If you feel like you’re having a memory loss in your daily life, maybe it’s time to cut down on using your phone.

Recently, I started to forget the things that I think I would never forget. Like my postal code, my son’s school number. The reason behind it may be a lot of things being on my mind or my phone that glued to my hand.

A study carried out in 2016, in a magazine called Memory, indicated that relying on technology makes our brains become lazy. Researchers pointed out that the possibility of gravitating towards search engine to get an answer for easy questions increases when people let Google answer difficult questions.

Dr Susan Lehmann, the clinical director of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neuropsychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, states that smart phones block our ability to recall things by overwhelming our minds with distracting factors. ‘’When you use these devices, you move on very quickly, usually among the subjects or conversations.’’, she says. ‘’The rapid change on the focus, may block saving up an idea or thought in your memory.’’, she adds.

Would you like to reinforce your recalling power in your daily life in the light of these facts? Let’s try the following tips

Hide your device.

Do you recall the grandma that took away the phones in a basket when she invited her kids and grandkids over to have something to eat before they sit down at the table? Or the cafes who have a ‘’No Wi fi, talk to each other’’ sign. You realize how right they are as time passes by. According to a new study carried out at University of Texas at Austin, just one glance reduces the capacity of attention and recalling even if the screen is dark. The co-writer of the study, Adrian Ward says, ‘’The process of resisting towards the charm of using it may reduce your ability to think clearly.’’ Keep your phone in your table’s drawer or in a different room at your house when you do not make a call or send a short message. Thus, you won’t see it and busy yourself with it since it’s not attention grabbing.

Go offline.

Turn ‘’Do not Disturb’’ mode on. Adjust it to only allow calls from selected people. Therefore, you will get important or expected notifications and not get distracted by non-urgent alerts. (Such as, Madame Coco Discount). I get that it’s compelling but you can switch to dumb phones. They can be used just for making calls and texting.

Meet up with your friends face to face.

According to the findings of the 2017 brain health study of AARP, people, over the age of 40, who reported socializing with their friends and family last week, have a higher rate of evaluating their memory as perfect or excellent than the ones who have a more isolated life.

Cynthia Green, the assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, says, ‘’There is a true benefit in talking face to face’’. ‘’Texting or communicating via e-mail is not the same intellectual or social skill as talking face to face.’’, she adds.

Get yourself a pencil.

Write down the quotes, important dates, and other details you want to keep in your mind. A study of 2014 which got published in the Psychological Science magazine, indicated that taking notes on a paper is kept longer in memory than typing on a laptop. Ward says that typing on computer is usually putting down in writing mindlessly while, handwriting takes more time and focusing. The process helps to code information to your memory. You can keep using a note application for details such as shopping lists or promotional codes for online shopping.

Do not use your phone at meetings.

Your brain relies on a thing called working memory when you interact with other people or complete a task. If you ask what is working memory, it a short-term remembering for details that you need to know right at that moment, at that meeting (for example, sales figures) but will not be necessary in a few weeks. Lehmann says, ‘’Working memory provides to keep new information, so we can decide on converting it to a long-term storage or not.’’ If your phone distracts you when an idea is in your working memory, you may not access it later.

Put your phone away when you go to bed.

Lehmann says, ‘’Memory is consolidated while sleeping.’’ She recommends turning off all your devices one hour before you go to sleep and charging them up at the other side of your bedroom, not next to your bed. Therefore, you will not tend to play with your phone instead of trying to sleep again when you lose sleep.

An impulse for distraction.

According to a global survey conducted by an audit and consulting firm Deloitte in 2017, people look at their phones 47 times in a day as an average. Well, how many times do you look at your phone?