MAXIMIZE YOUR MEMORY
- Maximize your Memory
“You should always be taking pictures, if not with a camera then with your mind. Memories you capture on purpose are always more vivid than the ones you pick up by accident” - Isaac Marion
I could make a pretty good case that whatever time you invest improving your memory will deliver the most “study bang” for your buck. It doesn’t matter how rapidly you whiz through your textbooks if you can’t even remember the subjects you studied…five minutes later. Getting organized is essential, but not of you always forget to turn in homework assignments or miss quizzes. And, of course, spending hours searching high and low for keys, glasses, your cellphone, and other essentials isn’t the most efficient way to start your study day.
As important as they are, basic memory techniques are the study ingredients least likely to be taught in schools, even in a study skills course. So while many schools and teachers might help you with reading, writing, organizing, and test strategies, far too many of them will “forget” to help you with your memory.
Retention, recall, and recognition
The essence of memory is the ability to get in touch with some fact or sensation as if it had just happened . Developing a skilled or practiced memory is to keep facts, formulas, and experiences at your disposal so you can recall them whenever you need or want to.
Why do so many of us forget where we put our car keys, eyeglasses, or cellphones? Because putting these objects down is the most ordinary of occuurences, part and parcel of the most humdrum aspects of our lives. (According to Readers Digest, the average adult spends 16 hours a year trying to find his or her keys.) We have trouble remembering facts and formulas from books and classroom lectures for the same reason. To be in school is to be bombarded with information day in and day out. How do you make those facts memorable? (And has anyone seen my glasses?)
What do all “memorable” names, dates, places, and events have in common? The fact that they’re different. What makes something memorable is its extraordinariness, how much it differs from our normal experiences.
So how can some people so easily recte the names symbols, and atomic weights of the elements of the periodic table – while thye’re playing (and winning) Trivial Pursuit?
Because this information has gotten “tagged” or “coded” in some way. For some people, myriad bits of data are almost automatically tagged so that they can be quite easily and handily stored and retrieved. But most of us, if we are to have exceptional memories, must make a special effort.
Let’s explore how our memories actually work. There are three key processes involved – retention, recall, and recognition – and three major kind of memory – visual, verbal, and kinesthetic.
If something is important enough
Retention is the process by which we keep imprints of past experiencesin our minds, the “storage depot.” Subject to other actions of the mind, what is retained can be recalled when needed. Things are retained in the same order in which they are learned. So your studying should build one fact, one idea, or one concept upon another.
Broad concepts can be retained more easily than details. Master generalities and details will fall into place.
If you think something is important, you will retain it more easily. So convincing yourself that what you are studying is something you must retain (and recall) increases your chances of adding it to your storehouse – your long-term memory bank.
Retention is primarily a product of what you understand. It has little to do with how fast you read, how great an outline you can construct, or how may fluorescent colors you use to highlight your textbooks. Reading a text, grasping the message, and remembering it are the fundamental that make for high-level retention. Reading at a one thousand-word-per minute clip does not necessarily mean that you understand what you read or will remember any of it.
As you work toward improving your reading, realize that speed is secondary to comprehension. If you can read an assignment faster than anyone in class, but can’t give a one-sentence synopsis of what you just read, you’ve wasted your time. If you really get the author’s message-even if it takes you an hour or two longer than some of your friends-spending the time you require to actually understand what you are reading will pay huge dividends in class and later in life.
It’s on the tip of my tongue
Recall is the process by which we are able to bring forth those things that we have retained. Recall is subject to strengthening through the process of repetition. Recall is least effective immediately after a first reading, which is why reviewing the material later is so essential. The dynamics of our ability to recall are affected by several factors:
* We most easily recall those things that are of interest to us.
* Be selective in determining how much you need to recall. All information is not of equal importance-focus your attention on being able to recall the most important pieces of information.
* Allow yourself to react to what you’re studying. Associating new information with what you already know will make it easier to recall.
* Repeat, either aloud or in your mind, what you want to remember. Find new ways to say those things that you want to recall.
* Try to recall broad concepts rather than isolated facts.
* Use the new data you have managed to recall in a meaningful way – it will help you recall it the next time.
Don’t I know you from somewhere?
Recognition is the ability to see new material and recognize it for what it is and what it means. Familiarity is the key aspect or recognition - you wil feel that you have “met” this information before, associate it with other data or circumstances, then recall the framework in which it logically fits.
If you’ve ever envied a friend’s seemingly wondrous ability to recall facts, dates, and telephone numbers virtually at will, take solace that, in most cases, this skill is a result of study and practice, not a talent he inherited.
Why we forget
1. As you think about the elements of developing good memory, you can use them to address why you forget. The root of poor memory is usually found in one of these areas:
- We fail to make the material meaningful
- We did not learn prerequisite material
- We fail to grasp what is to be remembered
- We do not have the desire to remember
- We allow apathy or boredom to dictate how we learn
- We have no set habit for learning
- We are disorganized and inefficient in our use of study time
- We do not use the knowledge we have gained
And more ways to remember
Here are some additional hints that will help you remember what you read:
You will remember only what you understand. When you read something and grasp the message, you have begun the process of retention. The way to test this is to rephrase the message in your own words. Can you summarize the main idea? Unless you understand what is being said, you won’t be able to decide whether to remember or discard it.
You remember what you choose to remember. If you don’t want to remember some piece of information or don’t believe you can, then you won’t!
To remember the material, you must want to remember it and be convinced that you will remember it.
To ensure that you retain material, you need to go beyond simply doing the assignment. To really remember what you learn, you should learn material thoroughly, or overlearn. This involves pre-reading the text, doing a critical read, and having some definite means of review that reinforces what you should have learned.
It’s more difficult to remember random thoughts or numbers than those organized insome pattern. For example, which phone number is easier to remember: 538-6284 or 678-1234? Once you recognize the pattern in the second number, it takes much less effort to remember than the first. Develop the ability to discern the structure that exists and recall it when you try to remember. Have a system to help you recall how information is organized and connected.
It’s helpful to attach or associate what you are trying to recall to something already in your memory. Mentally link new material to existing knowledge so tha you are giving this new though some context in your mind.
Three kinds of memory
They are visual, verbal and kinesthetic, each of which can be strong or weak and only the first two of which are associated with your brain. This is, of course, a gross simplification of what we term “memory”. Surveys have found more than a hundred different memory tasks in everyday life that can cause people problems, each of which requires a different strategy! Sorry to break it to you, but just because you’ve learned an easy way to remember a 100-digit number (as discussed in The Memory Book) does not guarantee that you won’t still spend days looking for those darned glasses.
Most people have the easiest time strengthening their visual memories, which is why so many memory techniques involve forming “mental pictures.”
To strengthen our verbal memories, we use rhymes, songs, letter substitutions, and other mnemonic gimmicks.
Finally, don’t underestimate the importance of kinesthetic memory, or what your body remembers. Athletes and dancers certainly don’t have to be convinced that the muscles, joints, and tendons of their bodies seem to have their own memories. Neither does anyone who’s ever remembered a phone number by moving his fingers and “remembering” how it’s dialed.
The next time you have to remember a list, any list, say each item out loud and move some part of your body at the same time. A tap dancer can do the time step and remember her history lecture. A baseball pitcher can associate each movement of his windup with another item of a list he has to memorize. Even random body movements will do.
For example, if you have to memorize a list of countries, just associate each one with a specific movement. For Botswana, say it aloud while lifting your right arm. For Zimbabwe, rotate your neck. Bend a knee for Lesotho, and raise your left hand for Burkina Faso. Kick Malawi in the shins and twirl you hair for Mauritius. Touch your right big toe for Kyrgyztan, your left big toe for Kazakhstan; bend your left pinkie for Tajikistan and your right for Turkmenistan.
When you have to remember this list of countries, just start moving! It may look a little strange – especially if you make your movements a little too exotic or dramatic in the middle of geography class – but if it works for you, who cares?
You can also use this newfound memory as a backup to your brain. You’ll probably find that even if you forget the “mental” tricks you used, your “body memory” will run
(or lift or squat or bend or shake) to the rescue!
Tag, you’re it!
As we said at the beginning of this chapter, we need to establish tags or codes for items we wish to remember so that our minds will have relatively little difficulty retrieving them from long-term memory.
The “chain link” method is one of the methods used for “tagging” items before they enter that morass of memory. It will help you remember items that appear in sequence, whether it’s the association of a date with an event, a scientific term with its meaning, or other facts or objects that are supposed to “go together.”
The basis for the chain-link system is that memory works best when you associate the unfamiliar with the familiar, though sometimes the association may be very odd. But to really make it effective, the odder the better.
For details of memory please refer The Memory Book.
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