Does this also happen to you again and again, that you want to recall a piece of information from your memory, and … nothing is found in the memory? You know that there was something there once, but like in an untidy room, the item you are looking for just can’t be found? Your eyes glide over the shelves in the supermarket, not because you are looking for something specific, but because you know: There was something I wanted to buy, wasn’t there? If these things often cause you grief, it doesn’t have to be a serious brain disease that is haunting you: Perhaps you simply lack the right handling, the right exercise with your memory.
The brain needs exercise
Proper handling of the cluster of nerve cells in our head is just as necessary as a little practice in “programming in” information. “From brain owner to brain user” is the witty subtitle of Vera F. Birkenbihl, head of the Institute for Brain-Friendly Work, one of her standard works against memory loss. She, like many other authors of “instruction manuals for the human brain”, tries to make the reader like the skillful linking of information into her memory network and to make him understand that he himself is the main person responsible for the quality of his memory.
Input – Output
So what is it about this phenomenon that causes so many things to disappear from our memory (often without a trace) on a daily basis? On the one hand, it is a completely normal process, because not all information runs through the stations “ultra-short-term memory” – “short-term memory” all the way to the “long-term memory”, a large part is sorted out on the way. And not without reason, because in fact a large part of the information we encounter every day is not intended (needed) for eternity. Thus, “filtering” sensory impressions and information allows us humans to let the unimportant stuff rush through the sieve, while the important stuff (should) get stuck in the information network.
How do our “gray cells” work?
Do you have the feeling of often standing powerlessly by while an important piece of information passes through your sieves and disappears into the eternal hunting grounds of memorylessness, even though you wanted to keep it? To avoid this, you need to familiarize yourself a bit with how the brain works and get into the habit of a new way of “storing”. So you complain (to your brain) about poor memory? If you let your brain speak to that, it would probably complain that you are serving it the information packaged incorrectly! “Operator error” would be the error message that would mostly appear when programming data into the “neck-top”. And herewith we are at the central problem of the people who complain about their bad memory: Instead of complaining about the bad “retrieving” of information from their head, they should rather complain about the bad “storing” of their information. Because the quality of memorization determines the ease of retrieval. And to promote and improve precisely this memorization quality, many books provide tips and hints.
Want to take a little test?
Take ten terms and try to memorize them within one minute. Then go about your normal occupation for five to ten minutes and then try to write down the list completely. Here is the list:
- Smartphone
- Pine cone
- Door frame
- Jello
- Polaroid photo
- Glue stick
- Name tag
- Second hand
- Table leg
- Cat scratching post
And, did it work out? In case of doubt, quite well, because after all, you were also highly motivated and made a real effort. What you often do not in everyday life. And what would a memory artist have done with this list other than you, that he could have memorized it so much better (faster, easier)? Here, different ways can lead to the goal. For example, while reading the terms, he could have constructed a story around them. Because a story is remembered much better than naked terms. Too exhausting? Then try to imagine breaking each of the items mentioned. The best way to do this is to take the one you learned first and use it to demolish the next one.
Creativity has no limits
Let your imagination run wild. Would you like to try list learning again in one way or another? Then here’s another list:
- Nail polish
- Coffee cup
- Flat screen
- Window handle
- Corkscrew
- Cheese grater
- Cardboard box
- Ballpoint pen
- Glass eye
- Telephone receiver
The principle of “memory art” – which is nothing more than correct brain application – is that, in addition to attentive attention to what is to be “learned”, the subject matter is “woven” into the memory. If we are dealing with such lists as the one above, it is important to link them together as well, so that one item on the list leads to the next, and thus one can “rattle them off” one after the other. And it is important to use not only our usually well-developed left brain, which is responsible for logical, linguistic thinking, but also our usually atrophied right brain, which is responsible for pictorial recognition, for smells, optical impressions and the imagination. Through this, the impression of the initially bare, abstract concept is stored more strongly in the memory. You have forgotten the pine cone in the first list above? Did you only focus on the word “pine cone” or did you really have it mentally in mind? Did you feel it prickling in your hand? Did you notice the resinous smell? Heard the rustling in the forest? Remembered collecting cones as a child? If so, you might not have “mentally dropped” it so easily.
Numbers and abstract concepts
All of this still works quite easily with terms that describe concrete objects. It is more difficult when terms for abstract things, such as the word “justice,” come up. And at the pinnacle of abstract terms are certainly numbers. Remembering numbers is the hardest for most people. But here, too, the use of imagination can help: If you think up a system of “stand-ins” in which each number, say between one and one hundred, stands for an object, it suddenly becomes easier to commit the hard-to-digest series of numbers to memory. The pictures that are assigned to the numbers should be as obvious as possible to make them easier to remember: For example, a dice is a good choice for six, an hourglass for eight, and a soccer team for eleven. Once you have thought up and internalized a “hundreds” system in this way, sequences of numbers can be represented as desired in the form of pictures or objects, which can then be used again (as with the lists) to weave a story or similar. In this way, memory artists can memorize numbers with many hundreds of digits without much effort. If you now have a taste for “learning to learn”, then you can use your own creativity or with the help of our book tips to work with your thinking apparatus and train it. And the practical thing about brain training is that you can do it anywhere – on the subway or during your lunch break, and at work anyway.
