Use it, or lose it............................

When was the last time you committed something to memory?  Now that we have 4G phones we don't need to remember anything, really, yet we're also aware this is a small disaster.  Our short- and long-term memories suffer for it.
     Merely doing what one has always done, such as a specialist does, strengthens existing networks but builds no new ones in the brain.  It also means that short- and medium-term memory are used less and less.  The lesson - an intuitive one only recently supported by scientific research - is simple:  if you do not use your memory, it will atrophy.   If you don't visit new places where you are required to orientate yourself by, for example, learning where shops are, finding the way back to your hotel, ore even remembering where you parked your car, then you'll gradually lose even this basic skill.  And it does help to think of memory as a skill.

-Robert Twigger,  micro mastery:  Learn Small, Learn Fast, and Unlock Your Potential to Achieve Anything