I once ate out at a restaurant with a large group. Everyone ordered all kinds of different things; meals, appetizers, drinks; some people asked for special orders or substitutions. The waitress didn’t write a single thing down, yet everything came out perfect. She had an amazing memory.
Many people don’t realize that memorization is a learnable skill. When people are given practice and training on different memory tasks, they dramatically improve. This might be useful for a variety of reasons; students studying for a test, card players, or trying to learn a foreign language.
People often think memory training would probably give them a tremendous advantage in their professional life. It might, depending on what type of work that you do. But it is somewhat unlikely. In most professional jobs, the value you create comes from a focus on Deep Work. Memory requires a lot of concentration, so attempting to memorize irrelevant details will likely distract you from your most critical tasks.
In the television show The West Wing, the characters frequently interacted while on the go. This walk and talk technique might have made for interesting television, but one thing you’ll notice is they generally never took notes. Everyone remembered what they had to do. But, of course, that is not the way it works in the real world.
Even if you could remember everything that comes on your plate, you probably shouldn’t try. As a BCBA, you have tasks that require follow-up phone calls, emails, and texts from parents, teachers, insurance companies, supervisors, and on and on. When you have this stuff in your head, it causes stress and probably reduces focus on your more critical BCBA related skills. What we all need is a capture system. You need a simple, trusted system where all the tasks you have to do are captured and you don’t have to worry that you are going to forget about them. This might be a pad, text file, calendar, or whatever system you trust to check that you won’t forget items. Cal Newport’s work is a great source for selecting the right target behaviors to improve organizational skills.
The waitress at the restaurant probably got bigger tips due to her amazing abilities, and thus memory training was probably very useful for her. For BCBAs and most professionals, your value comes from other abilities–attempting to keep everything in your head is a bad idea.