5 Memory Skills That Can Make You Smarter
5 Memory Skills That Can Make You Smarter
Getting smarter often helps us get ahead in life;
whether it is mastering skills at work or at home or just being able to tackle
your day-to-day agenda better. That's why having a few key and easy to use
memory techniques at hand come in handy as they play an important role in
making us smarter, helping us perform tasks more efficiently and
effectively.
Here are some techniques that can boost your memory and your
productivity on a daily basis:
Trying to recall an idea or information from the
past strengthens the neural pathways associated with that concept, making it
easier to recall information from the past in the future. Using flash cards to
recall a memory is not just great for students, but for anyone who wants to
better their memory. "The more you can explain about the way your new
learning relates to prior knowledge, the stronger your grasp of the new
learning will be, and the more connections you create that will help you
remember it later" explain Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel,
the authors of 'Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning'.
It's best to try and understand a subject from
multiple angles, as using various examples to understand a subject helps better
your memory skills of memorizing as well as retaining. For instance in cricket
batsmen face a variety of deliveries, from spin to pace, to increase their
batting average in real time. "By wading into the unknown first and
puzzling through it, you are far more likely to learn and remember the solution
than if somebody first sat down to teach it to you", state the
authors.
Evaluation can be the key to making smarter
decisions and improving productivity. Taking a few moments to reflect on what
happened can go a long way in helping you make better decisions. Researchers
from the Harvard Business School noted that reflective writing can be powerful
tool. Asking yourself questions, like what went wrong or well? What were your
shortcomings? What can you improve? Can you recall something from this? Just 15
minutes of reflection increased people's performance by 23 percent.
Sometimes using identifying certain thoughts or
memories with images using images can be a useful hack to add to your spectrum
of understanding, helping you understand quickly and clearly, while making you
smarter. "Mnemonics are not tools for learning per se", the authors
write, "but for creating mental structures that make it easier to retrieve
what you have learned".
Receiving feedback that reveals to you where you
might be wrong misinformed or not thinking clearly is also called the process
of calibration. According to the authors, "Calibration is simply the act
of using an objective instrument to clear away illusions and adjust your
judgment to better reflect reality." This process is necessary for us to
break away from the 'cognitive illusion' that engulfs us, to think more clearly
and to better understand something we haven't really.
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