Increasing Your Muscle Memory
The above screenshot is from a 7-day poll that ran on the EA LinkedIn business page. I picked these three categories because they come up a lot during phone calls with candidates and clients. At times, during the voting period, option two and three ran neck and neck. However, in the end by only a small margin, Increasing Muscle Memory won.
What is Muscle Memory?
What is the definition? Muscle memory refers to developing a new skill through practice.
What happens when you give a new, developing skill attention? You grow working memory.
Why is it important to learn new skills? To free up energy, so that it can be used for other things that are more interesting and complex.
What happens when you don’t adopt new skills? You use up energy to navigate low-level issues resulting in poor energy and time management.
Example:
You get up each day and do the same routine (or super close) to accomplish certain tasks, i.e., brushing your teeth, making coffee/tea, and so on. You keep items in certain places for quick access, allowing you to preserve energy from having to think about each step or the location of your items.
When you establish new skills, you are better equipped to work more strategically because extra time and energy are in your favor. You aren’t running out the clock to tackle low-level issues. Administrative individuals know this work cadence well. Around month 6 (or so) in a new role, administrative professionals know the players, understand their executive’s movement (and the why), and are able to anticipate what might happen next.
What is Working Memory?
What is the definition? Working memory is the retention of a small amount of information in a readily accessible form. (Notice the italics, this will come into play in a little bit.)
What happens when you store small amounts of information for quick access? You use less energy when you respond to a demand, plus you develop recall strengths.
What happens when you establish working memory? You consciously use less energy allowing for deeper thinking and time to do creative problem solving (versus reactive problem solving).
Why is it important to preserve energy? So you can work more strategically and work towards avoiding burnout.
What happens when you don’t adopt new skills? You use up mental energy to navigate issues, resulting in becoming overwhelmed.
Example:
When you park your car in a parking garage, the level you parked on is likely labeled with an image. You embed this image into your brain for recall later, e.g., a lion, a bird, and so on. It’s being saved in a readily accessible form (italics from above). If the parking garage does not offer an image for reference, you are required to use energy to store the parked level somewhere for recall later or (and some are guilty of doing this) try to rely on memory for recall later. Why yes, you could also save this information on your phone, as a second recall location.
What steps can someone take to build muscle and working memory?
These two areas are directly associated with Executive Function. Executive Function is a very complex and deeply psychological overview of the brain and how (amazing) it works. For the sake of this article, we’ll use only a few parts to help us stay on topic.
Executive function is responsible for many skills, including:
Paying attention
Organizing, planning, and prioritizing
Starting tasks and staying focused on them to completion
Understanding different points of view
Regulating emotions
Self-monitoring (keeping track of what you’re doing)
When you look at this list, it crosses over very well with an administrative role.
When someone is looking to advance their work style that person should embrace unconventional practices to develop muscle and working memory. The best way to do this is by creating shortcuts (like the image example in the parking garage). Using shortcuts results in great time and energy management.
Now What?
Combining everything up until this point, we’ve covered 1) you can increase your muscle memory through routine practice so 2) you can have information in a readily accessible form, to then 3) establish quicker recall of said information, resulting in you using your time and energy more strategically.
Since memory is a core element of these two areas, we’ll focus now on memory alone and how to elevate the storing and recalling of information.
Information retention practices:
Understand: One of the big goals with building up memory for recall is to lighten the cognitively-demanding process; i.e., need to use up brain-power to make decisions.
Problem: When you use up brain-power for basic tasks, you cause cognitive overload.
Solution: When applying shortcuts to your workflow, you're better prepared to recall information through memorization.
Elevating your work system:
Shortcuts: When you use shortcuts, like the parking garage example, you create an encoding process to store information. For the sake of an administrative role, I won’t ask you to draw images for memorization, but I will encourage you to adopt abbreviations and symbols into your day-to-day. For example:
AR = awaiting response
→ = delegated
OH = on hold
D = done
* = important
When you apply abbreviations and symbols next to items on your list, you are able to scan your list quicker. You can also create additional shortcuts, such as a circle next to something indicating you need to circle back. You can also throw initials next to items if you support more than one executive. That way, if one connects with you quickly, you can quickly scan your list and retrieve their specific action item.
A common scenario: an admin receives the attention of their executive but only has him/her for a few minutes. Do you know what’s a priority on your list allowing you to optimize that short amount of time? Do you have a system in place for quick retrieval of those questions OR do you use extra time scanning your general list to find the things you wish to connect about (on the fly) so both of you can move on to the next thing?
Repetition: If you begin using abbreviations, you begin to establish encoding skills and start to shave off minutes as the practice becomes a new habit. Memorization is the driver versus no memorization. Using some of these abbreviations with your executive helps s/he save time and get up to speed faster. Here at EA, Leah and I have a hefty list of shortcuts we use, so both of us can get up to speed quicker therefore allowing communication to be more concise.
Compartmentalization: In using shortcuts, you also create groups of information (i.e., initials and stars). This supports processing and storing the information like a filing system. Thoughtful organization supports saving time. There’s a great quote from Benjamin Franklin, “For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.”
Example:
Think about a well organized filing system, either digital or paper. If you think about your folder tree and your document saving process, is it 100% on point or 60%? If you made a conscious effort to file away documents for quick access later, without using the search function, would you save time? Yes. The way you organize information matters.
When using a full minute to work diligently (up front) organizing information/items, you earn an hour (or close to it) not conducting lengthy searches later on. In all my interactions with admins, I am able to share not many track action items in a journal because they rely solely on memory. I don’t have anything to prove. I write everything down, and I hope you do too.
In closing, someone can increase their memorization and information recall by incorporating shortcut tricks into their work system. In doing so, they preserve brain-power that can be used elsewhere and for more strategic activities.
Launch Pad:
1. Think about how you can strengthen your muscle memory with routine tasks.
2. Think about how to write in shortcut to retrieve information quicker.
3. Deploy shortcut language with your team and executive(s).
Listen to the EA Podcast below for further insight and laughs.
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Other resources:
https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2016/06/learning-memory