10 PSYCHOLOGICAL TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY
- Try to understand the material you have to memorize. Simply reading it will only require mechanical memory, and after a relatively short time you will forget what you have learned. If you try to understand the logic of the material to be memorized, you will remember it for a very long time.
- Use as many analyzers as possible to memorize a material. Read it, take notes, talk about it, make diagrams, visualize processes, touch it and feel its texture (if appropriate), smell it (if possible), taste it (if it lends itself). Each analyser involved in memorising will do its job, and when you have to remember what you have memorised, it will be easier.
- Repeat, repeat and repeat again. Repetition is the mother of learning, said the Latins, and that doesn’t seem to have changed today. Repetition creates strong neural synapses, which help to fix what you memorise. Sometimes it’s memorizing movements (dance, sports movements, martial arts, etc.) Repeating them will create habits, which will allow the information to be ritualized unconsciously and quickly. This is the secret of the great masters.
- Repeat what you have memorized as if you had to explain the issue to someone. In this way, the information will stick even better, because you turn yourself from a student into a teacher. It is desirable to repeat aloud. It really helps!
- Don’t parasitize the memorization process with seemingly pleasant elements (music, a film or TV in the background, a conversation with someone you know, thoughts about something really interesting, a game, a glass of alcohol, etc.). These will definitely disrupt the memory process, as they will take away some of your attention and concentration power. Although it sounds sad, this is how memory works.
- Plan your time when you have to memorize something. As a rule, memorization is closely linked to learning. People who allocate clearly defined time for learning/training/rehearsing/etc. are better at memorizing than those who learn randomly, ad hoc.
- Uses mnemonic rules to increase memory performance. For example, you can make logical schemes with the elements to memorize, perform operations with numbers, arrange concepts according to certain criteria (ascending, descending, categories, etc.), construct words from the first letters of statements, use acronyms, etc. Look for and use the mnemonic rules that are most favorable to you.
- Train your memory and thinking continuously. Any untrained organ atrophies. The same axiom applies to memory. Learn new things, read, tell others about what you’ve learned, write, calculate, solve puzzles, etc. You can do all this as a game or as a hobby.
- Maintain a balanced lifestyle. Don’t do any kind of excesses (alcohol, tobacco, drugs, medicines, food, sweets, abstinence, etc.). Keep your psycho-physical balance: rest, hydrate, eat a balanced diet, relax as much as possible, go for walks in the fresh air, sit in the sun and breathe fresh air. Abuse does the most damage.
- Link new information to what you already know. This memorization technique links new information to what the subject already knows, with beneficial effects for the memorization process. Make sure that what you learn is not wrong, because sometimes it is harder to fix a mistake than to memorize it.
