Things are easier to remember if we can form patterns with them. Remembering the pattern then helps us to remember the original information. Disorganized and random information is very difficult to remember.

We find it easier to remember information we can visualize. Try to turn abstract ideas into something you can visualize either directly or through the use of analogies and metaphors. Use exaggeration and absurdities to make the visualizations stronger.

If there is something you want to remember, make up or use a rhyming saying, generally the sillier the better. Information embedded in rhyming poems or sayings is usually much easier to remember than the same information in a simple list or sentence format. Particularly if you also create a vivid mental image to accompany it.

Memory tricks usually rely on creating links between the things you want to remember and something you already know. For example link a list of things you want to remember to a place you know well, linking specific items on your list to specific aspects of the place you know. Then later when you mentally walk or look around the place you know well you should find you can recall the items on your original list. Variations of this technique have been used to enable remarkable feats of memory. Thus look to familiarize yourself with sequences you can use to attach a list of items to, such as certain buildings, or shopping centers, or streets or gardens. Make the associations between the list you want to remember and the sequence you already know vivid and preferably absurd or humorous. You should then find it easy to later on remember the list by stepping through the known sequence.

If you have a list of things to remember, creating a story that leads from one item to the next will significantly increase your ability to remember the items. Make the story vivid and absurd.

To remember a sequence of letters you can make up a short saying or story using each letter as the first letter of a word. Using humor helps. To remember a sequence of numbers try to chunk up the numbers into maybe dates or times of the day.

To improve your chances of remembering something, write it down. The very act of writing it down, assuming you do it slowly and deliberately, improves your memory of it.

Why try to rely on memory when you can write it down? Keep a list or notebook of things to remember and simply look at it now and again. You may never forget anything important again. This includes information about people, for example shoe and ring and dress and trouser sizes for people close to you, information about children or interests for acquaintances.

Use a calendar for any dates you need to remember, and, just as importantly, mark the days on which you need to take some sort of action, such as when to go out and buy presents or cards, when to send cards, when to undertake preparatory action in support of upcoming events, etc. etc.

Don’t try to keep in you head any thoughts you want to remember such as particularly creative ideas that occur to you. Always have with you a way of recording such thoughts, paper and pen or some means of audio recording.

Keep checklists for things you do which you might have to do again such as organizing events or making trips. You can improve such checklists based on your experience of using them.

For long term memories to form you need to pay close attention. If you are multitasking, for example doing e-mails or writing whilst also listening to someone, you will find it difficult to remember what that person said.

We have far more difficulty remembering things we did on autopilot than things we were paying attention to at the time. If you want to remember doing something, such as checking things when you leave the house – did I switch the iron off, or did I shut the front door – then ensure you think deliberately about doing them, maybe noticing some detail in the surroundings as you do so.

We are much better at remembering faces and occupations and where people are from than we are at remembering people’s names. To improve your ability to remember someone’s name when you first meet them, which you will get better at with practice, are:

◦ Ask them to repeat their name if you didn’t get it clearly, or possibly to spell it. Jot it down if you can;
◦ Mention their name back to them a couple of times. It reinforces it in your mind. However don’t go overboard;
◦ Envisage, possibly immediately afterwards, links between them and their name. Use your imagination. You are looking for a way that when you see them again, or recall their features or characteristics, then their name will also come to mind. A typical way of doing this is to take some feature, exaggerate it in your mind, and then find some play on words you can use to link their name to the feature. Alternatively you could make some play on words with their name and relate exaggerated images. However keep all this to yourself.

You can improve your memory of the things you are trying to learn or remember by working at it: pick out salient points, make your own summary notes using illustrations and diagrams if you can, and try to structure new information against your current understanding.

Items that stand out, so long as you notice them, are likely to be remembered. Thus if you have a list of things amongst which is one or two you really want to remember, make them stand out in some way, eg. by highlighting them in a bright color. You are much more likely to then remember them.

If you want to remember a particular event or something you’ve just seen or witnessed, spend about 30 seconds or so describing it to yourself, deliberately recalling specifics and particular vivid aspects. You are far more likely to remember it and remember details of it at a later date.

Our memories are malleable. They are not like video recordings, and over time they can and sometimes do change. Moreover in recalling past event we sometimes fill in vague recollections or gaps with what we expect must have happened rather than with what we actually witnessed happening. We have no realization of this happening and will be as confident about what was in fact a false memory as we will be with what was a true memory.

People reconstruct their memories in positive self-flattering ways. They see their past through rose-tinted glasses, and can even come to believe what are largely fantasy memories. Ask a husband and wife what percentage of the housework they themselves each do, and in the vast majority of cases and sum will be considerably greater than 100%.

We tend to remember things that reinforce what we already agree with or believe, and are less likely to remember things that don’t; which of course then further strengthens our existing beliefs.

We tend to have a very strong hindsight bias where we believe we knew how things were going to turn out before they did. Before events we rarely come to a strong conclusion one way or the other about how they will turn out, but after the event we clearly remember thoughts that related to the way they did turn out and largely forget those that related to the alternatives, leaving us with a strong impression that we ‘knew it all along’.

False memories can be created by implicit or explicit implications and suggestions on the part of the person asking us about what we can remember. There have been frequent examples of injustices resulting from careless or deliberately leading questioning of witnesses to, or victims of, crime.

There have been many proven cases of psychotherapists teasing out supposed repressed memories which in fact never existed. The techniques used to supposedly ‘reveal’ repressed memories are the same techniques that are very effective in creating false memories. Note that truly traumatic events are not repressed, particularly repeated ones: the view that people repress such memories as some form of defense mechanism is a myth.

Witnesses of a car accident will remember the cars as having been going faster if asked how fast they were going when they smashed into each other than they will if asked how fast they were going when they contacted each other.

To some extent our memories evolve each time we remember, and what we are remembering is the last time we remembered. Like Chinese whispers our memories are subtly changed each time we remember, influenced by the circumstances and our feelings at each remembering. This accounts in part for people being experts after the fact. Their memories of their earlier beliefs are strongly influenced by how they know things have turned out, and they overestimate the accuracy of their earlier beliefs.

The following are some common memory biases (1 of 4):

◦ We tend to remember the positive things resulting from the options we chose or decision we made more so than the negative things. Our memories support us in seeing ourselves as having made good decisions in the past;
◦ We remember things in a self-flattering way, in a way that justifies our actions and makes us feel good about ourselves and what we did or didn’t do;
◦ We overestimate our involvement in things that turned out well, and underestimate our involvement in things that turned out badly;

The following are some common memory biases (1 of 4):

◦ We tend to remember the past in a more exaggerated manner than it actually was. We can thus come to believe our school exam grades were better than they were or that we were better at given sports or activities than we actually were, albeit assuming we believe ourselves to have been better than average. If we believe we were worse than average we tend to remember ourselves as having been worse than we actually were;
◦ We incorrectly remember our past attitudes and behaviors as being consistent with our current attitudes and behaviors; ◦ We often to distort our own memories based on stereotypes and prejudices;
◦ We tend to remember humorous events better than non-humorous ones;

The following are some common memory biases (1 of 4):

◦ People are more likely to hold as true, statements that they have heard previously, vis-a-vis statement that they haven’t, even if they don’t remember having heard them;
◦ Uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better than tasks we have completed;
◦ We can misattribute the source of our memories, whereby we attribute a memory to an incorrect context or circumstance. We can sometimes for example mistakenly believe that we saw in person something that we actually saw on television;
◦ We sometimes believe certain ideas were our own when in fact they were ones we have read or heard about;
◦ We tend to remember concepts presented in a picture format better than concepts presented in a word format;

The following are some common memory biases (1 of 4):

◦ We tend to remember concepts presented in a picture format better than concepts presented in a word format;
◦ We remember things at the beginning and end of lists better than we remember things in the middle;
◦ We recall personal events from our late teens and early twenties better than personal events from other periods in our lives;
◦ We can often remember the idea behind what someone said whilst what it was they actually said. If we get the wrong idea we can thus readily misremember what they actually said;
◦ We have a tendency to perceive recent events as more remote than they were and remote events as more recent than they were. This is sometimes knows as the telescoping effect.

As a result of memory biases, when we meet people we once knew a long time ago we feel we have changed significantly whilst they have barely changed at all.

Whilst our memories change as they are influenced by our beliefs and biases at the time we are remembering, our confidence in those memories also increases. We thus have the double whammy of both a changing memory and a stronger belief in the truth of what are becoming increasingly false memories.

We are capable of producing new brain cells no matter how old we are, and significant memory loss is not an inevitable result of getting older. But you have to actively use your brain if you are to keep your memory in a reasonably good state.

Regular physical exercise boosts your memory, and this is increasingly important when you get older. Good physical exercise for your memory includes swimming, cycling, or reasonably brisk walks.

Good sleep is important for effective long-term memory.

Meditation is good for the brain in general, and good for memory in particular.

Stress seriously impairs both the creation of new memories and the retrieval of old ones.

Being overweight generally impairs memory.

Caffeine drinks help you feel more alert but they don’t help your memory. In the long run you are better off getting more sleep whilst revising than spending more time studying on a caffeine high.

Food rich in antioxidants seems beneficial to memory, including berries, plums, oranges, grapes, spinach, and broccoli.

Place things where they will trigger useful memories. For example if you need to take something out of the house with you, put it next to the front door.

If you are regularly misplacing certain things, such as keys, ensure you identify somewhere where you will keep them and ensure you put them there whenever you have finished using them.

It is common to walk into a room and forget why you went in there, generally more common as you get older. If this has happened to you, try to mentally retrace your steps to think about what you were doing when you initially decided to go into the room.

If you have mislaid something and can’t remember where you left it, the following are some tips to help find it: focus on where you were and what you were doing when you last saw or used it; think about whether it is something someone else might have borrowed or moved; be systematic in your searching, starting with the most likely place, but be sure you search everywhere in a given place checking any nooks and crannies – most people when they search for something end up spending much of their time searching again places they have already searched.

You are likely to remember information if you are in a similar state as when you first learned it. When studying for exams it is good advice to do your revising and test papers in a similar environment to that which will be relevant in the exams itself. Thus with relative quiet and sitting up at a table.

Your memory of an event, or something you read or experience, will be better if you think beforehand about your expectations and what you are looking to get out of it. Reading a summary of something beforehand will help you remember what you read more so than if you just read it.

You can significantly increase the likelihood of remembering something long term if you review it, and test yourself on it, at regular intervals. These should be progressively spaced out – for example after an hour, a day, a week, a month, and finally after about 4 or 5 months. Summarize for yourself the core principles of given topics and then set yourself a sequence of reminders following the above pattern to review them.

One set of facts can often overwrites or interferes with a similar set of facts. When you are learning, give yourselves breaks to avoid simply having more recently learned facts overwriting facts learned early in the same session, particularly if they are similar. Also, don’t be surprised to find that something once familiar becomes difficult to remember what it was originally like after it has changed. For example if can be difficult to remember the previous telephone numbers of people you know, or places you knew when younger which have since changed. If you know that something or someplace is going to change, and you might want remember it, then make sure you get some written or picture copy of it before the change.

When studying to remember, frequent testing of yourself significantly increases what you remember, even though it generally doesn’t feel like it. Thus far better to study and regularly test yourself, than just to keep studying.

Learning to visualize is a cornerstone of a powerful memory. Techniques to improve your visualization include:

◦ Look at an object then close your eyes and try to see it in your mind’s eye. Open your eyes to see it again, and again close your eyes. Keep trying this till you see at least an outline with your eyes closed;
◦ Relax somewhere on your own, close your eyes, and try to describe out loud any images you perceive, no matter how vague. Practice should help to strengthen the images;
◦ Try drawing. Your drawings don’t need to be realistic. Just representative to you of what you are trying to bring to mind. Try looking at something, then look away and draw it from memory, looking again, then adding more detail. But avoid judging how good your drawings are. You are not trying to be someone who draws well. You need to see it as simply a skill like handwriting where you only need to write well enough to be able to read it back to yourself.

Things we experience or learn in the presence of distinctive smells or sounds or sights or tastes or feelings are more readily remembered when again in the presence of the same. It is not uncommon for childhood memories to suddenly resurface as a result of encountering some particular smell.

Just because we or someone else is positive about the accuracy of a memory does not mean the memory is accurate. People are often just as confident about false or distorted memories as they are about true memories.

Emotions influence our memories. Information learned whilst emotionally aroused is more likely to be remembered, but information learned just before a strong emotion is less likely to be remembered.

We remember the unusual rather than the usual. You leave home every morning to go to work. You will tend to only remember those specific occasions when something different occurred. If there is something in particular you want to remember then you need to make something about it different to usual circumstances.

We better remember things learned whilst in a positive frame of mind than those learned when in a negative frame of mind.

How an experience ends has a more lasting impact on us than the length or even the intensity of the experience itself. Thus always look to end any experience on a high note.

Many common metaphors relating to memory are inaccurate and misleading. Memories are not buried in our brain, such that when we dig them up they are perfectly preserved. And we do not record in the deep recesses of our brain everything we ever see or hear. At best we remember odd moments from the past and reconstruct many memories by filling in what we presume must have been the case, and often it wasn’t.