Have you ever known someone who seemed to have
a stellar memory and wondered how they did
it? As you are reading this sentence,
there are people living who have such keen memories
that they can recite entire plays,
hundreds of songs and even entire books from memory.
Can you imagine how valuable this
kind of skill would be to you?
If so, you're about to learn a few simple
strategies which you can use to increase
your memory by as much as 300%....
The Nature of Memory
When you hear a number or a name, do you find that it's
easy to forget it very quickly if you don't repeat it to
yourself over and over and over? If so, you're probably
learning that this is not the most efficient price
information. This is because repetition is only one of the
things which causes your mind to remember a piece of
information.
People recall information which is repeated, because
the brain considers it to be more relevant. It's that
simple. Considering this, it ought to be easy to memorize
information quickly if you can just find a quicker way of
letting your mind know that information is relevant.
Three Ways to Make Information Relevant
1. Emotional Context
The first way to make information more relevant is by
providing it with a richer emotional context. If your
mind is a powerful emotional context to associate with a
piece of information, it is more likely to remember it.
How can you put a piece of information into a richer
context?
By simply adding additional sensory stimuli to it:
auditory stimuli, visual stimuli or tactile (feeling and
motion based) still.
For example, if you simply hear the piece of
information, you are only letting the auditory portion of
your brain and thus making a weaker impression. But if
you take the time to write down the information that you
want to remember, and if you look at it and read it out
loud, you'll stimulate the visual and tactile parts of
your brain as well.
This will make you more likely to remember the
information. If you're looking for an example of this,
just think about how much quicker you memorize a phone
number if you dial it a few times instead of simply
listening to it.
TIP: The next time you want to memorize something, sit
down and physically write it out a few times. Then
practice speaking it aloud a few times, with some emotion
in your voice. This will give it a visual, auditory and
hands-on (the practice of writing it) context.
2. Supporting Information
Information is more likely to be considered relevant
by your brain if it is attached to other supporting
information. This is because your mind recognizes the
information has being a part of a larger concept and
therefore more relevant. For example, it's much easier to
remember words if you hear them sung than if you hear
them spoke. This is because the melody and rhythm of the
song provides the lyrics with supporting information.
You can also remember people's names easier if you
also find out things like where they are from or what
they do for a living.
TIP: the next time you memorize a piece of information,
either put it to music or learn some other supporting
information to go with it. For example, the next time you
meet someone, ask them where they're from and memorize
their name as "Mark from Tampa" instead of just "Mark."
3. Take Ownership of Information
The next time you want to remember a piece of
information, sit down and write out a description of why
the information is important to you. This is especially
effective when you learned something from a book, such as
a quote or a concept. For example, if you come across a
quote that you really like, write a paragraph about it or
relate it to another quote that you like. This will help
you to take ownership of the information by developing
your own thought process around it.
TIP: Start keeping a book of important quotes and
concepts that you want to remember, and get into the habit
of reading a few pages out of it every morning.
This post has been edited by Omar Saady: Jun 10 2014, 02:40 AM
