Strategies for remembering

STRATEGIES FOR REMEMBERING

1. Become interested in what you're learning. We're all better remembering what interests us. Few people, for example, have a difficult time remembering the names of people they find attractive. If you're not intrinsically interested in what you're learning or trying to remember, you must find a way to become so.

2. Find a way to leverage your visual memory. You'll be astounded by how much more this will enable you to remember. For example, imagine you're at a party and are introduced to five people in quick succession. How can you quickly memorize their names? Pick out a single defining visual characteristic of each person and connect it to a visual representation of their name, preferably through an action of some kind.

3. Create a mental memory tree. If you're trying to memorize a large number of facts, find a way to relate them in your mind visually with a memory tree. Construct big branches first, then leaves. Branches and leaves should carry labels that are personally meaningful to you in some way, and the organization of the facts ("leaves") should be logical.

4. Associate what you're trying to learn with what you already know. It seems the more mental connections we have to a piece of information, the more successful we'll be in remembering it. This is why using mnemonics actually improves recall.

5. Write out items to be memorized over and over and over. Writing out facts in lists improves recall if you make yourself learn the lists actively instead of passively. In other words, don't just copy the list of facts you're trying to learn but actively recall each item you wish to learn and then write it down again and again and again. In doing this, you are, in effect, teaching yourself what you're trying to learn (and as all teachers know, the best way to ensure you know something is to have to teach it). This method has the added benefit of immediately showing you exactly which facts haven't made it into your long-term memory so you can focus more attention on learning them rather than wasting time reinforcing facts you already know.

6. When reading for retention, summarize each paragraph in the margin. This requires you to think about what you're reading, recycle it, and teach it to yourself again. Even take the concepts you're learning and reason forward with them; apply them to imagined novel situations, which creates more neural connections to reinforce the memory.

7. Do most of your studying in the afternoon. Though you may identify yourself as a "morning person" or "evening person" at least one study suggests your ability to memorize isn't influenced as much by what time of day you perceive yourself to be most alert but by the time of day you actually study---afternoon appearing to be the best.

8. Get adequate sleep to consolidate and retain memories. Not just at night after you've studied but the day before you study as well. Far better to do this than stay up cramming all night for an exam.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Remember-Things&id=2445684