Try it when you’re next out getting lunch: Who were the people in the queue? What colour was that poster?
BITS ‘N’ PIECES
Practise, practise and practise
‘You can improve your memory by practicing your ability to recall information at any time,’ says memory Guinness record holder Nishant Kasibhatla. Try it when you’re next out getting lunch: Who were the people in the queue? What colour was that poster?
Get enough sleep
This isn’t just good general life advice – recent research seems to confirm the vital role sleep plays in memory consolidation.
Build a mind palace
Mind palaces were first mentioned back in 80BC and the technique is still used by today’s competitive memory athletes (yes, it’s a thing).
Think of a sequence of locations you know really well, such as rooms in your house. Then put the objects in those locations. Then, when you want to recall the location, you go through your journey and think: ‘What object was here?’
Lift some weights
Osteocalcin, a hormone released by bones that can be boosted by weightlifting, appears to have a key role in retaining memories in old age, according to research from Columbia University.
Make dates and events visual
For birthdays and other dates, try attributing an object to each month, and an image to the day.
Get playful
Games, including matching card memory games or even the humble jigsaw, are great grey-matter boosters.
Find a hook for names
Kermode, whose four world records including memorizing 224 names in 15 minutes, recommends making names meaningful to you.
Learn a poem (or song) by heart
Top lyric-learning tips include:
- Learning in bite-size chunks.
- Choosing a poem or song you love.
- Combining visusal, auditory and kinetic memory aids. That could mean retyping the poem with a helpful layout, recording it on your phone, revising as you walk, iron, drive or wash up.
Make mistakes
Research published earlier this year explores the “derring effect”: how making errors on purpose can promote deeper understanding and better recall.
Learners who inserted then corrected deliberate errors learned approximately double the amount of information of those who put the right answers the first time.
What happens when we outsource part of our memory to an external device? Are we so reliant on smartphones that they will ultimately change how our memories work (sometimes called digital amnesia)?
Our brains and our smartphones form a complex web of interactions: the smartphonification of life has been rising since the mid-2000s, but was accelerated by the pandemic, as was internet use in general.
Prolonged periods of stress, isolation and exhaustion – common themes since March 2020 – are well known for their impact on memory. Of those surveyed by memory researcher Catherine Loveday in 2021, 80 percent felt that their memories were worse than before the pandemic.
We are still shattered, not just by Covid-19, but also by the miserable national and global news cycle. Many of us self-soothe with distractions like social media. Meanwhile, endless scrolling can, at times, create its own distress, and phone notifications and self-interrupting to check for them, also seem to affect what, how and if we remember.
