From Memory Palaces to Meaningful Mistakes: Top 5 Tips for Improving Your Memory

Remembering ideas, experiences and things is a skill we could all be better at. At some point, every one of us has misplaced something or forgotten some piece of information, leaving us racking our brain to recall where we’d put it or what it was we’d learned. How can we work on our memory so that we might be better able to recall? You could give Peak’s latest version of our Advanced Training memory game, Wizard, a try. Built in partnership with Professor Barbara Sahakian and Tom Piercy in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, the game, which uses Paired-Associate Learning tasks, works your visual and episodic memory.

We’ve also rounded up some memory tips from Nelson Dellis and Simon Reinhard, two of the world’s most formidable memory champs, as well as a few of our own to help you hone your memory skills.

Tip 1: Pay Attention to Improve Your Memory:

“Memory,” says Nelson Dellis, the 4-time US Memory Champ, “Comes down to paying attention. That’s all it is.” In memory competitions, Dellis says he uses strategies to pay better attention to the materials he has to memorize. But the core idea of paying attention to improve your recollection is actually grounded in science. MIT researchers recently found that when the brain is attentive, cells called astrocytes relay messages alerting neurons of the visual cortex that they should respond strongly to whatever visual information they are receiving. The conclusion: be engaged and pay attention to improve your recall.

Tip 2: Construct a “Memory Palace”:

This is a popular mnemonic device with memory athletes. Both Dellis and Simon Reinhard, German memory athelete and world record holder, often make use of a memory palace in competitions. The technique, also called the “method of loci” was first used by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and is not as intimidating as it sounds.

“A memory palace [is] a mental construct of a place you are familiar with like your home or office,” says Dellis, “Something you have memorized already without realizing it.” Reinhard adds, “We connect things with locations, using this automatism of the brain. And it works.” Want to see for yourself? Try this out. Take this random list of ten words: lemming, pomegranate, shovel, snake, fireplace, magazine, sunglasses, rose, beach, statue. Place the words in a familiar setting — for example, it may be specific places in your house, or on your route to work. Once you’ve placed them in your memory palace, see how many you can recall.

Tip 3: Use a Name or Word Mnemonic:

Chances are you’re already familiar with this memory device. Remember Roy G. Biv, or Richard of York Gave Battle In Vain? Both are mnemonics for recalling the seven colours of the rainbow in the order they appear next to one another: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. With this device you simply turn the list you need to remember into a name (Roy G. Biv) or into a phrase you can remember (Richard of York…). Had more people remembered “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally”, the word mnemonic for remembering the order of operations in math this simple arithmetic problem might not have swept the Internet, fueling debate on its correct answer: 9–3 ÷ 1/3 + 1 =?

Tip 4: Don’t Be Afraid to Make “Meaningful” Mistakes when You’re Learning:

Making mistakes while learning can help you remember facts and lead to the correct answer, according to Canadian researchers at Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute and the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. But it’s the type of mistake that matters — you need to make errors that are meaningfully related to the right answer. Researchers gave their subjects a set of target words to learn, based either on the semantic category it belongs to, or its word stem. For half of the words, participants were given the answers, for the others, they were required to guess the word. The researchers wanted to know if participants would be better at remembering if they had made wrong guesses prior to studying it rather than seeing it right away. They found that this was only true if participants learned based on the categories rather than the word stems. Researchers believe that memory organizes information based on how it relates to other information conceptually rather than lexically. Lead investigator Andrée-Ann Cyr of the study said, “Near-miss guesses act as stepping stones for retrieval of the correct information.”

Tip 5: Space Out Your Learning:

Most students and ex-students are familiar with cramming: the panicked, last minute effort to stuff as much information on a subject into your head before a big exam, only to forget everything once the exam is over. Spaced repetition is the opposite method, one that works with how the brain remembers information and with longer lasting recall. Instead of cramming information all at once, spaced repetition is the system of learning a subject by reviewing and revisiting the information over set intervals of time. Also known as the Leitner System, it can be done using old-fashioned paper flashcards. Lately, several apps and sites allow you to do it digitally, including Synap.ac.

How does the system work? Say you’re studying for a Spanish exam that will include 100 vocabulary words. You would divide the cards into three piles: 1) you know well 2) you know moderately well and 3) you don’t know at all. On day one you would go through the cards separating them into your piles. Once you have your piles you would then have a schedule for studying the most difficult to remember on more days and the ones you know well on the least amount of days. For example, you would study the most difficult cards once a day, the moderately difficult cards every two days, and the well-remembered cards every five days. Cards can be moved to the well-remembered pile, or demoted to the difficult pile.

Finally, Reinhard has one last piece of advice: “Believe in yourself and have fun. The reason is simple: Memory is very confidence- and attitude-based. No need to be afraid: You will always remember much more than you forget. Best of luck!”

If you’d like to give Wizard a try, you can download the app straight to your phone through this link here.