Five memory hacks to make you smarter

Strategy 1: Rereading. 

Memory hack: Space your reading

Passive rereading is probably the least effective study method, but you can make better use of those sessions, however, by ensuring that you return to the material at regular intervals. You might read a chapter, move on to something else, and then re-read it after an hour, a day, or a week to help stimulate the memory.

You can also benefit from questioning your understanding before you return to the material, which helps tune your attention  you do and don’t know and increases your mental engagement.

Strategy 2: Underlining and highlighting

Memory hack: Pause to think

The process of underlining key words and phrases should help you to engage more with the information, and it makes it easier to identify the most important passages later on. 

Scientists suggest that you read the text once through cold, and then mark up the relevant passages on the second pass. By forcing you to think more carefully about each point and its relative importance in the overall argument, this encourages the more active processing that is essential for the formation of stronger memories.

Strategy 3: Note-taking

Memory hack: Be concise

Your overenthusiasm – and propensity to include everything that is mentioned – can easily become a vice. The fewer words students use to express an idea in their notes, the more likely they are to remember it afterwards.

These findings may also explain why it is better to take notes with a pen and paper, rather than using a laptop: writing by hand is slower than typing and forces you to be more concise in what you note down.

Strategy 4: Outlining

Memory hack: Search for deep patterns

Students offered a course outline do tend to perform better, new evidence suggests, since it allows them to identify the underlying connections between different topics. These studies suggest that it’s often more efficient to begin with a skeletal outline before study, and to then fill in more of the details as you progress.

 You can easily make your own bullet-point outlines of a text or lecture. Being concise is key: you have to focus on the structure of the argument rather than getting lost in the details, if you are to see those underlying connections and make the most of that deeper learning.

Strategy 5: Flash cards

Memory hack: Beware overconfidence

 

Most people struggle to gauge the limits of their own thinking, believing that their decisions are smarter than they really are.

Indeed, one study found that the more confident people felt about their learning of a fact, the less likely they were to recall it later.We all underestimate just how easily we will forget material in the future. The use of flash cards can therefore backfire.