Message Overload

According to our book we only remember about 50% of what we hear, immediately after we hear it. After time passes, it slowly dwindles. As human beings we are constantly hearing things, someone talking, a lecture, when we have a conversation with one or more people. I can only imagine how often we would be in the state of message overload if we remembered 100% of what we heard. I think that everyday I have school that I come home and am in message overload. I choose not to talk to people right away when I get home because if they told me anything important I feel I wouldn't remember it. It also would not be fair to them because my listening skills would not be very good. I often catch myself beginning to listen mindlessly or not even paying any attention at all during long lectures. I think the best way of avoiding the feeling of message overload was if we had a few minutes of break every half hour to hour of lecture. I remember that my high school teacher used to talk about message overload. She did not call it that, but she used to allow us to stand up and stretch talk for about two minutes and get back to the course work. This really helped me stay focused. I also felt I could recollect myself so as not to feel I was overloaded.