Guest Post by Julie Bismuth:
As a kid, I wanted superpowers. I wanted them to make life easier, convenient, exciting, and well… “cool”. I remember going to bed hoping I’d wake up with super powers the next day: extra strength, speed, flying, anything. I thought I’d do anything for a superpower. Obviously, that dream faded away once reality kicked in. Yet, ten years later during the high school years, I started dreaming of a new superpower: super memory. Ten years later, that dream hasn’t faded away for one bit. Now the good news is that’s a super power I can create. That’s actually something we can all create. While we’ve already given you an infographic on how memory works and tips on how to improve long-term memory, we share today an article from The Education Blog, teaching us how to train our brains into becoming the “super memory” we all crave for.
Learn To Focus And Improve Your Memory
You are not the only one that has problems with their memory, lots of people have the same issue, so there is nothing wrong with wanting to try to learn how to improve your memory and there really isn’t anything wrong with you. Everyone has memory malfunctions no matter how old they are and unless there is some sort of medical problem causing it, most people really can learn how to keep track of things a lot better. You can do this by using memory devices and different tricks to help boost your short term memory.
One thing you can do to improve your memory is to declutter your mind and focus. Your brain is capable of expanding so it can provide storage space for new info and new details. But, the short term memory capacity of anyone’s brain is limited. One of the best ways to focus better is to make your to do list shorter. Try to keep the list to just five items at a time. This will help you have better recall. By doing this you will improve your memory by relieving the strain on your brain trying to put too much into its short term memory.
Another trick to improve your memory is to turn off the brains autopilot. Your brain automatically remembers tons of different things like how to walk, brush your teeth, comb your hair and so on. But that autopilot can sometimes get in your short term memory’s way so switch things up, for example take a different route home from work a day or two each week, brush your teeth with your left hand if you are right handed and vice a versa. This will actually exercise your brain and deactivate that cruise control it gets into.
Memory training can be done by retraining your brain. Try telling yourself to remember something and make a mental note of it, then use memory tricks to help you process the information better. Those tricks can be word or color associations that will help you recall what you need to remember. Another thing is to create a mental picture, especially if you want to remember a name, or just repeat the name of the person out loud several times.
Writing things down is also a type of memory training. When you need to remember something write it down and then this way you are using sight and touch, then to reinforce it say what you wrote down out loud, this way you are using three different senses to help your brain remember.
