Education & Career Trends: March 16, 2023
Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
- Excerpts are taken from an article published on toggl.com
Your brain is affected by memorisation techniques in two ways. You study the material at hand first, and you also get better at remembering things over time. Consider it to be the “Use it or Lose it” principle.
Your memory improves at retaining information when you intentionally take steps to make it simpler. This proves that no one is naturally forgetful. It’s not difficult to learn, and it’s a talent that everyone can pick up.
While choosing memorising strategies, it’s crucial to be aware of how our brains process and store memories.
Information that is lively, engaging, colourful, vibrant, and energetic is preferred by our brains. How to make the information appealing to our brains so that it would be retained? Finding a memory strategy that suits you specifically and creating training objectives are the keys to improving it.
Loci Technique
There are several names for this technique, which is believed to have been created in Ancient Greece some 2.500 years ago. Popularly referred to as “The Memory Palace,” this method has appeared in several films and TV series such as the Sherlock Holmes rendition.
The Loci Method is actually a lot more attainable for the average individual than most people realise. The premise is straightforward.
Try to connect each thing you’re attempting to remember with a particular setting and image. You can utilise the rooms in your home and see the objects scattered around in the spaces that come naturally to you. It doesn’t matter where it is as long as it holds a special significance for you.
This method works well for memorising information that simply has to be recalled and not processed. This indicates that lists, birthdays, names, and faces are among the things that this method is most suited for remembering.
Mnemonics
Making memorable phrases out of words that begin with the same letter as the information you’re attempting to remember is a common mnemonic.
Although most mnemonics might be a little challenging to recall, once you do, they will stay in your memory for a very long time.
According to a 2017 University of Florida research evaluating the efficacy of mnemonics, 71.2% of students said these strategies helped them recall and later comprehend the content more effectively.
The best mnemonics for recalling academic material and retaining it for a longer amount of time have been shown to be musical ones.
Chunking
The chunking strategy focuses on putting things together to make them simpler to recall.
The main component that makes this method effective is grouping items based on semantic encoding, which means that items are organised into groups based on context or pattern.
It might have several meanings depending on who you ask.
Some people may organise their grocery list by food type, while others may do it by letter. Finding the patterns that seem most natural to you and sticking with them can help you adopt the chunking approaches successfully.
Most of us should find it to be a reasonably simple undertaking.
The human experience includes looking for significant patterns in life, and our brains are designed for it.
Storytelling
Stories have all the elements of knowledge that our brains love and retain, such as bright, colourful images and engrossing plots involving living things.
This truth has long been recognised by the advertising business, but you can use this feature of your brain on a personal level to help you remember the things you need to.
You can make your brain follow a story by combining several pictures that contain the information you need to learn and linking them in a particular order.
The specifics of the story don’t matter much. Creating a story with components that attract you is advantageous, just like with the loci technique.
Repetition
Most individuals know that “repetition is vital” but few actually put it into practice.
You may need to repeat simple concepts and phrases up to 30 times before they get firmly ingrained in your mind. More repeats could be necessary for bigger activities like speeches or job presentations.
To prevent errors and hiccups if you forget words or mix up the sequence of your points, try to comprehend the idea of what you are attempting to recall unless you are trying to memorise particular facts or terms.
Mind Maps
Although mind maps are most known for their ability to improve creative thinking, they may also be used to acquire new knowledge or just organise it more logically.
It works great for segmenting lengthy texts or many documents.
Basically, all you need is some paper and a pen. Start by writing down the main concept or topic you’re attempting to recall, preferably in only one or two words.
Continue by drawing short sentences to connect them to the subtopics in the way they’re linked to one another. The further you stray from the core subject, the more specific the subject becomes.
Building Technique
This strategy may be added on top of the ones stated above and can really help you remember much more than just names, dates, and phone numbers.
While being able to recollect data might be useful, nothing compares to having a thorough comprehension of your subject. Yet, this cannot be accomplished by merely recalling the past.
When opposed to information that is just learned, information that is comprehended has a considerably better probability of keeping in your memory. You may both remember things better and apply them in various circumstances after you give the information you are attempting to recall a feeling of comprehension and significance.
The constructing method comes in use most often when you need to recall larger, more intricate ideas or information. This method’s essential component is to connect ideas and facts in order to improve your understanding of them.
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(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
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