How To Remember Data: Sharpen Your Short-term Memory
December 3rd, 2008

Numbers unlike names of objects or people are not very easy to retain unless related with something special like a phone number or someone special is birthday or the like. So what should you do now? Just keep in mind the following points-

1. Be interested in whatever it may be- your interest in the data is of utmost importance. No one can remember anything for long unless he has an interest in the particular subject. Nobody can ever remember anything just by looking at it once. It has to sink into you by constant reading or by utmost concentration. One must look for something interesting (or maybe a double meaning) or a fact in whatever one is reading. One must also try to look for something interesting in the person whom he/she is conversing with. It helps your memory to retrieve the information about that person later more easily. The greater the amount of interest, the longer that you'll be able to remember that piece of information or the person you want to remember. While reading something difficult or boring, we often start drifting from the topic to something else. This can be eliminated by keeping a pen and paper by your side whenever you sit down to study. As soon as you find yourself getting distracted, start writing on the paper. This really helps in maintaining your concentration.

2. You must be totally focussed in whatever you do. All your concentration must be at one place if you want to remember something or transfer something from your short-term memory to long-term memory. There are a lot of things and stuff waiting in our short-term memory to get into our long-term memory. However, until and unless one is fully concentrating on the subject and material at hand it's of no use. Our short-term memory cannot hold much information and thus it is always better to transfer the data from our short-term memory to long term memory as efficiently as possible. Just focus your attention to what you want to retain and not on what you don't want to remember.

3. Elaborating a subject or a word or a phrase is a very effective, tried and tested method for remembering anything. Add details wherever possible in your mind or make the image more colourful in your mind. It helps retain the information much better and longer. Try to add certain extra objects to the subject in your mind. For example if you want to remember the name of the Nobel laureate Gunter Grass, you can imagine a guy carrying a gun of grass to take the award. Such a vivid and colourful image will always remind you of the name (gun=Gunter, grass= Grass). Or maybe if you want to remember some topic's title u can use the initials of the words to make it sound funny like Rust and Corrosion Analysis= RusCoran or anything that you can remember.

4. Try to make associations between things that you already know and things that are new to you. Although most of the time the associations are done unconsciously but if done on a conscious level, it can help remember even difficult matter and that too much more easily. Also try to make as many associations as possible because the more the number of associations the more strongly it will be embedded in your mind. For example if you are introduced to someone called Charlie, you can try to associate him with Charlie Chaplin or someone else with the name of Charlie whom you already know.

Following the above-mentioned four points, you will surely be able to retain information for much longer and in a more organized manner

---

Please use the form below to comment on this page:

Name:
Email Address:	(kept private)
Comments:
Let me know if my message is replied to:	yes
Please enter the digits 513 in the box. This keeps away spam robots:

PHP Warning: Unknown(): Unable to load dynamic library 'C:\Program Files\HSphere\3rdparty\PHP\PHP5\ext\php_curl.dll' - The specified module could not be found. in Unknown on line 0 PHP Warning: Unknown(): Unable to load dynamic library 'C:\Program Files\HSphere\3rdparty\PHP\PHP5\ext\php_gd2.dll' - The specified module could not be found. in Unknown on line 0 PHP Warning: Unknown(): Unable to load dynamic library 'C:\Program Files\HSphere\3rdparty\PHP\PHP5\ext\php_mysql.dll' - The specified module could not be found. in Unknown on line 0