Your Iphone Storage is Full

Two of the most dreaded messages one could possibly receive on the Iphone: 1.) 10% battery life remaining! and 2.) Your IPhone Storage is full! Go to settings to manage storage. I don't have too many photos, download too many podcasts, or store too many songs/videos, but apparently my allotted storage plan is abnormally low, because I run out of storage all the time. When that happens, I run into the tricky dilemma of having to delete photos I may want to keep for nostalgia purposes, or delete podcasts that I really want to listen to. Mainly 21st century Millenial problems, I know, but these dilemmas do exist!

Its one thing to run out of storage on my mobile device, but lately I've been worried about running out of storage in my brain! Everyone knows that children are the best at learning new things because their brains are still "flexible," they can think about things in new ways and absorb information at a faster rate than adults, but when do adults stop growing new brain cells and slow down their learning? Is there such a thing as running out of storage in the human brain? A quick google search shows that there's no such thing as cessation of learning, but I definitely feel like my memory isn't as good as it once was.

Sometimes (ok, frequently) MJ will tell me something about something that happened to her or a certain way to do the chores and I'll forget it. I'll forget names of streets or phone numbers I once knew. I forget the login information and password for a website I haven't used in a while! I try to recall a movie I once watched and forget the title. Most frequently, I'm searching for a word to use in the English language (I like to mix up my diction a bit to not sound like a broken record) but can't find the word after racking my brain for it. Is it because I've stored about too much information in my brain that it's become hard to cram more things into it? Do I have to pay an extra $2.99 month for 15GB of extra storage space?

I think getting older does have something to do with lower memory abilities, but also the way we process information and determine what's important and what's not important. I remember as a kid I thought EVERYTHING was important, took notes on every single word a teacher said in class, paid rapt attention to everything someone ever said to me, etc. Nowadays I've developed a bit of selective hearing, where I tune in and out of conversations based on how much they matter to me. I definitely find that if I use my brain more proactively to listen to someone 100%, I tend to remember what they say more, whereas other conversations that happen while I'm multi-tasking, listening to something on IPod, or just thinking about something else tend to get forgotten later, even though I remember having that conversation, but fail to recall specific details of the conversation. A computer would have no problem storing everything regardless of importance! Another example that computers are smarter than humans.

I think it's important to know that our brains have "overcapacity" times during the day but to try to remember as much as possible and give other people our full attention, especially if they're spending the time to talk to us one-on-one! Now, what to do about that 10% battery life left problem (What if I only had 10% of my life left?) YIKES. That's definitely a harder topic to tackle.


Fantasize on,

Robert Yan