How to Remember Something: Put a Chainsaw to It!
Table of Contents
In order to remember something important, information needs to encode on a deeper level. Give the brain a hint that the action is essential, and memory will encode with a higher success rate. Above all, pay attention to what needs to be remembered. Create a vivid story where, at least for a brief moment, you can imagine an interaction of components, making sure to give the mind a fair chance to encode and store needed information into the long-term memory.
How to Remember Things Better the Way We Were Taught in School
There are conventional ways that we as humans are taught to encode, store, and recall information. Essentially this is the process of memorization, and we have been taught small tricks along the way, perhaps in school or in self-taught ways. Spaced repetition, chunking to remember, and remembering numbers with the major system are examples of ways to remember things.
Spaced repetition’s perfect example is with the use of flashcards. Individuals have an appropriate time to repeat information to themselves to encode it. This technique will require a person per se to study one hour, then study again in three hours for an hour, and then again in six hours. These intervals may be adjusted as pleased. While doing so, it is also possible to use chunking to memorize information. This is the process of taking small pieces of information and forming a large unit of information which is formed by some common link. For example, on a grocery list, all vegetables may be grouped as well as all the items that need to be stored in the fridge. Lastly, there is the major system to remember numbers. This type of phonetic system allows one to remember numbers by converting them into consonant sounds and then into words by adding vowels. These examples will serve as a great segway for those who would like to explore the possible ways to increase their memorization skills. Also, it is important to understand that taking mental pictures with your brain will not last in your memory for longer than a few days. The common misconception within memorization techniques is that eidetic memory is real.
How To Remember Things To Change Your Bad Habits For The Better
This zone of understanding memory encompasses many behavioral traits of an individual and their ability to live a healthy lifestyle. This healthy lifestyle will lead to an increase in memory capabilities. Learning mnemonic techniques, having lifestyle changes, and most importantly, being aware of what helps your particular case when it comes to memorization.
Once the journey to a better memory begins, that will be the beginning of change within remembering to introduce yourself more and more to daily positive things. Taking care of your health is most important and becoming into a constant state of calmness. From within this space, one can retain much more information, stay in focus, and rely on their memory. Traveling and hearing new languages boosts brain functioning, and all neuro connections begin to grow again. Therefore, the brain is trying to fathom what is being said and is on constant alert. Keep feeding it with water and nutritious food, and your ability to retain everything around will come with ease.
Essentially paying more attention to your attention and guiding yourself to the best way to remember things. Find yourself fighting memory loss at various stages in your life when you begin to see how your brain perceives information on various levels.
Ponder a Bit Closer
Isn’t it strange that it can sometimes be so hard with the idea of remembering something? We have these remarkable brains made up of billions of neurons that can complete complicated tasks like moving all the body’s muscles in unison to get up of the bed with no effort at all. Yet we way too often come home from the grocery store without the bread, walk into another room and forget why, or forget names and fail exams. What’s up with that?
Well, it all has its explanations, and when you know about these, you can use them to your advantage. There might not be a single best way to remember things, especially when it comes to striving in recollections on how to remember where you lost something. Initially, understanding why we forget things is the best way of finding out how to remember them in the first place.
Probably the most common reason for forgetting something is that you never really applied various ways to remember things in the first place. You might have thought about it, but that doesn’t mean that you committed it to memory. You might think then how to remember where you put something you lost. Seems like impossible wordplay. The reason for this is the handy little mechanism known as the working memory. Think of this as your memory’s head-up display. Whatever you have on your display is what you can currently work with. Of course, this is limited to just a handful of things, which means that if you try to think of too many pieces of information at once, some of them will actually “fall out” of your working memory frame.
So when, for example, you are going to the kitchen to see if there is any soy milk left and find yourself opening the door to the fridge and having no idea about what you were going to do, it is very natural. You probably started thinking about what to watch on tv this evening when you passed the living room, and this was enough to push your soy milk thought straight out of the frame.
But not all the thoughts entering the working memory are so short-lived. For a few lucky ones, the golden gate leading further to the long-term memory suddenly opens. If they manage to take the leap from short-term memory, they can be sure to stay for at least a big while longer. However, for the brain to decide to let something enter its long-term memory, it has to be important. So if you want this to happen, YOU have to give your brain a hint about the best way to remember things.
A typical example of when you don’t do this:
YOU: *I am arriving home and really have to go to the toilet, so I quickly remove my jacket and put my keys on the kitchen table on my way there.*
YOUR BRAIN: *Important right now: Have to pee. Not important: Where I put my keys.*
You likely didn’t even think about where you put your keys but did it mainly on reflex. This means that the thought of the keys on your kitchen table might not even have entered your WORKING MEMORY. Then it, of course, had no chance whatsoever of reaching the hall-of-fame of the long-term memory, a spot where it’s easier to remember these things for future reference.
Here is the best way to remember such things:
YOU: *I am arriving home and really have to go to the toilet, but first I put my keys on the table where I can find them later. It is said to give bad luck, but I don’t care about it now because I really have to pee.*
YOUR BRAIN: *Aha, this key thing seems to be quite a big deal, welcome to the long-term memory! I still have to pee though.* Now it will be easy to remember where the keys were left; you placed them there intentionally!
So when you panic and think on how to remember where you put something you lost, like your keys, check around, maybe this time, you made plans ahead!
So the first key here is paying attention to what you want to remember.
The second thing is to connect the thought to something else.
If you think of your memories as a huge web of interconnected bits and pieces, it makes sense that to extend this web, you have to connect the new information to threads already in it. Creating those crucial ways to remember things.
That’s why it helps thinking about the superstition idea of keys on the table. It creates a further connection between something already in your long-term memory and the new knowledge of where your keys are currently located.
If you want to be absolutely sure of remembering where you put your keys (and approach the realms of the memory masters), you should aim for making not only one but several connections between the new memory and those you already have in your head. So that instead of just hanging onto a loose thread at the end of the big web, the info is heavily entangled in it. Process of how to remember where you lost something simply becomes stuck in the traceable web of ideas. Can clearly see it stuck in that web, look again!
Since there aren’t that many great connections between a pair of keys and a kitchen table, you can simply make up one. This alone unravels into what is a mnemonic device! Technique to remember things, here, let’s say that you briefly imagine that your key becomes huge and rattles and spins like a chain-saw and that you use this chain-saw key to cut your table in halves. Then you suddenly have created a ton of associations between your keys and your table: The vision of the key shredding the table surface; The hereafter hostile relationship between the keys and the table; The magnitude of your mighty keys in contrast to the kitchen lamp, etc.
And what’s more, these associations are unusually strong thanks to the unusualness of the whole event. Of course, it didn’t actually happen, but so what? It happened in your mind, and to your brain, that is almost the same thing. So it will register this memory as something very important to keep in the long-term memory. (So that you don’t go around accidentally sawing other people’s tables apart as well!)
This may at first sound like a crazy and complicated way of remembering something very simple. Still, after some practice, it becomes second nature, and it will save you many frustrating hours of searching the whole apartment for keys. Above all, it forces you to pay attention to what you want to remember. To create such a story, you have to, at least for a brief moment, really think about the components of it, and that makes sure to give you a fair chance of remembering them later.
FAQ
What is it called to remember something?
The ability to encode, store, and recall information by any means possible is the ability to remember something with the process of natural memorization.
What happens when you remember something?
The ability to remember something entails recalling the information stored multiple times in different scenarios. It is then easy to rely on the information; this boosts confidence, a key ingredient in memorization.
Is it possible to remember things well in old age?
Naturally, our bodies will change their form, and with that, many other changes happen, especially around memory. It is important to include mental exercises into one’s daily life in order to have better memory at an elderly age.
Positivity promotes memory improvements best!