Why Does It Feel Like We’re All Getting More Forgetful?

I can’t tell you how many women have said some version of this to me:

“I just don’t trust my brain the way I used to.”

You walk into a room and forget why you’re there. You reread the same paragraph three times. A name you absolutely know disappears the second you need it. You’re halfway through a sentence and suddenly the word you were looking for is just... gone.

For me, this became especially scary during perimenopause.

I was still working in live television at the time, where finding the right words isn’t exactly optional. There were moments when I would look at a word I knew and somehow couldn’t get it out of my mouth.

My memory has improved tremendously since then, but the experience changed the way I think about my brain. Even now, I like having notes in front of me because losing that confidence was frightening.

So when I sat down with leading brain coach Jim Kwik, I wanted to understand what is actually happening when our memory starts to feel different and, more importantly, how much power we have to strengthen it.

The answer was much more hopeful than I expected.

Forgetfulness doesn’t always mean your memory is failing

Jim told me something that immediately changed the way I thought about those everyday lapses: “The art of memory is the art of attention.”

Sometimes the problem happens before memory is ever created.

Think about walking into another room and suddenly having no idea why you’re there. Jim explained something called the “doorway effect.” When we move into a new environment, our brain is changing contexts. It’s a little like opening another tab on your computer and forgetting what you originally went there to search for.

That doesn’t mean every experience of brain fog can be explained by distraction.

Hormonal changes during perimenopause and menopause can affect the brain. Sleep changes matter. Stress matters. Health conditions matter. And then there is the enormous mental load so many women are carrying at the exact same time.

The point isn’t to dismiss forgetfulness. It’s to understand that memory is influenced by far more than age alone.

We may also be asking our brains to do too much

Our brains weren’t designed for 47 open tabs, constant notifications, texts coming in while we’re answering emails, a podcast playing while we’re making dinner and a mental list running in the background of everything we still need to do.

Jim calls this cognitive overload.

And it made me think about how quickly we assume something is wrong with us when maybe our brains are also responding to an environment that rarely allows them to focus on one thing at a time.

One of Jim’s simplest pieces of advice was this:

“If your mind feels empty, read. If your mind feels full, write.”

Get some of what is swirling around in your head out of your head and onto paper. It sounds almost too simple, but that is part of what I appreciated about this conversation. Strengthening your brain doesn’t necessarily require adding another complicated wellness routine to your life.

Your brain still wants to learn

This might have been my favorite part of our conversation because I think we have absorbed a very strange idea about aging: that at some point we become too old to start over.

Too old to learn the language.

Too old to change careers.

Too old to pick up the instrument.

Too old to become a beginner again.

Jim pushed back hard on that idea. Our brains remain capable of changing and forming new connections throughout our lives. But they need to be challenged.

I immediately thought about my dad.

He took up pottery at 86 years old. Nine months later, his work was being shown at the Tampa Museum of Art.

Eighty-six.

He didn’t need to become an expert. He just followed his curiosity, learned something completely new and kept using his brain in a way he hadn’t before.

I find that incredibly inspiring because it raises a bigger question: What if getting older isn’t our cue to do less with our brains? What if it’s our opportunity to finally learn the things we never had time to learn before?

And then there’s AI

We also talked about something I think all of us need to start paying attention to: what happens when technology doesn’t just remember things for us, but starts thinking for us too?

We’ve been outsourcing pieces of our memory for years. Our phones remember numbers. GPS remembers directions. Calendars remember appointments.

AI can go much further.

It can brainstorm the idea, solve the problem, write the answer and recommend the decision.

Jim used a phrase I hadn’t heard before: “cognitive surrendering.”

His analogy was simple. You wouldn’t go to the gym and ask someone else to lift your weights for you and expect your muscles to get stronger.

Our brains need some resistance too.

His rule is to “build your own intelligence before you borrow.” Think first. Brainstorm first. Come up with your own ideas. Then use AI to pressure-test them, challenge your assumptions or show you something you missed.

That distinction feels increasingly important.

Technology is going to keep getting smarter. The question is whether we continue exercising our own ability to think alongside it.

Maybe the goal isn’t a perfect memory

What I took away from Jim wasn’t that we should never forget a name again or that every brain lapse needs to be “fixed.”

It was that our brains are not finished.

We can keep learning. We can keep challenging them. We can protect our attention. We can take our sleep seriously. We can read things that make us think differently, write when our minds feel overloaded and choose hobbies that force us to become beginners again.

And maybe most importantly, we can stop assuming that getting older automatically means becoming less capable.

At 55, that’s the part I keep coming back to.

There is still so much left to learn.

🎧 My full conversation with leading brain coach Jim Kwik, “How to Strengthen Your Memory at Any Age,” is available now on The Tamsen Show.

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