Due to this, I'm finding myself in situations where my memory just fails me, in discussions where I really need to be on top of the details. And, while I've never been great at making decisions quickly, nowadays it's taking longer than ever.
Given some more time, I still have the knowledge and judgement to be make good decisions. But it is affecting how I do my job, and (I believe) how people perceive me in my role.
I wonder if anyone else here has experience with problems like this, and if so, whether anyone has any advice on things that could help. For example, I'm finding I need to take much more detailed notes. Tips along these lines would be welcome.
A few things that have helped me:
#1 sleep in a completely dark room. A specialist MD shared this insight with me and it changed my life. I also use an eye mask and white noise machine.
#2 use a call recording tool on your internal meetings that can summarize notes. Being able to go back “in time” to a call often has enabled me to reload the entire interaction just watching a few min of the call.
#3 rely on your team. As a leader you get the benefit of the doubt that you are covering a lot, so I’ve made a ritual of just asking people to restate our last interaction and where they are at now with any updates. Again, simple thing but helps trigger my memory
Good luck!
.. temperature is critical, and if you experiment with setting your thermostat exaggeratedly high or low for a while you will eventually notice it has an impact on sleep.
... getting cold was a frequent struggle as I would lose the covers and they would be twisted up and I would have to drowsily untwist. Now I wear a long sleeve fleece button shirt backward like a smock. Backward because the tails of the shirt always fall down and keep your side warm. The covers I just pull up to armpit and have never had to wake up since.
I hate light masks too, so I cover my face with lightweight athletic shorts that have a cooling effect. Then I use a small half-size pillow (walmart chopped memory foam) and turn my head sideways to muffle the ear not facing the pillow.
There are headphones out there that are purpose-built to help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer.
My favorites right now are SoundOFFs, which emit pink noise, no apps required.
I'm also going to experiment with the Ozlu Sleepbuds, which many are calling the unofficial Bose Sleepbuds III since Bose discontinued the second iteration of these buds and sold off much of the IP to this team.
I've been sleeping with custom ear molds for five years prior to moving to noise machine earbuds. Hearing's fine as of earlier this year!
"It turns out, any walk outdoors has the potential to unlock our brains" https://lithub.com/on-the-link-between-great-thinking-and-ob...
"Older adults who consumed cranberries frequently as part of their diet saw improvements in episodic memory, neural function, and brain perfusion" https://neurosciencenews.com/cranberries-memory-dementia-206...
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2022.84990...
"Conflict of Interest DV, MH, MM, and AN received funding from the Cranberry Institute.
The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest."
And in any case experience is as useful as raw ability in getting things done.
I'm now ancient (late 50s) and recently had to step away from my start-up as CTO since we sold the IPR, but instead I am doing a part-time PhD (just had my first paper published) and may become a fractional CTO for a friend's business. For the last I won't be racing the tech staff on coding speed or code performance, but I think that decades of delivering such stuff can help them do it and get credit for it.
Regardless, I'd recommend taking more notes and set up 15 mins before and after work to go over them. I'd also recommend using a paper notebook in supplement of an electronic one as you can spontaneously put down some notes on paper.
The way it appears he is dealing with it, from my perspective, is he has delegated the things which require immediate memory/cognition to us and is leveraging his expertise to direct us at a higher level and trusting us to execute and feed back pertinent information when we next check in.
While I feel for his worsening condition he has managed to do negotiate this in a way that:
1. Leverages his knowledge, expertise and network to a greater degree
2. Given us autonomy that feels empowering, while not increasing our workload to pick up his perceived slack.
It's advisable to consult with relevant doctors, get some tests done, and ensure you're not overlooking any underlying issues.
Relying on tips may not resolve the problem.
Also look into your stress level, zen meditation can do wonders for it. In my experience mediation also helps with sleep deprivation.
> I'm finding I need to take much more detailed notes
There is nothing wrong with that. Create a habit to always take notes. This helps remembering what was said and if that is not enough, you can even read your notes.
Although, I use org-mode and denote in Emacs with a Zettelkasten style setup to keep my work related notes nowadays. I would argue that everybody should start taking notes on paper. Get a well bound leather notebook, a nice pen. Open it at the start of every meeting, write the date, time and title of the meeting and keep doodling. That does so much for my attention, concentration in the meetings and recall of the meetings.
Make sure not to make enemies, as they will use this against you. In that sense, try to make meetings flow and if something requires a decision from you, ask people to create diagrams and explanations in a wiki like internal page, like confluence, so you can digest it on your time to make the correct the decision. Similarly, create yourself any diagram or descriptions/points you want to discuss beforehand to take it to the meetings. Maybe make them available before the meetings as well so people can provide you with info you will have processed before the meeting and during the meeting it will be easier to make decisions. Have a good night sleep. Have a good routine and eat well. Take any food supplement you may think you require, and consult a physician if you need medication. I've been taking lion's maine recently and has helped a lot with memory cognition. Unfortunately there is no easy solution here, except to work harder to overcome your problem. An alternative to working harder is getting less tasks to focus on, manage less people, reduce the amount of workload so you can still deliver good work, or even step down from workload intensive roles, like C- ones. Or if you can't step down but have some budget, have your own sharp assistant to help you out.
People mostly like to take responsibility. For decisions, let someone else offer up the potential solutions. Make someone else your memory. Its a very important part of management because it develops you and them. For technical people it is hard because we see the detail as the part we like most. Let someone else enjoy it.
PS. You can't delegate responsibility! That's abdication.
I've also heard that exercise can boost your memory. (Possibly in part because it improves your sleep, but it also enhances oxygen flow.) Or maybe it just reduces your stress.
You've ruled out "anything pathological" - otherwise I would suggest mentioning it to your doctor. But I've always wondered if "brain plasticity" is what's causing us all to adapt to our new habit of endlessly scrolling Facebook/Hacker News/Reddit/Twitter -- by adjusting our perceptions to handle shorter bursts of attention. There've been articles and books written on the subject, but the fix they often recommend is just: unplugging for a while.
As a general tip, I typically say don't take notes, don't use spell checkers, don't scribble thoughts, and so on. Young or old, these are crutches you'll only ever lean on more as time goes on. Meanwhile, you'll get better at mentally storing, organising and imagining if you do it more, or at the least, you'll retain these abilities for longer.
I also resonate with the person who said that reading out aloud helps. I start each day reading the Bible and I read out loud when my mind is overly busy. I find this helps.
I also like your comment about never being great at making decisions quickly. I often describe myself as a good thinker, if not a fast thinker. In saying that, we do tend to compare ourselves to the fastest thinkers we know. So don't beat yourself up too much :-)
The good news is there is probably a lot of low hanging fruit that can help with this. Quit alcohol, for one. Quit caffeine, too, for at least a couple of weeks. Screen your window, and leave it at least a crack open, if you live in a place with clean enough air to allow that - if not, air purifier it up. Try to get used to sleep masks, they're phenomenal for blocking out light, and they're really not so bad if you take your time to test and get used to them.
Past that, physical exercise is also widely known to keep cognition healthy as one ages.
Quite a while ago I left my job where I was doing a mix of development as well as management of a small team. Now I'm doing indie game development and I'm getting more brain exercise working on hard problems every month than I had in a whole year at my IT job.
Since then I feel as if I have become a lot sharper than I had been for a long time.
reduce fat intake to your personal min requirement.
controlled sleep deprivation, meaning no stress at all, every once in a while, 48 h, to 'reset the brain', no liquor, 16h+ fasts, coffee is ok. sounds like nonsense but try it and be happy.
By no stress I mean, no deadlines, only recreational coding and building stuff, no going through documents, minimum of screen time, best none in the night hours, puzzles and stuff are great. Nothing work related at all. Recreation is the goal. The controlled sleep deprivation is for organs, synapses, receptors.
You go hiking, talk with people through the night, write on novels or blog posts, then you go hiking again. Or swimming, or relaxed skiing, surfing, nightly museum or gallery events and weekends are the perfect time for this kind of thing.
The goal is to "empty your storage" of certain hormones and transmitters and get the respective organs and receptors to their limits, which they will barely get to after just 48 h of wakefulness, but it will be enough for your brain to notice the difference when you wake up afterwards. 'Holy shit, this is what it is / what it was like' ...
It's like getting a drop out of the fountain of youth. The boost will return after normal days and healthy sleep but work/life are crazy and TV/ads put an insane amount of obvious, subliminal, subconscious stress on our brains that we aren't aware of and that builds up in specific spaces that, after some 'amount', kind of constantly put some threshold under pressure which annihilates the boost of even good sleep, which is why you should do it regularly.
A lot of people swear on sleep but check their cabinets or ask them for their stack and you'll know ...
Because you can look away but you can't control what's ON your peripheral and so you have to get your hormone and transmitter producing organs, and just as - or even more - importantly, *the respective receptors*, to the point where they can produce and enjoy proper doses again.
Some bad analogies: Stretching is great but you need to stretch beyond a point to really enjoy the state and the progress afterwards. The same goes for strength training, we call it progressive overload. Too much is bad, especially on drugs, pain killers and stuff, but just the right amount without any additional stress and it works sustainably well.
If you know the right kind of researchers, they can certainly go beyond stones are hard and this is what 99 peoples' blood work and 4000 survey participants say.
Sleep, exercise, testosterone sups (nothing crazy) and some quite time to compose your thoughts will all help, you need to take some dedicated time/care for yourself, and you’ll be fine.
Have them do the evaluations and write you reports. Then have them revise the reports based on upper management responses.
Stop by engineering advisors in their area and not your office.