How often are you introduced to someone and you quickly forget their name? Or you attend a meeting and shortly after cannot recall what was discussed?

Research by Dr. Art Markman (University of Texas) has shown that your memory of an event (introductions, business event, a meeting, hockey game, car accident, etc.) is organized around three separate things that you experienced during that event. This is because your brain can typically only pay attention to three “sub events” at one time and then tends to organize all of your memories around these sub events.

Dr. Markman calls this the “Role of 3.”