Yep, I've found I'm less effective at remembering fully detailed information but more effective at remembering 'bread crumbs' which let me quickly find the information in documentation or online. It's sort of like I store the index internally and the data table externally.

This is also something I've found when hiring. If the position is time sensitive - the fires being put out tend to have a <1 day time limit, I want an older (45+) person in that position. Not for their experience, but for their ability to recall and store memories.

In my experience, older employees are able to recall information to solve a problem, but the recall may be incomplete, leading to a quicker, but less effective solution. Whereas, younger employees often need more time because they don't specifically remember solutions, but they are able to find, categorize, and process information faster, often leading to a slower, but more complete and robust solution.

Not sure if it's a product of education and upbringing in different worlds, or a product of experience, but it's fascinating to me.

I don't think that is unusual.

I also don't try hard to memorise things I know I can trivially lookup.

Other things I have a directory called `useful_things` that has markdown files broken down by category I can quickly grep for that thing I remember I needed but not how to do.

Thank you for saying this - that is what I experience (sub thirty) and I never thought of it that way...

It even comes to inbox organization. All the older team members her have folders etc to organize everything. The younger ones - we have one large inbox with everything and just search by remembering how to look for it (“oh yeah, that email had the word “altruistic” in it and it Jeff was involved)

If you think about it, that’s just how Google and constant internet connection programmed us... knowing how to find information became more valuable than knowing information.

> more effective at remembering 'bread crumbs'

Fun fact: this is Ken Jennings method for practicing for Jeopardy, mental models of items and triggers with surrounding facts.

> I'd say we could be better at remembering that some piece of information exists and where to find it instead of having to memorize it. This seems more powerful.

[paraphrase] "I wrote it down so I don't HAVE to remember." --quote from Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade

Seems similar to Einstein's "Never memorize what you can look up.".

> "Never memorize what you can look up."

I can look up all the definitions and grammar rules of English, but without memorizing them, I wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone around me.

I don't know any of the definitions, grammar rules of English yet I'm still able to effectively communicate with and understand others.

If you are a native speaker of English, you learned those rules over your whole childhood, by example instead of being explicitly taught the rules.

Agreed - I learned examples, not rules.

> I'd say we could be better at remembering that some piece of information exists and where to find it instead of having to memorize it

This approach is called Transactive Memory, and you do it with Google, with your note-taking software, with your friends and colleagues. You do it with your pet.

One of our biggest employable strengths as hackers is that we know where to find information. We make a habit of learning where to find different kinds of knowledge, then do a deep dive into a particular subject. We are masters of transactive memory.

We as a species are rapidly shifting to a more transactive memory in general as it further compresses our knowledge into a small space by storing metadata instead of the knowledge itself, allowing for rapid acclimation to a given task based on the wealth of knowledge around you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactive_memory

Sometimes not remembering the content of a meeting has to do with no important content in a meeting.

you just described pointers and RAM :-)