In Your Brain at Work, neuroscientist David Rock compares your short-term and long-term memory capacities to a theater. Your short-term memory is the stage. Your long-term memory is the audience in the theater. As you’re trying to connect concepts to generate ideas, it’s like you’re pulling actors onstage to act in scenes. But the more actors you have on the stage, the more difficult your scene becomes to follow. So at some point you need to send some actors offstage.
