I can relate to this, but always explained it away in the opposite direction: I never trained my memory very much because I was able to work things out on the fly. Who knows, maybe there isn't much of a link between the two at all.

> I never trained my memory very much because I was able to work things out on the fly

I actually always thought it was the opposite for me – I had to figure out how to work things out from scratch because I could never remember anything.