Why can't I memorize text anymore? I'm only in my 30's.

February 13, 2016 2:31 PM

I used to be able to memorize text without any problem. Then I left working in radio and theater when I was 26 to own a company. Though I haven't done any type of memorizing of scripts in years when a friend asked me to get back into the game just as a side thing, I said no problem.

But in the past few months I've been given 3 scripts to memorize- only a few pages each, and I can literally spend more than a day trying to memorize only the first 15 lines. I don't have any memory problems elsewhere and there is no memory loss problem in my family history either. Does this happen often when people stop memorizing things and then go back to it 8 years later? It's really starting to worry me.

posted by manderin to Health & Fitness (10 answers total)

Any skill fades with disuse. The pathways in your brain built up in your twenties reading lines haven't had much exercise for the past 8 years, so it's not too surprising you can't just turn it back on now. I haven't read music in ages so while I could probably reteach myself sight reading, I couldn't do it cold anymore. Try running lines with a partner, or writing them out repeatedly, and see if that helps.
posted by axiom at 3:27 PM on February 13, 2016

I used to be able to remember biochemical pathways easily in my early 20s. In my late 20s/early 30s I don't have that ability. It takes me longer to route memorize things and I can't do it in bulk. Data point: it's normal. I have not figured out a work around. I do announce that I remember things conceptually and not facts in work groups.....but that won't help you learn your lines.
posted by Kalmya at 4:08 PM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Agreed that memory doesn't work as well as you age if you don't keep using it. Here is a fascinating article from the New York Times about a 57-year-old man who decided to spend a year learning French. He took memory tests before and after and found that his efforts to learn French resulted in a tremendous amount of improvement in his overall memory over the course of that year (though he never did that well at French). If I were you, I would keep trying.
Your question made me wonder about aging stage actors. I googled and found this, which talks about that as well as some tricks actors use to memorize lines.
posted by FencingGal at 4:39 PM on February 13, 2016 [6 favorites]

It's a skill like anything else -- if you haven't noticed cognitive difficulties in other parts of your daily life I wouldn't be worried.

Anecdotally, I was terrible at memorization throughout my teens and early 20s and avoided it accordingly. I've been forced to rote memorize a lot in the past two years and am now very good at it.
posted by telegraph at 7:11 PM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yes, it's a skill, but how are you sleeping? After I had a baby, I did not sleep more than 2-3 consecutive hours for over a year. Once during that time I was asked to memorize a short script for a video at work, and I literally could not remember more than one sentence at a time. It was the most mortifying experience of my professional career (they ended up splicing together my one sentence blurbs). There were smaller signs of sleep depression that occasionally popped up over that time period, but nothing at all like the complete brick wall that my brain hit while trying to memorize three stupid paragraphs.
posted by Maarika at 9:42 PM on February 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

Besides the fact that you are well and truly out of the practice, there is the fact that this is a "side thing." What else do you have to keep in your head that you didn't when this was your main focus in your mid 20s?
posted by Good Brain at 10:10 PM on February 13, 2016

I was much better at memorizing facts for tests in my 20s. In my 40s now, and I'm good at remembering philosophy (which I teach). But I'd be screwed if I had to memorize biology again.
posted by persona au gratin at 1:38 AM on February 14, 2016

Nthing check your sleep quality. Also iron levels. In my experience, if those go down my ability to remember stuff goes to shit.
posted by Jacqueline at 6:00 AM on February 14, 2016

Motivation plays a huge role in memorization. I was so dismal at learning a foreign language when I was young that I thought I never would. In my 30s I tried again and picked it up without too much trouble. The difference was that the first was for a grade (which I didn't care about) and the second was preparation for moving to another country and I needed to speak the local language.

From what little information you've provided I'd guess you were a lot more excited about theater in your 20s than you are doing it "as a side thing." You're still running the company, right? That has huge cognitive load and you simply won't have the brainpower to apply to side projects without letting things slip in your main projects. (A part of the reason young people can put so much time and energy into things is they aren't yet putting the necessary time and effort into adulting.)
posted by Ookseer at 12:19 PM on February 14, 2016

If I have to memorize something, I record it into an mp3 recorder (like audacity) and then listen to it over and over and over again until I can't not think of what comes next. Just a suggestion.
posted by Piedmont_Americana at 1:50 AM on February 15, 2016