To remember, you must forget. What?
Researchers have discovered that remembering involves not just trying to memorize but also allowing yourself to forget. You can’t really try to forget. If you try not to remember something, you are likely to further encode what you’re trying to forget into your long memory banks. Stop and think about why forgetting is key to remembering. Our brain only has so much storage (not unlimited). If we pack too much stuff into our brain, then it becomes increasingly challenge to pull out useful information because you’ve got to sort through all of the clutter that gets packed into our brains every day.
The good news is that when you sleep that your brain is acting like a vacuum cleaner picking up some of that “memorized trash” and throwing it out. Some are suggesting that this is one reason why some people cannot remember their dreams. If you fail to get enough sleep and high quality sleep, then your brain cannot function like a vacuum cleaner and clean up all that stuff which will affect your ability to memorize the following day.
Get some sleep to allow your brain to pick up some “memorized trash.”