Memory Strategies – do what the experts do!
Memory isn’t like a muscle, something specific you can exercise. It’s a way of organizing information in your brain. So to improve your memory, you need to change and re-organize the way you think and this will help to support how your memory works.
How to improve
There are two main approaches you can use to help your memory – external aids and internal aids. Memory champions use internal aids, these are techniques we can use in our heads to help us remember, and anyone can do it. Dr Chris Moulin from the Leeds Memory Group describes for us five tips – try them out today and pass them on to your family!
1. Chunking
Don’t swallow it whole!
When someone gives you a phone number to remember, use ‘chunking’ as a way of remembering it. Short-term memory is limited so chunking helps us process long bits of information in more easily digestible chunks.
Most people can remember seven things, plus or minus two, which means that you’ll usually be able to remember between five and nine things at most. So when given a string of numbers to remember such as 123957001066, break it down! 12 39 57 00 10 66 or even 1239 5700 1066 (chunks of numbers). You may find it easier to chunk numbers according to something you find meaningful, like the age of someone you know, an address or a famous date (1066 Battle of Hastings). These attached meanings can then form a story to help remember a really long sequence.
2. Cramming
Cramming doesn’t work!
Repetition and rehearsal can be useful as ‘practice makes perfect’. But psychologists have learned that it’s better to space out your learning than to mass it all in one lump.
When practicing a word in a foreign language, don’t repeat it over and over. Repeat it to yourself once or twice, then try something else (learn something else, or just have a break). Then come back to it. And don’t cram for exams, things just won’t sink in.
3. Cues
Give us a cue
If there’s something you have to do every day at a specific time and often forget, then this technique, called implementation intentions, should help and it’s very simple.
Give yourself a cue to help your intention to do something. Doctors use it to help people’s health behavior. For example, say to yourself ‘whenever I have my first cup of tea in the morning, I will also take my pills’. Or ‘I’ll first open my email inbox after morning coffee’
4. Me! Me! Me!
Remember – it’s all about me.
Called the self-reference technique, this is really one of the best and simplest methods of all, so much so that we tend not to even think about it. Simply refer any information to yourself and it makes it easier to remember. It can work on a mundane level – meeting someone called Peter and associating him with other Peters you know. On a deeper level, making personal associations with important facts or ideas – political, moral, social, etc. will help you remember them.
5. Place it!
Location, location, location
One kind of visualization technique is also called the ‘method of loci’ or the ‘Roman Room’ method. Fans of the dreadful Hannibal Lecter will recognize this technique.
However, it’s a very good way of remembering a sequence of related information such as a list of names. Use a mental image of a place you know well – such as your home – and take a mental walk through the rooms in a set order. Then, put the names from your list one by one into the rooms.
Suppose you want to remember the names of your friend’s children in order of age. Visualize Harry the eldest in your front room, then Sally the second in the back room. Molly the third is in the kitchen … and so on.
To recall the names later you repeat the mental walk. Loci seems a strange way of remembering but with practice it is very successful.
Need convincing? Try this: ask someone to read out a list of ten random words slowly but steadily and only once. About one word per second should be fine. Now, don’t use any specific method – just try to recall the words in order a few minutes later.
Try it again using the loci method. Visualize your home and all the rooms. Move between the rooms and find a starting point. Now when your friend reads the list of words again, try to create visual images of the words associated with one of the locations. It’ll take a bit of practice but keep trying and you should improve each time. For those having difficulty with only a small number of rooms etc. Make up a few more fantasy rooms and don’t just put the things you want to remember in the rooms all alone – associate them with things in the room like furniture etc – and stick a few memories on the ceilings/windows/walls/ chandeliers etc. there are endless possibilities. oh and don’t forget the fridge – a good place to store those things you need in the longer term!
However, one of the very best ways to improve your memory is to have an organized way of managing the myriad of details that make up the day, freeing your mind for richer and more important thoughts.
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For more information contact:
David Anderson
Okanagan Training Solutions
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250 762-5096 / 1-877-762-5096
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