How To Remember Things
- Jimbo reads a book on marketing.
- "I'm now a marketing superstar!" he tells himself.
- But, he reverts back to his old strategies of MARKETING SUCK as he never sufficiently conceptualizes what he learned from the marketing book.
How Do You Remember Stuff Better?
A study by two researchers from UCSD (Carrier + Pashler) compared the recall rates between two groups when shown two words:
- The control group saw both words for 10 seconds on a screen.
- The test group saw the first word for the first 5 seconds, while asked to simultaneously test themselves to recall the second word, and then seeing both words on the screen for the next 5 seconds.
Result?
The latter group that tested themselves overwhelmingly clobbered the first group in remembering the two words over the long-term.
Learning something?
Peeps want to be on the move and keep learning new things instead of going back to some material they just learned because they think that wastes their time when "I COULD BE LEARNING SOMETHING NEW RIGHT NOW!"
So, they rarely test themselves on new material, and rarely recall that information day/months/years later.
The learning-new-stuff then becomes trivial, as the peeps repeatedly go back to learning X when they could've just done it once, test themselves, and imprint the $&@#%* info into their memories for the long-term.
BOOOOOOOO
- You read a book.
- You give yourself a mini-test on the book.
- You'll recall much more from the book much later.
Testing?
Testing yourself on X can include:
- Giving a little speech about X.
- Incorporate X into your life right now.
- Teaching somebody about X.
- Writing a short summary about X.
- Waiting a few hours to see if you can summarize X.
- Etc. Etc. Etc.
Long-term memory WIN.
HIFIVE
Test yourself.
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Posted February 02 in Starting It, Management, Life |
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on "How To Remember Things"newworldorder (Rank: #40)
Spending time connecting the new material to ideas already in long-term memory is decent strategy. Simply ask yourself, "What is this related to?" Then come up with answers. The more answers you can come up with the better. You can do this in your head. Or you can do this on paper. The latter is probably more effective.
tim (Rank: #69)
Testing yourself looks overkill sometimes, especially when you tired of tests that all those schools, colleges, universities require to pass. But seems it's true that there is no long-term memory and knowledge without (self)testing. Thanks.
Tim.
http://gtd-tools.com
newworldorder (Rank: #40)
@tim, instead of thinking of it as taking a test, think of it from the perspective having to teach the material. And imagine further that you have a bunch of inquisitive students you have to teach. You'll find yourself saying things to yourself out loud. One study suggests that saying what you're trying to learn out loud activates different parts of your brain. Moreover, people who used this strategy learned the material more *quickly* AND were able to apply what they learned to more varied situations effectively.
chadwick (Rank: #259)