Increase Your Memory
One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his greatest surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t.
— One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his greatest surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t.
NOTE
Exercise your mind to keep your memory in peak form
NOTE
Techniques and tricks will improve your recall
One of the easiest ways to increase your memory is to exercise your mind. The traditional memory improvement method was repetition, but this helps very little unless you build in some more powerful strategies.
Use Both Sides of Your Brain
Everyone has a preference towards one side of their brain. If you are more left-brained, you would benefit from working on becoming more creative to help you increase your whole brain approach to thinking and learning. If the right side of your brain is more dominant, you would benefit from more logical learning.
Connect with Your Long-Term Memory
In one ear and out the other is probably the best description of what happens with short-term memory when new information comes in and it is not rehearsed. To help transfer and store the new information in your long-term memory you need to create more connections by adding meaning and a powerful picture in your mind’s eye. For example, when you read a book full of information that you need to retain, you will remember more if you take notes as you read each section; you will increase your recall even further by cataloguing and categorizing the information. Any deliberate processing of new information will make it more accessible in the future. The simple act of writing down any information you need to remember will impress it more firmly upon your memory; categorizing and cataloguing it will enhance this effect, creating more connections with your long-term memory.
Think Smart
There are some things you can do to help you to increase your memory and recall.
Be specific with information – specifics are easier to learn. Take breaks, test and review what you know, and then re-test. Put your new learning into a context, looking at how it fits into the bigger picture. Try to use words that rhyme, memory pegging, and mnemonics. Bring all of your senses into play.
Painting a Picture
Try to memorize the words listed here. You might be able to remember the whole list or a large part of it, but the average score is about 30 per cent.
tree
dog
pencil
car
motorway
money
traffic lights
sofa
cake
exercise
chair
purse
table
book
lake
Now read through the list again and, at the same time, create a picture in your mind of each item in turn. Test your recall – there’s a good chance that your score will have doubled.
Now look at the list again and make each picture more specific. This will help to increase your recall and commit the information to your long-term memory. For example, has your tree got leaves or is it bare? How tall is it? Is it by itself or in a forest? Are there any birds’ nests in it? Is it still standing or has it been blown over by the wind? Has someone built a tree house on it?
Improve Your Recall
Even if you think you have poor recall, memory pegging will help you to remember a number of unrelated things and recall them in order. It’s quite an amusing way to ensure you embed the information to aid recall later. Use this list: 1= run, 2 = shoe, 3 = ski, 4 = door, 5 = hive, 6 = sticks, 7 = heaven, 8 = plate, 9 = wine, 10 = hen. The first thing to do is to remember the pegs. This should be fairly easy as they all rhyme with the numbers one to ten.
Then create a visual connection that is as humorous and bizarre as possible. For One = Run, conjure up a picture of yourself in a bright pink running kit, with the word you need to remember on top of your head instead of a hat. For Three = Ski, you could be wearing skis instead of running shoes – make them really long and visualize yourself tripping people up. Once you have a strong visual peg, you can use it to memorize lists. This will also help you to remember key aspects of a presentation.
Try this – think of a familiar journey, “peg” each item on your list to a landmark along it, then replay the route to recall the list.
Use Mnemonics
The simplest and best known example of this type of memory aid is a sentence or phrase where the first letters of each word you want to remember correspond to the first letters of an easily recalled sentence, phrase, or word. Music teachers have traditionally used the mnemonic Every Good Boy Deserves Favour as an aid to remembering one of the basic sequences of notes. It is possible to remember long numbers in a similar way, using the number of letters in each word of a sentence to recall the number. The most famous one is the value of pi – How I wish I could calculate pi (3.141592).
Techniques to Practise
Another technique to improve your recall is to connect each item in a list to the next by means of a story told in pictures.
Make your story as absurd as possible, as this will make it more memorable.
Taking your memory list, you might start off with a picture of a bedecked Christmas tree, its lights flashing, in the middle of a muddy field. A brushed and clipped poodle with a blue bow and rhinestone collar is sitting underneath it with a red pencil in its mouth. Finish this story, then recall the list.
Try the technique with this list: car keys, window, sausages, lightning, coffee, patrol, comb, puppet.
Use it to exercise your memory, making your own list of random words or names by picking them with a pin from a dictionary or telephone directory.
On a long car journey with your family, have a list of words that each member in turn has to use to make up their own story.