Tamil Selvan's Key Ideas from Moonwalking with Einstein
by Joshua Foer

Have you ever wondered or thought, after an year or a month or a week, where the hell did that go?

Our memory remember things in a chronological order. For eg: Event X happened just before the big Paris vacation. Event Y happened in the first summer after I learned to drive.

As each year passes, some of our experiences are converted to automatic routines and since there are no particular new experiences to anchor our memories, our brain blends these years into one countless unit and stores it.

To tell you an example, imagine your routine of going to your work over a period of one month. You go at 9 in the morning, do your work, come back at 5 in the evening, watch some TV and this cycle continues and it becomes an automatic routine. You experience no new memory here.

So, here since there are no new experiences to anchor our memories, our brain blends this one month period into one countless unit and stores it. That's why you wonder at the end of the month "Where the hell did the last month go".