Alright, let’s dive into what actually happened when I tried to understand this whole “encoding failure” thing. You hear the term, it sounds complicated, but life served me up a perfect example last week.
It Started With A Coffee Disaster
I was prepping for a big client meeting on Tuesday. Like, big. My boss gave me all these specific points to cover about the new budget figures. He talked to me right after lunch, super clear, standing by my desk, hand gestures and everything. “Make sure you emphasize the cost savings in Q3 projections,” he says. Twice. I nodded along, feeling good. “Got it,” I told him. Felt solid.
Fast forward two hours later. I’m standing in front of the client, projector humming, laser pointer in hand. I hit the slide about Q3 projections… and my mind goes completely, utterly blank. Like a thick fog rolled in. That specific point about the cost savings? Vanished. Not a trace. I stumbled, mumbled something vague about “positive indicators,” and saw my boss’s face drop a little. Felt like a total dunce. Cold coffee down my back couldn’t have felt worse.
Digging Into Why My Brain Checked Out
After the meeting (face still burning), I started poking around. Why did that specific detail disappear? That’s where I ran into “encoding failure.” It’s basically just a fancy way of saying your brain didn’t save the information properly in the first place. Like trying to save a file on a computer but the save function glitches. The info was there for a second… then poof.
Here’s what clicked for me about why it glitched for me:
- I Was on Auto-Pilot: When my boss was talking, part of my brain was still chewing on my lunch, part was thinking about the next meeting’s agenda. I wasn’t really paying deep attention. Just nodding like a bobblehead.
- Meaning? What Meaning? The budget figures were just numbers he threw at me. I didn’t link them mentally to why they were important, or what they really meant for the client. Just raw data. Brains hate raw data without context.
- Stress Mess: Knowing it was a big meeting? Yeah, the background stress was simmering. Stress loves to mess with focus. My brain was too busy worrying about screwing up to actually lock down the information properly.
Basically, in that moment after lunch, my brain just noped out of doing the work to save that specific instruction. It got distracted, overwhelmed, or lazy. That’s encoding failure. It wasn’t that I “forgot” later; the memory never got properly formed to begin with. Like planting a seed but forgetting to water it – it was never gonna sprout.
The Takeaway Stuck This Time
So now? When someone dumps important info on me, especially numbers or specifics under pressure, I force myself to stop whatever dumb thing I’m thinking about. I look at them, repeat the key bit back in my own words – “Okay, so the Q3 savings hinge on X, right?” – and try to link it to why it matters, even just mentally. Gives my brain a fighting chance to actually hit ‘save’ properly. No more trusting the bobblehead nod.