Memory
Concentration and memory go hand in hand. Remembering things you read and learn, or conclusions you reached, is almost equally as important as the initial act of reading or processing the information. Of course in some cases you can go back and look it up, but it is much more useful if it is readily available in your memory. You will find that there is a lot of overlap in concentration and memory tips because they complement each other.• Have confidence in your memorization capabilities. People have memorized Bibles and Qurans and hundreds of written pages. People have learned over ten languages and become fluent in all of them. The human mind may have a certain capacity for holding information, but it is unlikely you will ever reach it, so memorize all you can, and never imagine that your brain will “run out of space.” It won’t.
• Don’t simply read—-understand what you’re reading, make connections to what you already know. If you see a claim you think is invalid based on your beliefs, figure out why; if you think it’s valid, see how it fits in with your values; if it’s a narrative, visualize and connect to personal experience; if it’s information, see how it fits in with what you already know. This last technique especially helps with things like history or science—when you learn new things, see how they fit in with what you already knew.
• Review and summarize things you read mentally or verbally as you go through. This can do amazing things for your ability to remember things you’ve learned. One technique that helps a lot is explaining what you’ve learned to someone else. Teaching information helps you retain it much more easily.
• Move slowly through less intuitive or more facts-based parts, analyzing it fully, so that you understand whatever you’re learning completely. It’s hard to remember things you didn’t quite understand in the first place.
• Make everything vivid rather than dull in your mind. Notice anything interesting and pay special attention to it; when visualizing, make it memorable. This visualization will remain accessibly in your memory if it is vivid enough.
• Actively read, mark the text, and ask questions. Underlining important sections of a book requires you to have understood and analyzed the reading thoroughly, so you will get more out of it than someone that simply reads it and skims over the important parts.
• Once in a while, take some time to review important things that you don’t want to forget. Languages are a good example—keeping fresh by speaking or reading a language you learned can do a lot. Try to apply things you’ve learned and discuss them or think about them or incorporate them into your writing so that they stay with you.
• If you’ve forgotten something, don’t immediately give up. Instead, try really hard to remember it, whatever it was. Get used to trying to remember things you’ve forgotten; this is a skill in itself. Learning to explore alternative mental routes to find something that you know you learned but simply can’t access is a useful and improvable ability.
• Exercise. Exercise helps keep you alert and stimulated, and it also increases the number of neurons and connections between neurons.
• Sleep. One of the functions of sleep is to store memories, and sleep deprivation destroys your memory for a while. It’s not surprising that you usually don’t remember anything from a lecture if you were nodding off during it, and it’s hard to recall things that happen when you’re extremely sleepy.
• When reading something involved that you need to learn thoroughly, it’s often helpful to outline it, manually or by typing. For example, if studying for an AP test, if you have time it would be useful to outline every main point in the book. This may take about three to four times as long as simply reading the book but it also forces you to fully comprehend everything in order to summarize it in your own words. Also, the outline you make will help a lot when you need quick review.
• Keep records of things you learn. Actively read interesting articles or other writing, and keep them, or at least clips/summaries of them, stored away for future reference.
Remember one final thing always: laziness and lack of willpower is the number one reason for failing to concentrate and retain information. Don’t get lazy.
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