Issue 8: Step Three - Depth Of Processsing

Dear Reader,

If you've been with us the past few weeks, you know we’ve covered the first two steps in the memory process:

1️⃣ Attention – You can’t remember what you didn’t notice.
2️⃣ Understanding – You can’t remember what you didn’t comprehend.

Now we come to Step Three: Depth of Processing.

Even when we do pay attention and do understand, we may still forget—especially if we move on too quickly. A name, a detail, an idea can come in one ear and go straight out the other.

Why?

Because we didn’t do anything meaningful with that information.

💡 How Deep Do You Go?

The brain needs more than a quick glance.

If something matters to you, you must engage it more deeply. That means not just hearing or thinking, but doing something with what you’ve taken in:

• Repeating it

• Visualizing it

• Organizing it

• Connecting it to what you already know

These are memory-strengthening strategies we’ll dig into over the coming weeks. But for now, here’s the big idea:

❝ Surface-level attention leads to surface-level memory. ❞
❝ Depth leads to durability. ❞

📖 Scripture Focus: Deuteronomy 6:6–9 (NIV)

“These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.
Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.
Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

God doesn’t just tell His people to listen to His words—He tells them to do something with those words. Repeatedly.

Notice the actions:

• Impress

• Talk (when sitting, walking, lying down, getting up)

• Tie

• Bind

• Write

These are not passive steps. They’re purposeful. God is showing us how to fix truth deeply in our minds and hearts. And this is for our good - so we will benefit from His word. 

God doesn’t want us to simply hear/read His word once and move on. He wants us to immerse ourselves in it—through movement, repetition, symbols, and shared conversation. 

These are, in modern terms, depth of processing strategies, and we can apply them to other information to help us in other areas of life as well. 

🛠️ Try This: Do Something With the Information

Think about your everyday life. You hear something important—your spouse tells you about a family event, or someone at work gives you a task or a date.

Now ask:

How deeply did I process that?

Did you:

• Repeat it to yourself?
  

• Write it down?
  

• Visualize it?
  

• Connect it to something meaningful?

If not, you probably won’t remember it well.

Let’s be real: You don’t need to meditate for three hours on the fact that your child has a dentist appointment in two weeks.

But giving it more than three seconds of attention is worth it. Taking an extra 15 seconds to enter it in your calendar—that’s deeper processing. That’s what makes a difference.

✅ What to Practice This Week

Start noticing how quickly you move on from new information.
This week, choose one piece of information each day to go deeper with. Try:

• Saying it aloud
  

• Writing it down
  

• Drawing a symbol
  

• Explaining it to someone else

It doesn’t have to be complicated—but it does have to be intentional.

🧠 Your Mind Can Be Strengthened

Memory can feel slippery and we can easily be lulled into a mindset that forgetfulness “is what it is” or that it’s “normal aging”. 

Don’t accept it. 

Memory is a set of skills that can be strengthened and improved. 

Practice the steps:  

Step 1: Pay attention.
Step 2: Understand.
Step 3: Process more deeply.

Next week, we’ll explore some of those deeper processing techniques in more detail.

Until then, remember:

If it’s important, don’t just hear it. Do something with it.

In Him, 

Dr. Matt

Christian Neuropsychologist | Fellow Traveler in Faith and Clarity

https://clearmindweekly.beehiiv.com/ 

www.drmattbridgman.com