5 | Practical Tips On How To Remember More
The brain only makes up 2% of one’s body weight but uses up 20% of the body’s oxygen supply.
The brain is thought to be able store about 5 billion books.
It was always thought that the brain degenerates with age, but it seems that it’s actually just a matter of, “use it or lose it.”
What exactly is memory? 🧠
Memory is one’s ability to store and recall bits of information. Until the 20thcentury, the study of memory was within the field of philosophy. It is now a branch within cognitive neuroscience. The topic of memory is undoubtedly super-complex but for what we are trying to get at, its relatively straight forward. As such, ‘memory’ can be broken into three parts as per the multi store model, proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin:
Sensory memory
Short-term memory
Long-term memory
The formation of a ‘solid’ new bit of memory has to go through the three stages. The sensory memory, as the name suggests, relies on the five senses: touch, smell, sight, sound and taste. When you’re exposed to something new, you perceive it via the five senses and the sensory memory stores this for milliseconds, up to a few seconds. This new information is almost lost immediately unless if it is ‘consciously’ perceived and attention is given to it, in which case it moves to the short-term memory.
The short-term memory has a limited storage capacity and can only retain information for up to a few minutes, after which it is forgotten. However, upon repetition, this new information is fed into the long-term memory, where it is still ‘fresh’ and subject to decay over time. To retain this information in the long-term memory, for good, it needs to be retrieved and recalled at increasing intervals.
Channels of Learning 🎓
There are essentially three channels through which we learn:
By seeing – e.g. visual and spatial learner
By listening – e.g. auditory and musical learner
By doing – e.g. verbal, logical, mathematical, kinaesthetic learners
And it is true, some individuals learn best by looking, some by listening and some by doing. However, most of us probably use a multi-learning approach.
Concentration 💡
You want to learn but find yourself struggling to ‘concentrate’, which is unfortunate, because there is a link between centration and memory – if you can’t concentrate, you most probably have a weak memory. So, how on Earth do you improve your concertation? Well, there is an ancient method which seems to work for a lot of people – candle watching! Light up a candle, place it in front of you, on a table, and watch it for 1-2 minutes. Keep your eyes on the flame, observe the colours, the wick, the melting of the wax…do not let your gaze slip, keep it fixated on the candle. Then, close your eyes and retain the image of the candle for as long as you can (ok, not forever, 2 minutes would do). Chances are, you’re probably going to fail after 30 seconds, which is fine, just repeat the process a few times and you are sure to improve your concentration skills. Just try it and see if it works for you.
How to improve your memory 📈
🍲 Food – the medical world is always banging on about the importance of adopting a ‘balanced diet’ and for good reason, a lot of studies have shown that a poor diet hinders one’s ability to concentrate which invariably affects one’s memory to functional optimally. Food is fuel for the brain, so it’s important to make sure you’re eating enough, but also eating the right things. Some types of foods that apparently are good for the brain include:
Essential fatty acids
Omega-3 from fish
Seeds and nuts
Dairy products
Complex carbs
Whole grains and cereals
Potatoes, corn
Micronutrients
Antioxidants – these fight off free radicals which cause disease
fruits and veg
Vitamins and Minerals
Vitamin B, C and E
Mg and Zn
🚴 Exercise – this was obviously going to be on the list. A lot of studies have shown that exercise increases blood supply to the brain which increases mental alertness and simulates the formation of new nerve cells. So, not only does exercise improve your ability to learn, but it also allows you to retain the information for longer. Bonus! So next time you think about skipping exercise, remember…your brain. Also, download and play more ‘brain stimulating games’ like sudoku, crosswords and chess.
🛌 Sleep – there is little doubt that sleep has an impact on concentration and learning. How do you feel when you’ve had little sleep…groggy, tired, agitable and immensely unproductive? Sounds about right. When you are sleep deprived, you are able to learn and remember less. End of. I’ve written more on sleep here.
🚭 Alcohol and Smoking – the health effects of alcohol and smoking on the liver and lungs is well known, but it turns out that it also has a major impact on, you guessed it, the brain! Studies have shown that excessive alcoholism and smoking causes ‘oxidative stress’ and increases the chance of neural damage which ties in with poor brain performance.
😞 Stress – be it at work, school, online, in relationships… is one of the most prevalent burdens of modern life. Stress is a key culprit- there is plenty of evidence that demonstrates how stress can impair cognitive and motor skills. And in more serious cases such as prolonged periods of stress, it can even cause ‘stress-related brain damage’ in the area of the hippocampus, which isn’t ideal as that is where memorises are stored. We need to find ways to minimise stress as much as possible.
I find that when there is clarity in one’s life, stress levels are significantly lower. To keep levels to a minimum, I always break tasks into small chunks and have tick boxes beside them. I make an effort to tick off tasks as soon as they are done. Using tick boxes prepares me mentally for what I need to be doing and ticking them off almost has a dopamine effect. There are obviously many other ways of dealing with stress, so it’s down to you to figure out what works for you. And remember, it’s always worth asking for help.
🤸🏻♂️ Get moving – look around yourself, you see two kinds of people; those who are bursting with energy, passionate about things, displaying curiosity about anything and everything. Then you have the second kind; lazy, demotivated, showing no interest in the world around them and just hanging around waiting for opportunities to present themselves. Do not fall into the second category, lest it becomes your permeant state, because after a while your brain registers this and you begin to feel like you’re not good enough to do anything.
🎨 Visualise – dual coding theory says that humans learn and retain information better when they use visuals. You may struggle to recall the name of a famous street, but chances are, if you’ve been there, you can probably reconstruct its image. So, when learning new things, try to use visuals and diagrams to create stronger neural links and retain the information for longer.
👩 👑 Associate and Group – associating newly learnt information with what you already know will make it easier to recall the information. Say you’re facing an interview panel, five peering eyes staring at you, they give their names: Zara, Adam, Andrew, Graham and Elizabeth. You could create quick mental association; Zara = shopping at Zara, Andrew = a woman drawing, Graham = a grey piece of ham and Elizabeth = queen. This method takes some time to perfect but it a fantastic way to memorise and retrieve.
Ⓜ️ Mnemonics – no need to explain how it works, I’ll just give some examples instead.
RHYTHM = Rhythm helps your two hips move.
ARITHMETIC: A rat in the house may eat the ice cream.
You can obviously use it to memorise longer lists, like the orders of taxonomy:
domain – dangerous
kingdom – kids
phylum – prefer
class – cabbage
order – over
family – fresh
genus – guava
species – soup
So, there you have it, improving your memory and concentration isn’t particularly difficult, it just requires some willpower and consistency. To get started, work on your diet and get some exercise in, then with experiment different memory techniques.
🚀 Keep learning,
Enes.