Find Yourself Discovering New Proven Ways to Enhance Learning.
To remember what you study, you may apply the ways of revision, sketching, talking out loud to yourself, taking breaks, having a study partner, and other known ways proven to enhance learning. The more a human practices, the easier and more natural it is to unlock the memory needed. Most importantly, test and see what works for you.
Suppose trying to remember tons of new data again and again, and you quit in defeat with a deficit of remarkable academic accomplishments. In that case, it is time to act to be able to produce the desired outcome. Where to start? Detecting all the factors that slow down your progress and hamper your success is necessary. These factors can become serious studying barriers that must be wisely addressed. Constant overwork, lack of fresh impressions, and boredom while studying lead to the inactivity of brain cells. Breaks or environmental changes are pivotal for re-boosting your cognitive speed and enlivening your learning mode. Let's unpack other memory recommendations.
Sometimes, it is a range of lifestyle issues, habits, and behavioral patterns that must be corrected to restore your memorization power. So, you can add a 15-minute nap during the daytime to relieve mental and emotional tension, explore foods that improve memory and concentration and re-fuel energy, or try to study in several locations, as the new surroundings are proven to be stimulating. With such tricks, you will be able to handle the onslaught of information during studying sessions. Though suppose you are among learners who constantly seek efficient suggestions on how to remember what you study and easily absorb complex concepts. In that case, the next tips will assist in confronting all studying challenges, fighting distractions, and re-structuring obtained knowledge.
Having a chaotic and disorganized mind when studying won't manifest the desired academic outcome. Poorly structured thoughts may prevent your brain from generating the expected output. So your understanding is low while memory storage is empty even after hours of cramming. Multiple attempts to encode exam answers will fail because it is difficult for your cognitive system to put thoughts, ideas, and concepts in working order. It means they cannot be accessed later and retrieved whenever you need them. However, by giving yourself some time to order thoughts, you will be capable of prioritizing important objectives, embracing complexities as something you can easily handle, and facing academic difficulties with a cool head and no stress.
Studying, writing scientific research, or exam preparation can be tiresome and tedious academic routines. If re-creating definitions you learned yesterday is a difficult undertaking, then it's time to understand how to remember something you forgot. One of the reasons for unwanted lapses might be mind overload. Mental burdens and exhaustion may stem from an array of sources, but mainly, it is evoked by intensive studying and active intellectual work. So keep in mind that making links between the incoming data and connecting the newly gained facts with prior knowledge to shape something totally new will be much easier if you will take a pause.
Any kind of knowledge and skill can be strongly consolidated thanks to an adequate amount of breaks and well-designed rest sessions. Working beyond your mental capacity or strength and failing to value rest will result in confusingly formulated memories. It means that most of the pivotal details will be slipping away from your mind, and recalling them with accuracy will be almost impossible. So a good way to study is to organize your learning routine, incorporating breaks required for freshly acquired information synthesis. Remember that only some encoding processes should be conscious. Sometimes, it is just needed to rely on the existing mechanisms that are naturally programmed to operate flawlessly.
Lots of reasons stand behind your tiredness. Feeling mentally unfocused, try to concentrate on something else. In other words, when you are fatigued, you should limit screen time, put social media aside, and, most importantly, try to free your mind space from the subject you are currently studying by shifting focus. It is assumed that switching attention will promote mental freshness. You can change your attention to a random thing, or such shifts can be planned, so you can just read a book or do your favorite hobby. You can also be engaged in some brain practices, such as creating a Sherlock mind palace or discovering new topics that are not related to your subject. The main idea with switching the attention is to percolate, synthesize, re-structure, and consolidate the information you are grasping by giving the brain an intentional mental re-focus.
It doesn't matter if you are good at sketching or not. But this is how you can occupy your mind with some new activity and give your memory time to reorganize gained information. Moreover, such activities as sketching stimulate the generation of dopamine and endorphins imperative for a good mood, motivation, and hassle-free studying. So always find time to respite during a dynamic study period with the right activity that will grow IQ apart from pleasant emotions.
Verbalizing, especially information read out loud, is a good study tactic to comprehend and decipher the material. A simple algorithm means more senses mean stronger memory, so launching hearing and speaking will bring better encoding! Sometimes when even having difficulty with something you’ve always wanted to understand, try to talk it out.
Revising seems time-consuming and boring. However, those who re-examine what was learned can protect themselves against failure. Moreover, while revising, you can determine pieces of information that are more uncomfortable for you to memorize and transform them, e.g., you can make ridiculous associations. Thus, imagine you need to remember a complex word that is hard for you to encode. For example, there is a need to know all brain chemicals. And if endorphin is a common hormone that everyone knows about, then remembering oxytocin is more complex. If this word escapes from your memory, you can associate it with something uncommon and even odd but, at the same time, familiar to you, e.g., with your cat or favorite dish. And every time you think of a pet or pasta, this word will pop up in your memory.
Personalize the material you learn. The most flexible and fun way to do that is to create your own game that is convenient for your brain. This is one of the proven memorization tips for studying, as many scientists claim that the human brain remembers more through the game. Moreover, tasking your mind with designing the gamified method for grasping material in your own style makes you extremely clever, wise, and astute.
Composing articles or scientific paragraphs and generating a personal view on the topic you are studying. It is advised to move from a general observation to some concrete facts and details that support these observations in order to have greater structuring.
Repeating definitions or theses aloud is just as useful as reading loudly. However, this approach will not work for some. Integrate it into your overall strategy but monitor the progress it delivers. Unless you're a silent reader, the reciting strategy might be your best way to study. Reasoning, thinking, and saying something aloud force you to remember things more deeply, as stating information out loud activates extra neural pathways.
Just imagine you’ve learned some astronomy topics about black holes, how a star is born, or the formation of planets and the evolution of our Solar System. You find it exciting and spend several hours delving into the topic. You feel satisfied with already gained knowledge and it seems like it will be kept in your mind forever. But unfortunately, keeping this sort of data long enough is not a natural talent and requires some extra effort. After studying the next topic, there is a risk that the previous one may be erased or remain in memory partially. This happens because your brain system tends to encode information selectively. And this process is totally natural. However, if the cognitive system is so shaped by nature, this does not mean that a person cannot take control of such processes.
Trying to remember some topic for years to come without forgetting, rehearsal is the key. And is there a better mechanism for repetition than teaching others? Probably not. So learning new facts about celestial objects or space, try to explain this to someone else. Share your knowledge with others to encode them more efficiently. Recency is another factor for strong memorization. So don't stop at one lecture. Make progress with your teaching. Present common information in an atypical manner. Think about how to make your story exhilarating. Remember about emotional aspects, as this is what makes our perception more intensive and stimulates the brain. Emotions help us label new information, concepts, facts, or events as fearful and frightening or vice versa as pleasing, edifying, and rewarding.
By occupying your cognitive system with out-of-the-ordinary activities, such as a mnemonic device, you will outperform your previous mental achievements. Most techniques are multisensory and diverse-thinking. For example, a mind map is a visualization aid that activates your full-dimensional perception.
Persistent tiredness, lack of mental stimulation, and poor studying strategies are recognized reasons for inaccurate memorization. Recovering is one of the ways to bring back mind power, so rest before getting back to work.
Even if our brains are similar biologically, the memorization techniques should still vary, as someone is good at developing associative links while others need longer breaks. The solution is to find your perfect learning formula.
The general fact is that the more rehearsals, the better the encoding. But in most cases, there should be at least three sets of repetitions of the same material.
Our mission is to make having excellent memorization skills the new norm
"Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going."
