Improving Your Memory

Like any other muscle, if you want your memory to become better you have to work it out. While weight training and cardio are easier for your other muscles, it's actually not too hard to get the same work out of your memory.

First off, if you are the type to be easily distracted, you have to really sit down and focus on something. It takes about eight seconds for a piece of data to be implanted within your memory, so try focusing on whatever you trying to remember for at least that long. Also, don't multitask if you are attempting to learn. This splits your attention and makes learning one thing impossible, while you only half way learn the other things you are doing.

Use your brain in different ways. How can this be accomplished? Try eating or brushing your teeth with your left hand (or right hand for lefty's). This makes your brain focus on the act, rather then simply following the humdrum autopilot of everyday life and common actions.

Another thing you can do is try doing actions with your eyes closed (nothing dangerous like driving). Showering, typing or writing, anything that you can do to keep yourself focused to build up this muscle.

Other things you can do, for test materials, is instead of cramming, space out your studying. Study one chapter, or one section, and then stop for an hour or two. Keep the information there inside you, so you keep thinking about it, but you're still allowing a fresh passageway for new information to come in. Then study some more. You will find this technique make remembering things for tests, and any other information applicable to this technique, much easier to remember. Not only that, but your overall memory will become better.

There is also the common technique of chunking. Most people can remember about seven piece of data at once (usually applied to numbers). Why do you think most license plates on cars are six or seven digits long? Or why phone numbers are seven digits long?

Instead of seeing them as seven pieces of data, see it as two or three. Take this number sequence: 8325090. It seems easily enough remembered, as it is only seven numbers. However, it will fade quickly from your mind, and it much harder to remember then this sequence: 832-5090. Now we have made it two piece of information rather then seven.

You can use this for other pieces of data too. Imagine someone tells you a lot of things about their day. Usually you can section it off into what happened in the morning, noon, and night. You may also be able to make sub-sections. For the morning, what happened that was rather normal, and what happened that was out of the ordinary? This will help both retaining and recalling skills as you attempt to make your memory stronger.