I recently heard an interview with Dr. Charan Ranganath, a professor of Neuroscience at UC Davis. Dr. Ranganath was being interviewed about his book, “Why We Remember.”1 The interview reminded me, I had forgotten, of the fickle nature of our memories. According to many studies, we forget about 90% of the information we learn each day within one week of learning it. At first blush, that doesn’t sound so bad. I am lucky if I remember much of anything from the previous day’s activity, especially what I had for lunch. Consider, however, that even if you retain 10% of the information from each day that you believe to be factual, time has a way of slowly eroding the factualness of information we do retain. Let me provide you with some fun examples.
Here are 5 facts I bet you know or learned at one point, that happen to no longer be true:
- A swallowed piece of gum takes 7 years to digest. (FALSE, it moves through like everything else.)
- We only use 10% of our brains. (FALSE, we use substantially more.)2
- Daddy Long Leg spiders have the deadliest venom, they just don’t have fangs long enough to pierce human skin. (FALSE, their venom is apparently quite tame.)
- Body hair gets thicker and darker every time you shave it. (FALSE)
- Sugar causes hyperactivity. (FALSE, though as a parent, everything in me believes my children act different after eating sweets.)3
I share this with you because, as your financial advisor, it is essential that we humbly acknowledge this “fact.” The human brain has limited capacity to recall, at will, facts and concepts that are both originally and presently accurate. Additionally, it is severely incompetent at predicting the future. Our lives are awash with information that is either intentionally misleading or was once accurate but is no longer. We tend to let our guard down when times are good. We start listening more. We expand our travel plans. We consider other ways to invest our money, more advantageous ways.
One of the key roles we play in your life is reminding you that one certainty every person faces, in bad times AND good, is the uncertainty of the future. We must remind you, that the 10% of information we remember from the past, may no longer be true in the future. Additionally, the assumptions we have about what the future holds are almost always wrong. Our challenge and great joy, as your advisor, is to help you build a solid financial plan that considers the uncertainty of the future and the fading relevance of the past.
Eric Puckett
- https://www.richroll.com/podcast/charan-ranganath-876/
- https://www.rd.com/list/facts-you-learned-no-longer-true/
- https://www.buzzfeed.com/angelicaamartinez/facts-that-arent-true-fs