Tips to make it easier to remember anything

The following heuristic notions that can help with organic memory organisation. If you decide you really want to memorize something, then learn memory techniques, if you want to remember organically then this list might help.


Make it Meaningful
If whatever you are trying to store makes sense to you, then you will find it easier to recall. Organize it in such a way that it makes sense.

Rhyme it to find it
When you convert it into a ryhyme then when you recall you'll have an easier time.

Is it on familiar ground?
If you already know the topic then tie in the new information to stuff you already know.

Repeat it
Whatever you are trying to remember. Repeat it to yourself. Have a gap. Test yourself. Repeat it. Essentially utilizing Ebbinghaus's work.

Information Theory
Information theory informs us about redundant data, so if we identify patterns in the information then we can use the lessons from information theory to help us construct what we tried to remember from minimal data.
Essentially, look for patterns.

Decide you want to remember it
Give yourself a reason to remember it. Make sure you are interested in the thing and in the recalling of the thing. This simple act will help massively.

Associate it with the environment
Remember the tip of the memory strategy where you visualize where you learned something? Well make it easy to use that strategy by associating what you are learning with your current environment.

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Studying Techniques for memory recall

Plenty of techniques exist to help you study quickly, and you can use them to help you recall what you study:

Review the territory
Survey the material. Skip through it all quickly. Read the summaries. Look at the images. Get a feel for the structure.
I imagine that when I do this I'm blocking out space in my brain to put all the information I'm going to learn. I have no idea if the brain works like this, but it gives me a simple model of justification that works for me.

Create Questions
Write down questions about what you think you are going to learn. Check that the material you have studied answered those questions.
This helps you identify 'why' you want to study and remember the information. It also helps you identify what you already know about the topic.

Read it
Yup, you have to read it. I usually read it a number of times. I read it fast. I read it slow. I read it backwards. I read it in chunks.

Make Notes and Review
Having read it, I make notes. Sometimes on a mind map, sometimes as unstructured text, sometimes as a visual adhoc map. Whatever helps me review it.
The notes are really there to help me review. I can review what I've written against what is in my head. I can review my notes against the text to see how complete my understanding of the top is. i.e my notes don't have to contain all the information, but do they trigger the recall of the information from my brain? That is their main purpose.

Repeat
Yes, repeat each of the steps, in various orders, until you are confident with the material.

It's on the tip of my tongue

That moment when you can almost recall something, it's there, you can feel it, you can almost see it, but it won't manifest.

"It's on the tip of my tongue"

People have put forward plenty of theories to explain it, but do we care about theories? No we do not.

Do we care how to avoid it? Well, we avoid it with effective storage strategies such that we can recall it.

Do we know who to trigger access to it, when we didn't store it effectively?

The alphabet strategy:

• Cycle through the letters of the alphabet and see if that triggers it. It might help you narrow down the range of values.

The context strategy:

• You could access the environment where you think you stored it. e.g. if you were told the fact, or name, or whatever is on the tip of your tongue by someone. Then imagine them telling you again. Visualise the place they told you in. Remember some of the background noises. All of that context can help your brain plot a route to the stored information and might recall the information.

And once you have the information?

Re-store it using a variety of meta data to help you retrieve it again. Or use whatever memory technique you normally apply.

Sometimes re-storing it with newly associated meta data can work as an organic memory technique. So if you forgot someones name, but bring it back through the alphabet strategy, then re-store it, but visualising their face, and associating the face with the name. Perhaps shout it loud in your head. Stamp it on their forehead. Make the first letter really big to allow you to use the Alphabet strategy. You decide.

But if you don't do something to re-store it and make new associations that allow you to search and retrieve the information then you will face the same recall difficulties as before.