- How to Improve Your Memory - (http://www.helpguide.org/articles/memory/how-to-improve-your-memory.htm )
How to Memorize Things?
Good memory is a sign of optimum brain health. Some tend to have memory lapses as they age; others begin to forget details due to factors that are not age-related. But we can do a lot to ensure a good memory at every age and also utilize tips and tricks to effectively retain information. There are many good ways to memorize things and to help us remember details well.
Consider these Lifestyle Factors that affect Memory and Brain Functions
Diet: The food you eat affects not only your physical health but your mental health as well. What you eat and what you don’t can make a huge difference to your memory. Your diet for good memory should include lots of vegetables, fruits, and healthy fats.
- Eat more fruits like bananas, watermelons, apricots, and cantaloupe for good memory.
- Also, eat plenty of leafy greens such as kale, spinach, and other vegetables like broccoli and winter squash.
- The brain needs a good dose of omega-3s for proper functioning. You can get this fatty acid from fish, such as mackerel, tuna, sardines, and salmon. You can also get omega-3s from walnuts, flaxseeds, beans, pumpkin seeds and so on.
- Polyphenols in green tea can protect brain cells from free radical damage and also improve memory and alertness.
- Eat more of complex carbohydrates found in whole grain, lentils and beans.
- Limit your intake of processed foods and also of saturated fats found in red meat, butter, cream, whole milk and so on./li>
Exercise: Physical workout helps memory by increasing the oxygen supply to the brain cells. This can protect the brain from diseases that can weaken memory.
Sleep: Lack of sleep often leads to weak memory. If you have wondered how to remember things faster, then you can do better with adequate sleep.
Stress Levels: A stressful lifestyle is a huge factor that affects memory. To strengthen your memory you can lower the stress in your life. The following steps may help:
- Participating in fun activities
- Spending quality time with your loved ones
- Taking long nature walks
- Laughing often
- Playing a sport
- Indulging in activities that interest you
- Reading more
- Taking frequent breaks
Exercise Your Brain
Your brain processes information through neural pathways. These help the brain function with ease as over time the information gets familiar. Therefore, if you exercise your brain, then you help the brain work a little harder and work those grey cells. Some ways you can give your brain a workout are by:
- Attempting new things
- Taking up a challenging activity
- Trying new routes while walking and driving
- Seeing new things
- Visiting new places
- Reading new things
- Solving puzzles
- Learning new skills
Try these Simple Tips and Tricks
You can try many useful tricks to memorize things better. You can train your brain to retain new information in a better way through simple methods.
- Mnemonic devices are great tools to memorize things in quick and easy ways. These are nothing but clues that help to remember things and information.
- Visual clues can be described as a strategy, where you project an image to go with the new detail so that you retain the information better. Colors, bold visuals, and 3-D patterns are all great ideas for visual clues.
- Creating new acronyms to remember big names or as a study technique for memorization, such as names of places, state capitals, rivers, the top five mountain ranges in the world among others.
- Chunking is when you break down information into easy-to-remember smaller bits. Basically, these clues can be anything that can help you retain information better.
- Your level of attention on something can determine if you are going to remember it later or not. If you want to memorize something important, then focus on the details with pure concentration for a few seconds for better recall.
- Repeating information immediately after your brain processes it, is a great way to memorize things easily.
- Making your own story about something can also help you retain information well.
Utilize these Effective Study Techniques:
Your tests are a few days away and you need to memorize and retain your lessons well.
- Some study techniques for memorization can be mnemonic devices, visual clues, and making stories, as mentioned above. These can be very handy tools to memorize school lessons.
- Understanding concepts behind solutions help retain details really well.
- Reading out loud can help you concentrate more on the words and later recall the lessons easily.
- Writing the solutions or anything that you want to memorize quickly is definitely an excellent way to learn and retain new information.
- Summarizing a complex lesson into small paragraphs is a good study technique for memorization.
More Tips:
- Keep your lessons/study materials/presentations/anything else you need to memorize organized. Clutter won’t help your case when you are trying to recall names, and all you see in your mind is a disorganized desk and papers scattered everywhere.
- Take your time. You don’t help your memory when you hurry along the memorization process. A few seconds of full concentration is all you need to memorize something quickly. It pays to utilize it.
- Find your own method to retain information. It can be anything that works for you - use of colors, music, funny images, jokes, slangs, anything.