As you get older, your focus tends to widen, making it more difficult to draw on a particular fact, which can be both frustrating and scary. Yet, according to Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard, “distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing…It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”
A study conducted on adults over 60 and college students showed that the older adults remembered more out of place words in a reading than the college students. The older adults read the passages slower and took in more information altogether.
According to Lynn Hasher, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, “A broad attention span may enable older adults to ultimately know more about a situation and the indirect message of what’s going on than their younger peers.”
And Ilchi Lee, originator of the Brain Education System Training (BEST) and author of In Full Bloom: A Brain Education Guide for Successful Aging agrees: “Time brings subtle yet meaningful positive changes to the brain, acquired through years of experience, that add to the quality of life.”
So the next time you forget little Johnny’s name, don’t fret. Instead, remember that you’ve accumulated a lifetime of experience and that a little grinding of the gears can be and often is one of the great byproducts of aging— wisdom.
Popular Brain Tips 
As many people age, they begin to fret over forgetting the simple things that once came easy to them—a name, a recipe or misplacing their keys. However, forgetfulness isn’t necessarily a bad omen. In fact, occasional slips of the mind may be a positive byproduct of an older and wiser mind.
