In 1956, George Miller published a paper in Psychology Review that provided a fascinating idea of how much humans can hold in their immediate memory at any given moment. He proposed that this number was seven and said it could be plus or minus a few digits. This has become the multi-store model of human memory, the idea of short-term and long-term memory. This seems like a simple concept today, but this was a rather startling observation back then. There is a definite reason why the area code was introduced, and it is precisely because it was felt that humans would have trouble remembering phone numbers longer than seven digits. This article, which you can find online, is a fascinating read. He divided short-term memory into chunks. For example, you can recall and have in your immediate mind a phone number, an area code, and the name of the person you are calling: seven digits (one chunk), plus two additional chunks. Interestingly, the early days of computing were based on the same basic concept.
The magic number seven is significant in our personal transformation when considering how much we can hold in our brain at any given time. When I say brain, I mean our brains’ immediate recall or short-term memory area. This is my theory at this point. I have no research to back it up—just my experiments on myself, a test pool of one case, and no control group. I believe this is a core cause behind some of our immediate and acute stress. Let me explain.
Have you ever had this overwhelming feeling come over you suddenly? You might do what I did for a while. Whenever I got that feeling, I would immediately sit down and write down what I was thinking about right at that moment. I soon learned that it was always the fact that I had ‘one more thing to do.’ Now, why is one more thing on my plate so upsetting? That is because I have exceeded the available chunks in my active memory and have no place to put it. Therefore, I immediately feel overwhelmed.
I have tried this out on my children. They always like to say when faced with the prospect of doing chores, homework, or another task they do not like, ‘Ugh, I will never remember all this.’ What caused them to say this? I remember asking them to make a list. OK, then tell me everything you must remember, and I will write them down for you. Almost inevitably, they could only name 4 things. Which holds to Miller’s theory. Three chunks and one of them can include a string of numbers. So, were there a ‘million things’ for my child to do? No, there were only 4. However, it does not matter. 4, 5, 6, 10,000 is all the same to the human mind.
Watch my video on the Magic Number 7, here
Have you ever felt instantly better after writing down a list of your tasks? This is because you are effectively clearing your memory and making room so that you can process things faster and easier. When you are loaded up with things to remember, you just feel stressed out. When my wife complains about 1 thing, I am OK. 2 things I can handle. 3 things, and I get a bit annoyed. 4, and I am grumpy, pissed, and inconsolable. That is because I have exceeded my capacity to store. It is a simple concept, but it is very real, in my opinion.
This leads me to the concept of why it is so vital that we do not overwhelm ourselves with too many objectives, too many projects, and too many improvement aims. Until we get into the habit of doing good things, any new thing we add will be something ‘on our minds.’ As soon as you get to 4, you are done. The feelings of being overwhelmed will kick in, and you will be discouraged. So keep it simple and keep it to three.
This is important for consideration in anything we do. Studying, planning our day, and communicating with others. Most humans have a capacity for three chunks. There is a reason that Dora the Explorer always has only three objectives. Forest. River. Castle! Let’s Go!
