Aside from practicing your brain, there are simple things that you can employ in order to improve your skill of recalling needed information.
1. Organization. You can write things down in journals, notebooks, or telephone books. Taking down notes on complicated information and organizing it to comprehensive categories can help a lot. You can use words, pictures and words in memorizing information.
2. Involve your senses. Though most of us tend to memorize using our visual sense, you can also associate information through using your sense of smell, touch, taste, feelings and emotions. The physical factor of using your senses helps in imprinting data into your brain.
3. Comprehend complex materials. If you need to memorize complex materials, you should understand it first and transform it into simplest forms of learning. If you can explain it in your own words, then you are successful in learning it.
4. Adapt data learning into your learning style. Learning data depends on your learning style, if you are a visual learner, you can memorize data effectively when you read or if you are an auditory learner, you can memorize well if you employ audio devices.
5. Over learning. You can practice information over and over again until it is associated to your brain. If you are preparing for exams for tomorrow, devote your review time by recalling what you have learned at different intervals. Rehearsal is very effective than cramming. If you have over learned certain information, recalling it will be a second nature for your brain.
6. Associate data to what you have learned. You can relate information what have you learned long ago, whether it is an update or entirely new data.
7. Pay attention. You can never recall an information if you never learned it. Learning is encoding data into your brain and to do this, you need focus. If you are distracted easily, try to understand the information in a serene place that you will not be interrupted.
8. Be motivates. If you really want to memorize and learn, you need a positive attitude. If you keep on telling yourself that you are a person with a bad memory, it will significantly affect your mental motivation.
9. Use mnemonics. Mnemonics are clues that can help us to remember anything through association of the data we want to recall with a symbol, a word or a picture.
The common mnemonic devices are:
1. Pictures you can use microphone to recall your friend mike or wind for Wendy. Always use positive images because the brain tends to block unpleasant images
2. Words. You can use words that start with the first letter of each word that can represent the initial of what you want to recall. Musicians usually recall the lines of a staff E, G, B, D, and F by memorizing the words Every good boy does fine.
3. Acronyms. These are initials that can create words. Musicians recall the spaces in a treble staff by memorizing the word FACE.
4. Rhymes. Most of us have learned that 30 days hath September, April, June and November.
5. Humor. By giving exaggerated symbols to associate facts and figures can be pleasing to brain coding because it is funny and it will be easier to remember.
These are some of the simple ways on how you can improve your memory. Through these methods, you can be sure that you will eventually have a sharper and much better memory.