor involved with successful prospective memory, it may help to use external aids and liberally so. No reminders are fully foolproof. For example, I sometimes make paper-based checklists and completely forget to check them. But digital alerts and reminders often hold me accountable (maybe because of the nag of repeated notifications). Alarms are one of the simplest tools I use for prospective memory retrieval. The clock app on my phone is wonderful for time-based cues to execute a task.

Task list to support prospective memory. This is a messy, throwback task list from 2016. I never marked these tasks as complete, but I’m sure I finished all of these! (Image from author)

The bottom line: sleep to remember to do what you need to do but also supplement it with external aids to remember the tasks that are important to you. For a deeper dive on this topic, visit my Substack page.

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