The first difficult thing for any student is how to remember each and everything easily? As a student, we get to learn a lot on a day and day by day the student’s learning grows by leaps and bound. However, in this process of learning, we learn something and forget some that after some time if not revised again and again. Such type of learning will not bear juicy fruits for you in the future. If you want to remember everything, you need to develop some techniques of memorization.
Most of us are unaware of the ancient and logical techniques that boost our remembrance power. These techniques are not difficult to understand but require constant practice. These techniques are practiced continuously so that they can become an inseparable part of our learning. These techniques increase our abilities exceptionally. To start with, I am here to apprising you about some of the basic memory techniques used in high schools. Slowly, we will head towards the advanced techniques.
Let us discuss the first five memory techniques:
1. Memorize with Acronyms:
How do you memorize the colors of the spectrum or rainbow? Is it easy to memorize all the colors of different things by name? Maybe, for some time you will be able to remember them all, but after some months or years, you will forget all. So the best way to memorize a group of words is to take the first letter of each word and then create a new word. Try to make the new word as catchy as possible so that you can remember it for a long. This technique is primarily used in elementary schools.
So if you are learning and memorizing the colors of the rainbow, i.e., Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red. You can use the first character of each color name and remember them as VIBGYOR. I used to remember it like this and still after so many years I remember the colors of the rainbow. Method of solving mathematical expressions was learned as BODMAS (Bracket, Orders, Division, Multiplication, Addition, and Subtraction).
2. Memorize with Rhyme-Keys:
This technique is used if you need to remember some number list in precisely a similar order. Suppose, you need to remember four things in order.
1 -- Soap
2 -- Bread
3 -- Toothbrush
4 -- Pencil
So, how you will remember this for long in the same order, never interchanged? Well, make a rhyme with the help of the words in the sequence.
Soap in the Bag,
Bread and butter,
Toothbrush in the bathroom
And Pencil and Eraser on my study desk
This association of one word with the other in the Rhyme, lets you remember things for a long. This concept can be applied to your studies.
3. Memorize with Acrostic:
This method is similar to memorize with acronyms. However, in this method, each first letter of the word is again turned into a new word to form a funny or cute sentence. One famous example of this is the way teachers explain the method of learning planets in a proper sequence.
Mercury My
Venus Very
Earth Intelligent
Mars Mother
Jupiter Just
Saturn Served
Uranus Us
Neptune Nine
Pluto Pickles
So the sentence formation for the nine planets is ‘My very intelligent mother just served us nine pickles.’ So whenever you remember this sentence, you easily remember all the nine planets in their particular sequence.
4. Memorizing with the method of Loci:
This method uses object and location association to memorize things. This technique uses the visualization power of the student. E.g., you need to remember five objects in a sequence of Notes, Puppy, Milk, Nuts, and Blanket. Now visualize that Notes are in your Computer room, Milk is in your kitchen, Your puppy is eating nuts in the living room, and a Blanket is in your room. This method is useful for those students who have good visualization power. If you remember a map, you can associate the objects with your known countries. This method is not used very widely, but it is good.
5. Memorizing with Detailing:
People who are good at remembering the details of a particular project usually find this technique helpful. It is good for all the students to observe the daily objects very well. If you are good at this, detailing may prove very beneficial to you.
In the detailing process, people associate all the details of any project or subject to the details of an object. E.g., if you want to remember some objects with a cow, you can do so. How? Suppose the projects are a laptop, mouse, fan, blanket, chair, and table. Now you can imagine that the laptop is balanced on the horns of the cow, and a mouse is sitting near her front leg. There is a fan below the stomach of the cow, and her hum is covered with a blanket. A cow is throwing the table away with her back legs, and the chair is tied to the tail of the cow.
After reading this, I am sure that you will be able to tell me what the objects were. These are just the five great techniques that help in super memory management. There are much more like sleeping, handwriting, flashcards, mind map, etc. We will learn about them in detail later. First of all practice these techniques to balance your mind and memory.
Memory management is nothing but just the simple training of the mind to recall any knowledge or information from the memory of the human brain when it is needed the most. You can recall anything that you have seen once, experienced, or known in the past. Everything is encoded in our mind, we just need to recover that information by some mental effort. And this mental effort is a part of the memory management technique.
To manage the memory in the best possible ways, researchers have worked to a greater extent and have found that there are not just but many kinds of memories such as explicit memory, implicit memory, episodic memory, prospective memory, retrospective memory, recognition memory, semantic memory, etc. Here, I am not discussing all of them but discussing how to improve memory recall by using study hacks. Let's start:
20 study hacks to improve your memory:
1. Instead of reading the study material silently, speak it out loud.
2. Make some form of connection or association between all the information and content you are learning.
3. Develop a habit to use highlighters to mark important text and passages. Mark only the most important one. If you want to highlight the less important ones, you can use different colors of highlighters.
4. Make use of flashcards to learn a new definition, formula, or concept.
5. Visualization helps to learn better. So if any concept feels difficult to describe, try to visualize the same with the help of a diagram, graph, bar chart, etc.
6. If possible, try to connect the relationship between the information with the real world.
7. In case you feel demotivated or low, make use of music that has the capability to soothe your soul and elevate your mood.
8. Try to study in groups. Sometimes, one gets new insights and directions when studying in groups.
9. Change your study environment every now and then. This gives the brain a new freshness.
10. Take study breaks. Study in blocks to time, and give yourself a good break in between to absorb all the information and increase focus and concentration.
11. Don't stay all night on the day just before the exams. The brain needs good rest before the exam to work properly during the exams.
12. If you frequently suffer from pre-exam stress, try meditation. This helps to relieve stress and stay focused.
13. Integrate the reward system and please yourself with rewards for the good work you did.
14. Teach whatever you learn to others. If not possible, teach yourself.
15. Try new ways of learning. You can follow the established ways of learning or develop a new way for yourself as per your habits and comfort.
16. Don't use Apps whether social media or others at the time of the study. If you are unable to control your habit, use Apps that block the distracting sites.
17. If you use a notepad or laptop for typing or reading the notes, use Times New Roman font. It has been found that reading with Times New Roman font is easier than any other.
18. Use study apps while you commute. There are many apps available these days that help you to study while you are on the go. Flashcards+, Study Blue, etc. are some of the famous apps.
19. If possible, try to watch videos related to the topic. Visual contents help to learn and understand better and faster.
20. Practice and test yourself. This is the ultimate thing to do. The more you solve the previous year's question papers and take the mock tests, the more you are able to remember and get success in the exams.
How to improve memory for studying:
We have discussed in total 20 hacks that are not only part of memory management techniques but are also the best way to study and memorize. Here, I am discussing in detail the 7 effective ways that help all to improve memory for studying.
1. Use the memory palace technique of learning:
This is a simple way of learning. This technique makes use of associations. Here, each piece of information is associated with the parts of the location. The location must be very familiar to the user. It can be a house, school, garden, or any other place of your choice. The logic behind this is, when every information is made to associate with some physical object to which you are familiar, it helps to retain the information in mind for a long.
2. Use Acronyms:
As I mentioned above also, Acronyms are best to be used when one wants to learn or remember shortlists. I remember to use the word BODMAS that explains the order of operations for solving equations. BODMAS stood for Bracket, Of, Division, Multiplication, Addition, and Subtraction.
3. Practice or repetition:
Reinforcing is a proven way of learning for a long. Spaced repetition i.e. repetition after some definite intervals of time is highly suggested. If you cannot do so after definite intervals of time, at least do it at any time of your choice. Using Flashcards is just an example of this practice.
4. Use the number mnemonics:
This method is used to learn or remember the numbers related to history, physics, mathematics, etc. In this method, each number is related to a definite pre-decided sound. Now, when you get a bigger number, you first make an association of each digit with the sound and then use the association of these sounds to form words from numbers.
For e.g. 22 could be ‘NUN' as the sound of 2 is ‘N'. Do you want to know the sounds of each digit from 1 to 9? The sounds are:
0= z, c, s
1 = d,t
2 = n
3 = m
4 = r
5 = l
6 = ch, j, sh
7 = k
8 = f, v
9 = b, p
5. Sync lifestyle to your study needs:
No method is going to work effectively if your body is not in sync with your mind. Only a well-synced body-mind combination works best to produce effective results during exams. Three things to be kept in mind for remaining healthy are Sleep, Food, and Exercise. You need at least 8 hours of sleep, healthy food that suits your body, and a regular routine exercise that your body needs. These are the indispensable things that you need.
6. Enhance focus:
It has been found that your brain is able to remember anything for long if it is able to pay close attention to any task. So when will you be able to pay close attention? It is when you remove all the distractions from around you. What are distractions? Actually, distractions are some activities or happenings around you that hinder your mind to pay attention to a particular thing.
For some text, notifications are a distraction, while for some others noise is a distraction. The type of distractions varies with people. Whatever you feel that annoys you or make you unable to pay attention to what you are reading or learning must be avoided at all cost.
7. Make a habit to recall before writing anything:
In schools and colleges, we are often instructed to write a few things again and again. Have you ever wondered why it is so? Well, it is because writing things down is said to help to remember it for long.
Here, I want you to make one more addition to it. Rather than just doing mechanical writing, I want you to remember and recall what you have to write and then start the writing.
Why I am instructing to do so because simple mechanical writing stores the information in short-term memory, while recalling what to write helps to transfer the same thing to long-term memory, which is the major aim of all learners.