To better remember information you need. How to remember large amounts of information? Reading quickly improves memory

The ability to remember key details of a future speech is a useful skill for anyone. To learn the material quickly, you need to eliminate all external stimuli and create a working environment. For effective learning, it is better to use several channels of perception and adhere to the following algorithm:

• Read the entire text several times, understand its meaning.
• Use associations (remember the picture drawn by your imagination while reading or listening).
• Divide the material into logical parts and make a plan.
• Write down supporting words or quotes for the points.
• Retell each part separately, then connect the story.

If you need to learn the text word for word:

• If possible, listen to the audio version based on the printed version.
• Rewrite each paragraph of text several times.
• Use the corrector to fill in the endings of the sentences and fill in the missing words from memory. Reproduce the material orally or in writing.

If a child remembers the text, you need to make the process as exciting as possible using game techniques:

• Replace some of the words with pictures and recreate the story. Gradually paint over all the new words and draw pictures in their place, retelling the material each time.
• Make a copy of the text and cut it into small pieces. Now you can put it together like a puzzle, while simultaneously reading the resulting sentences. The brighter and funnier the font, the better.
• Complicate the task: skip an essential point or add extra facts.

To quickly learn a large text, it is advisable to:

• Divide it into parts and work with each of them separately.
• Make a plan for the story or enter basic data into a table.
• Repeat the material regularly with short breaks.
• Use multiple channels of perception (for example, visual and auditory).

Information that is interesting to the reader is stored in memory automatically. Text written in clear language is easier to learn. Complex material needs to be simplified as much as possible and all unclear points clarified.

Pictogram method

Pictograms are a way of replacing words and sentences with pictures. You don't have to be an artist to do this. The simpler and funnier the pictures, the better. Children need visualization, interest, and involvement in the process. In this case, these aspects are best combined.

Methodology:

• Divide large text into parts. Work with a short story as a whole.
• Divide the board or piece of paper into two parts. On the left, write down the numbered sentences, each on a new line.
• Read the sentences, understand new words.
• Read each sentence separately, depicting it with the picture on the right. You can start by replacing individual words, gradually making the work more complex.
• Close the left side. Retell the text based on the pictures an unlimited number of times.
• Try a retelling without relying on pictures.

While getting acquainted with the game, draw pictures yourself. Then, gradually, you can involve children. This method is also suitable for adults if the material is presented in more or less simple language.

Using notes and exercises

This method is especially suitable for visual learners (those who perceive information better through vision), but anyone can use it. The result will be in any case, it will just take someone more time to achieve it.

Methodology:

• Divide the text into several parts. Work on each part separately.
• Read the first part, understand unfamiliar words and expressions.
• Rewrite part of the text 1-2 times.
• Use a stationery proofreader to color over individual phrases. Complete them from memory. Test yourself.
• Rewrite the text again. Paint twice as many fragments. Fill in the blanks.
• Repeat until you can reproduce the entire paragraph.
• Put all the parts together and retell the text orally.

This work can be combined with listening (the method described above), then the result will be high-quality and long-lasting.

Repetition method

If you have very little time to study, and you need to quickly learn a text in English, you can use the technique of constant repetition.

Methodology:

• Write short excerpts from the story on sheets of paper. It is better to use bright markers in flashy colors.
• Hang them around the house: above the kitchen table, in the bathroom, on the mirror in the hallway, on the balcony.
• When you visit these places or just pass by, you will see: your eyes will be “hooked” on the sentences, and what you read will be stored in your memory.

Of course, the technique itself will not work, but as an addition to other methods it will give good results and speed up memorization.

Planning

If there is no task to learn an English text by heart, but you can convey everything in your own words, a detailed plan for the future story will help a lot. It is important to understand the meaning of the text and understand what you are going to talk about, and the task must correspond to the level of language proficiency.

Methodology:

• Read the text carefully, write down unfamiliar words.
• Break the material into logical parts (introduction, key thoughts and facts, ending).
• Select support points. Make a detailed plan for each part. Present it in the form of short points, quotes or questions.
• Retell the text according to plan several times, looking at the original if necessary.
• Retell the text without looking at the original, and then without using the plan.

Key points in the form of quotes can be highlighted directly in the original text, underlining them with a pencil. And write your notes in the margins.

Mind map

This is a map of thoughts that allows you to structure even very difficult material to understand. In a free style, a map of what was read is depicted, on the basis of which the material is retold. This technique will be useful for those who need to quickly learn a text, but do not necessarily need to reproduce it verbatim. A bright plan, where everything is laid out on shelves, will be well imprinted in the memory.

Methodology:

• Highlight the key problem. Write or draw it, circle it.
• Depict secondary thoughts as branches in any direction. Some people draw left and right, others from top to bottom. There are no restrictions.

You will get a detailed plan in a convenient format, based on which it is easy to retell the material in your own words. For those who like to draw, you can replace sentences with pictures. This will make the process more interesting and even help you learn the information better.

How to learn a text in English and remember it for a long time

Learning your native language occurs naturally. We remember what we hear as children, gradually accumulating knowledge and expanding our vocabulary. When learning a foreign language, the approach changes and you have to consciously memorize words, phrases and texts. Let's look at several methods that can be modified and combined with each other.

Listening to an audio recording of text

The technique involves listening and reading the text at the same time and is very effective. The fact is that two channels of perception are used at once: visual and auditory, which means information is absorbed better. In modern English textbooks, almost every text can be listened to. If an excerpt from a work is given, an audiobook will help.

Methodology:

• Read the text and write down any unfamiliar words and phrases.
• Listen to the story in parts and at the same time follow the text with your eyes.
• Pause after each sentence and repeat after the speaker. This will help not only to remember each of them well, but also to practice pronunciation.
• Listen to the audio version at any free time: in transport, while walking, before bed. You won’t even notice how everything will be stored in your memory.
• Repeat listening as many times as you need to remember.

The more often you listen to audio, the better. It all depends on the length of the text, its complexity and the time available. The method is also useful for correcting pronunciation. If you are not sure how to pronounce a word, listening to well-read sentences will be very helpful.

How to process new information quickly and efficiently without losing focus? How can you make sure that all information is securely stored in memory? Modern research shows that during the day we forget about 70% of everything we see and hear. However, these losses can be avoided. The technique described in the book “How to Read, Remember and Never Forget” will teach you to assimilate information better and faster, without spending a lot of energy on it. We'll share a few tips with you.

Fill the void

In one minute, up to 1,400 different thoughts can appear in your head. The average reading speed is about 200 words per minute. In other words, when we read, we still have a lot of unused mental space to think about other things.

This is why while reading we get distracted by extraneous thoughts: “I need to call my mom, I need to send an email, I need to buy groceries.” Lack of attention makes it difficult to remember information. Concentration is required to quickly and fully assimilate and analyze it.

One way to fill the void is to remember information faster. If you read at 300, 400, 500 words per minute, there is less space available for other thoughts. As a result, concentration increases and the level of understanding increases, leading to better retention.

Of course, you need to find a balance. If you read too quickly, your brain will no longer understand the content of the text, and if you read too slowly, your thoughts will wander.

Your reading speed should be determined by the answer to the question: “Do I understand what I am reading?” If you don't understand, this is a warning sign. Then ask yourself the following question: “Is this happening because I’m thinking about something else?” If so, try reading a little faster. Stimulate your brain and fill the void. Or do you not understand the information because it is complex? Then try reading a little slower.

Another way to help our brains better understand and remember information is to look at the big picture. A simple example is putting together a puzzle. If we were asked to put together a puzzle with a thousand pieces without looking at a picture, it would be incredibly difficult because the individual pieces don't tell us anything. However, once you see the big picture, you will have context for each element, which will make things easier.

It is very difficult to absorb unrelated pieces of information. Learning is faster and more effective when we understand the big picture.

A rather interesting study confirmed this concept. Two groups of students were asked to read a detective novel. Participants in the first group received it one page at a time, moving on to the next only after reading the previous one. Participants in the other group were asked to read the report first so they knew who committed the murder and why. And then they were given the entire book.

Comparing the results of the two groups, the researchers found that the group that read the novel page by page spent 30% more time on it and scored lower on a comprehension test. The group that got the "big picture" first showed 38% higher comprehension levels and were better at separating important facts from unimportant ones. In addition, the formation of an overall picture allows you to remember information for a longer period.

Information never exists on its own; it is always part of something larger. Once you see this bigger picture, it will be easier to study the individual elements.

The overall picture, especially if we are talking about a large number of texts, helps to conduct a preliminary review. You can navigate the text and understand what you already know about the topic. This creates expectations about the text. And when you know what to expect, your brain cells send the right signals faster while reading.

In other words, you process information faster. Sure, reviewing text takes time, but it's an investment that pays immediate dividends. The critical point is ten pages, meaning if you have ten pages of information to process, review it first.

Remember how it happens. You are about to watch a film whose trailer you have already seen or about which you have read a review, that is, you already know the plot. Another example is racing. In this case, viewing the route is vital. The navigator sits next to the driver and can warn him of upcoming maneuvers, such as a sharp turn after 300 meters. Of course, the driver will notice it too, but now he will be better prepared for it. As a result, the driver can drive much faster. The same applies to information processing.

Use imagery

What do you remember better: words or pictures? Most people will answer that images, and they will be right - images are stored in our memory incredibly well. As much as a third of our brain is involved in processing visual information.

If information is converted into an image, it is clearly and accurately recorded in memory.

Hundreds of studies confirm this. One of them is the Baker-Baker paradox. Participants were given a photograph of a person. One group was asked to remember that the last name of the person in the photograph was Baker, the other that his profession was baker (in English - “baker”).

After two weeks, participants who were told it was about a baker were able to easily remember it. And of the participants who were asked to remember the name, only one was able to reproduce it. Why are the results so different if the participants had to remember the same word? This can be explained as follows: when you think about the profession of a baker, you imagine the image of a person baking something. It's easy to visualize. Remembering the name Baker is not that easy - it doesn't create any images in your brain unless you know someone with the same name.

Harvard is conducting research into how accurately images are stored in our brains. Participants were shown three thousand images of deserts, parks and schools, then were shown 200 pairs of images consisting of new ones, ones they had already seen, and were asked to show an image that was already familiar to them. No one experienced any difficulties; recognition accuracy was 96%. Even when the researchers increased the number of images they had to remember, the participants' ability to recall them did not decrease.

Therefore, if you want to remember information, it makes sense to convert it into images. Can this be done with any information? No, but with a certain amount of imagination it is usually effective. Let's say you want to remember the name of Hank, your new friend. This name is similar to the word “tank”. Imagine Hank sitting in a tank. It sounds a little strange, but the name has become an image, and it is much easier for the brain to process this information. Even numbers can be converted into images. For example, the number 2 looks like a swan, and the number 8 looks like a snowman.

You don't always have to turn information into images yourself. If there is a picture next to the text, it will be easier to remember it.

Even if the picture is not related to the text, the information will still linger in memory, because the image will leave a trace in it.

One study beautifully proved this by looking at which newspaper articles are better remembered. Most people remember the articles next to the advertisements. This is surprising because advertising usually has nothing to do with the text of the article. There is a simple explanation for this: consciously or unconsciously, you associate information with the image next to it. It gives your brain an extra clue to recall information.

From the point of view of memory retrieval, it does not matter whether the image is related to the text or not. The image can even be as simple as a drawn sun. So you can take this idea on board: Draw something in the margins or next to your notes - it will make remembering and referring to this information easier.

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Learning a language is impossible without memorizing new words. But besides banal and boring cramming, there are many simple, and most importantly, effective ways to learn unfamiliar words.

First you need to figure out exactly how you best perceive information. There is a small but very important checklist for this. If you are an auditory learner, then the “read a notebook” method will work much worse for you than the “listen to a list of words for a text” method. And you may not even think about it and look at this stupid notebook for a long time and persistently, until the bitter end and the feeling of your own worthlessness and not understand why nothing is remembered!

Traditional methods

1. Yartsev method (visuals)

Let's take a notebook. We write down the word - translation - in 2-3 columns. We give synonyms\antonyms\examples next to each other. We read lists from time to time, just read, don’t cram anything.

I don’t know how it works, but, for example, I didn’t cram German, but just read the notebook from time to time. The teacher did not give dictations and never checked us against lists. And I still, many years later, remember a bunch of words.

It turns out that you don’t strain yourself, you don’t try to cram 100 words into yourself in 30 minutes, you just systematically refresh the material from time to time. But you should immediately warn that these words should appear in textbooks, articles, i.e. you must, in addition to reading the notebook, somehow activate them.

1. Card method

The second popular method. We take and cut up a bunch of cards or buy square blocks of note paper. On one side we write the word, on the other - the translation. For advanced users we provide examples. We pass the cards around, putting aside those that we know well. From time to time we repeat what we have covered in order to refresh ourselves. The downside is that if there are a lot of words and little time, you will spend a lot of time creating the cards themselves.

For fun, you can put them in piles of 10 in different places in the apartment, stumble upon them from time to time and repeat. Auditory learners should definitely add speaking out loud to this method. Cards are great for children; this can be turned into an interesting game.

1. Prescription method

Classics of the genre. You take a word and write it out many, many times. Works great for Chinese characters. Minus - green melancholy. But the method has been tested for centuries.

1. Half Page Method

This is one of my favorite ways. You bend the sheet in half, write the word on one edge, and the translation on the other side. You can quickly check yourself. For me, as a visual learner, it works well, because... I easily remember in which part of the sheet a given word was written down. The downside is that you get used to a certain word order.

1. Interior Designer Method

If you are learning some specific vocabulary that surrounds you, you can make unique “labels” everywhere - stick stickers with the names of objects. You can also stick the most disgusting words on the monitor that you don’t want to remember. The advantage of this method is that it's fun. The downside is that the brain may begin to ignore all these pieces of paper, and then they will hang somewhere for a long time.

Optimization methods

1. Grouping method by grammatical features

If you have a large list of words, the worst thing you can do with it is to learn it haphazardly. It can and should be processed and grouped. For example, first you write down verbs, and you do not write them out in a row, but group them by type of ending, or you write down masculine nouns, then feminine and separately exceptions that do not fall into these lists.

Thus, because Most of our words are not exceptions; you begin to see the logic of the language and remember words in conjunction with similar ones.

1. Method of grouping by meaning

You write down and remember the word and its synonym/antonym at once. This is true for both beginners and intermediates. Now that you have learned the word “good”, find out right away what “bad” will be. And if you also remember “excellent, so-so, disgusting,” then you will greatly enrich your vocabulary.

1. Method of studying cognates words

We take words, group them around a root, for example, “deed/do/done,” and learn several parts of speech with the same root at once.

1. Etymological method

Works well for those who have learned several languages. When you study multiple languages ​​within the same language branch, you begin to see similar roots. This actually comes with experience, and there is no need to learn a huge number of words again. At a certain point, you just know enough. And if I understand that this word doesn’t tell me anything categorically, I go into the etymological dictionary and find out where it came from. While I do this, I remember it.

1. Chains of words

You take a list of words that you need to learn and make up a story (even a crazy one) from them. So you will learn not 30 words, but 5 sentences of 6 words each. If you approach this matter creatively, you can have a fun and useful time.

Methods for those who do not like old-fashioned methods

1. Spaced Repetition

A technique of retention in memory, which consists in repeating learned educational material at certain, constantly increasing intervals. In fact, you install the application on your phone, and the program will automatically show you words in the specified order and with the desired frequency. You can use ready-made word lists or create your own.

Pros: thoroughly etched in memory.

Cons: it takes a lot of time. If you've already memorized a word, it will still pop up from time to time in some programs.

In Memrise you can choose ready-made lists of words or create your own. If a word is absolutely not memorized, you can use special funny pictures that users create using mnemonic techniques, or upload your own. Memrise also recently added a new option - you can not only hear the voice of a word, but watch a video of how people pronounce these words.

A service for working on written speech for those who have already mastered the basics of language practice. The user writes a text in the language being studied, after which a native speaker of the corresponding language checks what has been written and makes his own corrections.

"Magic" methods

Various marketers and language gurus love to use magical methods to lure people. Usually the essence of the methods lies in “secret techniques of the special services,” which, objectively speaking, are described in a lot of literature. And they ask for ludicrous amounts of money for this.

1. Mnemonics

Mnemonics is one of the most popular methods, the essence of which is to come up with funny and absurd associations for a word that you can’t remember. You take a word and come up with some kind of associative image, which should be very vivid. But in this image there must be a “key” to the memorized word.

Example: “grief” (“grief”) - woe to the wounded tiger, vultures are circling over him.

For auditory learners

Rule #1 for you: Always say out loud what you are learning. If you use flashcards, recite them. If you are reading a list, read it out loud. Listen to the words, this is the fastest way for you to remember them! Naturally, you will have to write them down, but things will go faster than if you read and write silently.

1. Listening to words

You can play audio recordings of word lists and repeat after the announcer. Usually, good textbooks provide a well-read list of words for the lesson. You can also listen to high-quality podcasts that provide detailed analysis of dialogues.

1. Repeat multiple times

A method similar to writing words in a row is quite tedious and boring, but effective - repeat it out loud several times. There is an opinion that you can consider a word learned if you have used it in context 5 times. So try to give 5 different examples of how this word is used. Naturally, out loud. You can reinforce this by writing it down.

Don't just learn the list. Always learn words in context, choose examples and phrases. Work with a dictionary.

1. Learn dialogues by heart

Learning small dialogues and texts with useful vocabulary by heart is one of the surest ways that you will remember at the right time and correctly use the word in the context you need. Yes, it will take more effort and time, but in the long run you will have a set of ready-made structures in your head that you will be happy to use.

1. Ask someone to check you

Grab your husband/mom/child/friend and ask them to run you through the list. Of course, you won't be graded, but an element of control and discipline will appear.

1. Learn what you really need

In one of my textbooks, the word “hoe” appeared in the vocabulary before the words “short and long” appeared. Don't learn "hoes" and all that unnecessary crap until you've learned some really relevant and pressing vocabulary.

How to determine relevance? There are many manuals and lists from the “1000 most common words” series. First we learn frequency, then “hoes”, not before. If you have not yet learned to count and do not know pronouns, it is too early for you to learn colors, no matter how much you would like to.

1. Get creative with the process

If everything infuriates you, words don’t come into your head and you want to quickly close these lists, experiment. Some people get help from drawings, some people walk around the apartment and recite out loud, some people talk to their cat. If you are interested in something, do not be lazy to look into the dictionary. Study what is close to you. Don't get hung up on methods that don't work.

It goes in one ear, out the other. Common situation? Oh, how great it would be to take and remember the necessary information the first time... I decided to see what His Majesty, the all-knowing OK Google, had to say about this. What's the best way to remember? And, alas, some of the advice made my eyebrows furrow in surprise. For example, shout out loud the memorized text. Or walk constantly while reading and memorizing. Or sit and meditate for hours to come into harmony with the universe...

I'm not against any of this. And I think meditation is a wonderful tool, and movement really helps memorize. But... I can imagine how you prepare for an exam for several days in a row, shouting a textbook on quantum physics or management for several hours a day. So you can be left completely without a voice. Meditation is also good, but as an opportunity to tune in to remembering or to give the brain time to assimilate and retain what is memorized. However, if you don’t remember, then there will be nothing to retain.

I want to talk about ways to better remember information. My personal achievements. What I have tested in practice.

How to remember better: create an incentive for yourself

Nothing increases the speed and accuracy of memorization like our personal interest in the material being studied. I think you have often encountered the fact that if you are interested, then remembering or studying a fact is not difficult.

This is the basic mechanism of our involuntary memory: what is interesting equals what is important. What is important must be remembered and the brain remembers itself.

How can this be used?

If you need to remember something that at first glance seems uninteresting, create motivation and interest for yourself. If this is a large block of information, an academic discipline, then first find out what is interesting in this area?

The latest developments, products, secrets, maybe secrets? For example, studying boring sections of physics can be interesting because you will learn the basics by which the most complex space launches of the most modern satellite are calculated, or you will learn the basics that will then allow you to understand how sensitive sensors are built on the smartest autonomous robots.

Find out what practical interest this or that training can bring you. And in the near future. Perhaps a boring study of tax legislation will allow you to start right now advising businessmen you know about taxes, which will allow you to create additional income. Money is one of the most effective motivations.

It is difficult to give complete advice on how to create motivation for yourself, because each of us has our own interests and motives. Look for something interesting for yourself.

How to remember better: create images

A little educational program. The fact is that our brain operates with images. Think about it: images. We think in images. Often visual, slightly less auditory, tactile. Humanity has created a lot of symbolic information: texts, numbers, diagrams, graphs. All this makes up a large part of our daily intellectual activity. And figurative memory is the fastest. Yes, we can remember numbers and logical connections, but much slower, in less volume and more difficult than images. So why not use the fastest memory?

How to remember in images

Try to translate everything you need to remember into images (pictures in your head). Before your presentation, present the key points of your report with bright pictures with a plot.

Live the text of the educational material, imagine it in your imagination. If you study biology, imagine all the bugs and cockroaches, all the veins of the leaves. If this is mathematics, then imagine graphs as objects that can move along the trajectory of this graph. Think of a parabola as a ball flying upward. A sine wave like a bat. Visualize the law and formulas, provisions and principles, theorems - everything you can.

If you deal with numbers, then you imagine certain objects behind the numbers: a box of oranges is 50, a truckload of oranges is 1000.

Come up with your own figurative notations for frequently used symbols. For example, I often have to deal with chemical equilibrium. I think of it as a scale. I see these scales shifting to one side if something happens in the system. I know people who imagine current in wires as rivers flowing along their beds. Enshtei imagined himself as a photon flying at the speed of light. Some biologists walk inside cells, walk through mitochondria, untangle DNA in the nucleus.

It’s nice to study the material like this, isn’t it? Yes, at first it may seem unusual, you need to shake your brain.

I agree, it's not always easy at the beginning. But if you develop a habit, then automatically every complex text will be drawn as a movie in your head. And the quality of memorization will be at its best.

How to remember better: tell someone

Many people know about this method of how to remember well and quickly. You just need to retell it. And know what needs to be retold. An even greater effect occurs when you not only need to tell, but also make a favorable impression. For example, you make a presentation of a business idea, based on the results of which it is decided whether there will be investments in your project. In this case, the motivation to memorize facts is very high.

How to use this method in practice:

Create conditions for yourself in which you would need to speak in front of an audience. These could be your relatives and friends. If this is not a motivating factor, then speak in front of an unfamiliar audience.

Create a video blog for yourself on a specific topic (Youtube can help) and regularly record videos on the range of tasks you study. The need to regularly cover topics on your blog's topic will make you a true expert.

Introduce charitable educational lectures for schoolchildren and open lectures for the public. There is no more effective way to understand a topic and remember it, than to study a topic and clearly tell it to children or grandmothers.

We studied the topic, recorded a video, and told people about it. A bit lazy, huh? But you can’t imagine how much this increases the quality of memorization. So the choice is yours.

How to remember information better: apply

Tell me, would you learn to ride a bike or swim just from books? I doubt.

What we remember most strongly is what we do. Therefore, whatever you want to keep in your memory, first bring it to life. Exactly: first apply, even before remembering.

This method is applicable to better remember words, read text, action algorithms, even numerical data. And much of what we need.

• If you need to remember the algorithm of actions, then just do it several times (Of course, peek, until you remember it by heart). Let these be conditional attempts. Let's say you need to remember an algorithm for working with a computer program. Go to the program and, following the prompts, go through the algorithm.
• If you need to remember a route, move around your room in small steps, imagining the road and making turns as necessary.
• If you need to know the sequence of points in your oral presentation, present it as if in front of a real audience.
• If you need to know a method for solving problems, solve these problems using this method, with hints and peeking. Just don’t act like a schoolboy cheating. Feel free to look at the examples.
• If you are participating in training, there is no point in memorizing. Large amounts of information poured into you will fly out of your memory instantly. Put into practice what you want to remember. Training on creating a website - make a website right away, training on relationships - apply the practices.

Obviously? Yes. But we often do not use them, but only read or watch. remember, that memory for actions is the strongest.

Once again: take it and immediately do what you learn. Otherwise, you will not be able to better remember what you read or hear.

Even if the first experience is not the most successful, this is not the main thing. The main thing is to do what you want to remember.

How to remember better: create a base or foundation

Can the base be null or non-null? It depends... Our brain is cleverly designed. The basis of its physiological work is neural networks, and the cognitive consequence of this work is the associativity of thinking and memory.

This means that the new can only fall on the known old, cling to known information.

Associations are like hooks: if they are not there, then there is nothing to hang on. If the hanger doesn't have hooks, then what?

If the subject of study is completely unknown to you, even in its minimal basis, then memorizing the material becomes extremely difficult.

Can you find your way in an unfamiliar city without a map and the help of passers-by? Will you walk around at random until you get to know the city in practice? A good strategy, but you will achieve your goal (find a specific building) in a few weeks, or maybe even months, at best. What we usually do in such a situation: maps, navigators, communication.

Why then do we try to remember new things on a zero basis? We hope to quickly find a hotel without a tourist map?

How to better remember new material:

1. Before studying and memorizing something new and complex, find in other sources (Google and Yandex will help you) the simplest explanation of the basics of the topic being studied. Let it be an article from Wikipedia, a lecture for dummies or for schoolchildren. It is important to understand the basics, the key principles (nailing a hanger with hooks)

2. Read the book on the spiral algorithm (I have written about this method of working with information) several times. This will be a quick skim first, then a reading of the key takeaways, then a deeper reading.

Each time you fill out your knowledge base on this topic, each reading will add new ideas to existing hooks.

3. Choose materials (books, trainings, lectures, articles) in which you know 20-50% of the material. The memorization result from mastering information of such a distribution will be higher than from 100% new information. Amazing, isn't it?

So, we looked at 5 important principles on how to remember any material better. I really hope that you will start using at least some of it right away (see above why this is important). Now take and retell these principles to someone so that most of the information remains in memory, and on the first occasion (the first book, lecture, training) immediately study the materials so that they are remembered as completely as possible.

Leave your impressions and wishes, I really love comments!

Few of us have not had to fall silent in embarrassment in response to an unexpected question: “You don’t recognize me? You and I recently met and got to know each other...”, and then the stranger reminds you of the time and place of your meeting. The desired image finally pops up in your memory, and you answer: “Yes, indeed, we know each other. Sorry, I didn’t remember you right away.”

How can you help yourself remember information faster and avoid getting into such awkward situations?

What is "remember"?

There are two different psychological mechanisms behind this memory process:

• recognition;
• playback

Recognition is based on establishing identity or similarity between objects. However, associative psychology claims that any recollection is always the launch of an associative series of images. Let's not argue. Let's just take on board the idea of ​​associative memorization.

Reproduction requires a person to actively and voluntarily reconstruct the image in consciousness. There is willpower and goal setting here. And for this case, they are looking for better ways to remember information.

5 techniques using associative thinking

Those who are looking for a non-trivial method for how to easily remember information can be advised to use the associative approach. Psychologists group all associations into 5 groups. These are associations by:

• similarity;
• contrast;
• adjacency in time;
• adjacency in place;
• cause-and-effect relationship.

1) Technique “Memorization by similarity”. This technique is useful to use when you have a fleeting or short-term acquaintance with a person, if you want to remember him, so that you can easily recognize him in the event of your next meeting. Ask yourself, who is this person like? You can associate the image of your new acquaintance with one of the characters in the film, an artist or politician, in a word, any popular figure. Mentally name him, for example, “Well, the spitting image of Don Quixote of La Mancha - just as thin and tall, with the same sharp look and impetuous movements. And even his name is Dmitry Konstantinovich.” The next time you meet, the association with Don Quixote will tell you the initials of your friend.
2) Technique “Memorization by contrast”. Here we do exactly the opposite. Find some detail in your interlocutor that openly contrasts either with his appearance or with his (or her) name.
“The last name is Belykh, and he himself is black-haired,” - sometimes this contrast will be enough for you to recognize later.
3) Technique “Memorization based on time contiguity”. This technique is useful for memorizing a long series of numbers. Let's say you want to train your memory and remember someone's phone number without writing it down. There are a lot of numbers in front of you. It is necessary to divide the series into groups so that numbers appear in front of you that are identical to dates that are convenient and familiar to you. For example: 4561678 can be divided as follows: 45 – the end of the war, 61 – Gagarin’s flight, 678 – numbers in order. All that remains is to come up with and remember a phrase like “Victory, Gagarin, from six onwards.”

4) Technique “Memorization based on adjacency in place”. Choose as an associative basis an object that you will certainly encounter when you need to remember certain information. For example, you keep putting your car keys somewhere, and then you can’t remember where you put them. Or you leave the house first, and only then remember that you didn’t take the keys. How to effectively memorize information so that you can then recall it at the right time in the right place? In this case, it will help you to associatively link the required action (pick up the keys before leaving the house) to the action that you will perform in any case before leaving the house (for example, change your shoes for the street). Imagine an image of yourself changing your shoes before going out, and add to this picture something bright and unexpected, even silly and funny from the first act. Here are some examples of such pictures:

• you put your foot into the shoe, and wheels suddenly appear on the sides, and it snorts and drives away right from under your nose;
• you take the shoe, and car keys fall out of it, many different keys for cars of different brands;
• you put on your shoes, but at this time your shoes begin to resist and, hobbling, hastily runs away from you. Or it even takes to the air and flies away, flapping its transparent wings.

The brighter and more unexpected the image (and the funnier it is), the more likely you are to remember the keys before you leave the house.
5) Technique “Association based on cause-effect relationship”. Sometimes, in order to assimilate a sufficiently large amount of necessary material, it is enough to understand the cause-and-effect relationships and assimilate one thing: either cause or effect.
This is exactly the case when understanding significantly narrows the amount of information that needs to be remembered. In other words, logic comes to the aid of memory. For example, if you have to read a number of articles in preparation for an exam, first just remember the typical structure of the article:

• problem;
• goal and tasks;
• basic support positions;
• research method;
• results and conclusions.

Any information is much easier to assimilate and more reliably stored in memory if its structure is clear. It's like in a song or poetry, when the next line pops up by association with the previous one. Next, as you read article after article, do not try to memorize the entire content, but focus on the structure, problem and results. Everything else can be easily remembered by analogy.

With Vikium you can learn to remember information faster online

5 tricks to quickly remember information

If you are interested in learning how to quickly memorize information, choose from these techniques one or more of those that seem suitable to you. All these techniques are designed to help organize and use what is called short-term memory, i.e. when we need information only for a certain time - for a day or just for a few hours.

1) Technique “Colorful Picture”. Suppose you have a busy day ahead of you tomorrow, and it is important not to forget anything you have planned for today. As you fall asleep, you tell yourself that you need to do the following tomorrow:

• walk the dog in the morning;
• on the way to work buy a bouquet of flowers;
• at work, congratulate an employee on her birthday;
• then sign the document with the boss;
• return the book to a colleague;
• in the evening on the way home to pick up my sweater from the dry cleaner.

You can, of course, put all these things in your diary. Or you can think in advance what to do to better remember the order of things, and use the “Colorful Picture” technique.

Before you fall asleep, imagine as vividly as possible the following image: your dog, dressed in a dry-cleaned sweater, holding a bouquet of flowers in its mouth, with one paw gives your boss a document for signature, and with the other hands a book to your colleague. Record this picture in your memory. You're left with this weird "to-do list" for the next day.

2) Technique "Grouping". Let's say you go to the store and you need to buy different products. You can make a list of necessary purchases in advance and check it as you move along the sales floor. You can group your purchases by topic:

• 5 vegetables;
• 1 bread;
• 4 dairy products;
• 2 meat.

And remember them in the order in which they appear in front of you in the supermarket.

3) Reception "Abbreviation". The same shopping list can be remembered by combining their initial letters into a whole word. If the list is the same as in the previous example, then you will get the word “ham meat”, and you can use it to navigate the store.

Abbreviations help memorize lists of words, for example, a list of planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto - can be converted into “mevese-musunep” and memorized that way.

4) Acrostic technique. This is similar to an abbreviation, only more convenient, because the first letters of the list of words intended to be memorized become the first letters of the words from which the sentence is built. However, everyone is familiar with this technique from childhood. It was the acrostic “Every Hunter...” that helped us remember the colors of the rainbow and their sequence.

5) Reception "Knot for memory". To remember something important to you in the morning, perform some action in the evening that will slightly disrupt your usual algorithm for morning behavior. For example, if you need to take a multivitamin in the morning, move the toaster away from its usual place in the evening. In the morning, when you see the toaster moved, you will remember that you moved it to remind yourself to take your next morning pill.

Now you know 10 useful techniques that you can use when solving the problem of how to better remember information in everyday life.