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Welcome to my new seven-week blog to keep the middle-aged mind sharp, given all the conveniences and shortcuts tempting us to hit pause on our own brains. Today’s post focuses on something we all do without thinking. Copy and paste. It is so easy to right click or use keyboard shortcuts to copy text from one place and paste to another.

Since when is the easy thing the right thing to do? The past few months, I have been wondering how much this simple feature is impacting my ability to memorize small to large pieces of information on a temporary basis. Like reading a short statement and then repeating it after five seconds without looking at it. Try it. How did you do?

When I tested myself, I did not pass with flying colors. I had to go back to the original text multiple times or, for longer statements, memorize a few words at a time before I was ready to type them out. In my efforts to complete each task at hand as fast as possible, I was beginning to rely a little too much on the machines already ruling my life.

Over Thanksgiving break, I made a pact with myself to no longer copy and paste any pieces of information. Instead, I would memorize it, even if only a few words at a time, and return to the original text as many times as needed until I had retyped it in its new destination instead of copying and pasting it there.

Yes, this takes longer than the few seconds required to copy and paste but not as long as I originally thought. Because guess what? Over the last few weeks of practice alone, I have experienced an improvement in my ability to memorize an increasing number of words at a time. A month and a half in, I am already retyping faster than I was when I started in December.

For instance, the December newsletter asked readers, “What is the one thing you will not do in 2025, come what may?” The funniest answer was “get married.” My answer was “eat a big mac.” The most inspiring answer was “being afraid of failure and staying within my comfort zone.” I just read it and retyped it here in one shot.

The first two answers are short and simple. In recent research*, scientists discovered that memorization is related to recognition. The shorter responses are more recognizable than the long one because, even though we may say the last phrase ourselves, we most likely don’t say it as much as the other two.

Either way, I am taking some inspiration from that statement and staying out of the extremely comfort zone created by copy and paste. When time is limited, I tiptoe back in and quickly run back out. Often, though, I find that time is not as limited as I allowed myself to believe in the past. As practice builds speed, time seems to be catching up as well.

*What Makes Some Words More Memorable Than Others? | Stanford Graduate School of Business

Disclaimer: This content is neither advice nor instruction. Medical or otherwise.