8 Secrets For Memorizing Things Easily

If you belong to that category of people who simply are not able to remember details, ask questions all the time so they can follow up, and cannot remember important dates, names of people they’ve just met or details in films and books, you need to know that there is a chance to get better.

It all begun in 1870s with the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, when he begun to be interested in human memory and made a decision to organize experiments so he could study it.

He made lists of words that does not make any sense and used them to estimate pure learning, also known as the learning of free meaning.
Using his findings, he invented the “Forgetting Curve” or the speed we forget new information. He discovered that he has forgotten significantly great quantity of the nonsense information in just 20 minutes of time. Within an hour, he has forgotten more than a half of the material.

After 24 hours he has forgotten 2/3 of the previously learned material, and the rest of the information remained in his memory. According to this, if some information stays for a day, it remains memorized forever. He also offered another theory called “The Spacing Effect”, which explains that we learn better and easier when we study the information several times, separated over an extended period.

For example, if you study something a week before the exam over and over again, you will learn better, as opposed to learning all the material the night before the exam. However, this applies to the information you want to learn and keep in your memory for a longer period of time.

Here we offer more detailed explanation on the Spaced Repetition Technique:

Storing the information in short-term memory:

  • First repeat the information right after learning
  • The second repetition should be after 15 to 20 minutes
  • The third repetition after 6 to 8 hours
  • The forth repetition after one day (24 hours)

Storing the information in the long-term memory:

  • First repeat the information right after learning
  • The second repetition should be after  20 to 30 minutes
  • Third repetition after one day (24 hours)
  • Forth repetition after 2 to 3 weeks
  • Fifth repetition after 2 to 3 months

However, if you still have a problem with remembering the birthday of your dearest ones and you are not able to go shopping without your grocery list, read the following tips which you might find helpful:

  1. You need to understand immediately the material you’re learning. In that way you would be able to easily recall the information you need.
  2. Set priorities and try to remember only the most important things first.
  3. According to the serial positioning effect, things learned at the beginning or at the end are much more easily memorized.
  4. When it comes to learning a vocabulary from a foreign language, the advice is to connect the new words with words you already know.
  5. Speaking of learning new vocabulary, another tip is to learn the opposites. This is because the brain remembers opposites easier.
  6. When you learn something, use body language and try to visualize more.
  7. According to the interference theory, memories which are very alike can be easily mixed together. So, while you are trying to remember things, switch the topics.

All you need to do is remember these tips and you will be able to remember anything else in the future!