Everyday Memorization Techniques

This memorization technique involves creating associations between items in a list and assigning images to each connection to help you memorize better. 

For instance, your accounting exam is tomorrow and you need to memorize which items fall under the Current Asset section of a balance sheet (Cash, Inventories, Accounts receivable, Prepaid expenses).

This approach is really similar to the Link Method. While you create a bunch of different images between each two items using the Link Method, you combine everything into one big picture with the Story Method. This technique helps you memorize the sequence of the images and hence the order of the items. 

Acronyms, music (very effective) or rhyme, or sentences of words that start with the same letter as the items you are trying to memorize are all mnemonic techniques that help you to remember and retrieve information.

Stories encompass all the qualities of information that makes our brain love and remember it: vivid and colorful picture and engaging plotlines about other beings that are alive.

By creating a narrative that is interesting to and include items you need to memorize, you create a story your brain can follow.

“Whatever problem you’re struggling with is probably addressed in some book somewhere written by someone a lot smarter than you."

- Ryan Holiday

...in terms of reading retention:

• Impression
• Association
• Repetition

Most of us can type very fast, but research shows writing your notes by hand will allow you to learn more.

Taking notes by hand enhances both comprehension and retention.

Studying over a period of time is more effective than waiting until the last minute.

Distributed practice works because each time you try to remember something, the memory becomes harder to forget.

The more information that is available to us, the more we are unable to retain it. Memory means association and most information we consume may be simply buried inside, lurking deep in, and surfacing when the right cue pops up.

Binge-watching or binge-reading serves no useful purpose as we are only holding the content in our working memories. That's why schools space out the chapters and review them, helping us retain the material.

The art and culture we engage our brains in turn into memories which can be unpredictable and fickle.

The books we read, the songs we hear and the movies we watch become interwoven and entangled with everything else in our lives.

When you give yourself a few minutes to rest and think about what you just read,  you're allowing your brain to better connect the new information to what you've already done or understood.

You stand a better chance of the new memories being more powerful and easier to retrieve.

When you can remember information from your content better, you actually can end up saving time. 

You don't have to go back and look up as many facts or ideas, and you can apply the information on the fly better. 

By studying people with amnesia, it seems that short-term and long-term memories don't form in precisely the same way, nor do declarative and procedural memories.

• Emotional responses such as fear occur in a brain region called the amygdala.
• Memories of learned skills are associated with the region called the striatum.
• The hippocampus is essential for forming, retaining, and recalling declarative memories.
• The temporal lobes play a critical role in forming and recalling memories.

Memories are held within groups of neurons called cell assemblies. They fire as a group in response to a specific stimulus, such as recognising your friend's face.

The more neurons fire together, the more the interconnection of the cells strengthen. We experience the nerves' collective activity as a memory.

“Work involving higher mental functions, such as analysis and synthesis, needs to be spaced out to allow new neural connections to solidify. New learning drives out old learning when insufficient time intervenes.”

A recent theory on forgetting states that everything we learn remains in storage inside our memory, but our ability to recall and retrieve that information fades if we do not practice fetching information.

• Meditate to improve working memory. Take a pause to empty your mind and to reduce stress.
• Although still debatable, drink coffee to help improve memory consolidation.
• Eat berries for better long-term memory. Berries contain flavanoids,  which appear to strengthen connections in the brain.
• Exercise not only to improve memory recall, but also to enhance cognitive abilities.
• Chew gum to make stronger memories. It is proven that it increases activity in the hippocampus. It also increases heart rate which causes more blood to flow in the brain.
• Sleep more to consolidate and easily remember memories.

Whenever you find yourself in the difficulty of not remembering somebody's name, try some useful tips such as repeating the name several times, connecting the new name to something you already know or linking it to something else you have just found out about the person. Just bear in mind that associations work wonders.