I vaguely remember reading about Piotr's software a few years ago. I wondered if it wasn't easier to just make a bunch of online reminders. Apparently not.

How soon we forget.

In the book The Overflowing Brain, the author Torkel Klingberg begins with a kind of time and attention study, a typical day in the life of a corporate manager. Just minutes or seconds after beginning one task, the manager is interrupted by another; he or she spends the first few minutes reading and sending email and devotes time thereafter updating and reordering items on their to-do list.

Our brains evolved from a far simpler environment. When we return to a task after interruption or delay, our brain's working memory tries to retain the necessary information. We use this form of memory to keep a telephone number in mind just long enough to dial it. But working memory has a short life and limited capacity. About four items is the most it can hold.

Working memory is so fugitive in part because it is encoded in the activity of brain cells. As we try to remember a new phone number, neurons in our frontal and parietal lobes are firing away. Attention works the same way: Neurons increase their activity as we concentrate on an object or task, and they slow their firing when something else intervenes.

For Mr. Klingberg, the mismatch between our modern lives and ancient brains is most evident in the problems of working memory and attention, but another culprit may be at work. We are easily distracted also because we vastly overvalue what happens to us right now compared with what comes in the future and because novelty is intrinsically rewarding. So whatever we are supposed to be focusing on has to compete with every new email, new task, new blog post and new conversation that wanders into our information sphere. These biases may have served us well in our species' evolutionary past, when the future was uncertain and the new could well be a threat that deserved immediate attention.

Mr. Klingberg details how he and other brain researchers are trying to find ways to increase mental capacity. Many doctors already recommend various brain-boosting activities, from crossword puzzles to aerobic exercise, for staving off Alzheimer's disease. Although some claims have notoriously failed to hold up, the field is young, and there is no reason to believe that the inherent plasticity of the brain cannot be stretched further.

It doesn't allow for the perpetual failures like myself, who need in excess of double figure reminders. Or better still, someone to do the things we are meant to be reminded about to do. :)