Time
CAN be on Your Side with "Make Time for Success!" Discover
the 39 essential tools needed to map out your goals, maximize
your effectiveness, and win control of your time and your life.
Mind
Tools Career Coaches give you the focused personal help you
need to find direction, think through your goals, and make the
very most of your life and career.
Are you often unable to remember an
important fact or figure? Do you forget people's names at the
worst moments? Are you ever asked a question, and you should know
the answer, but you struggle to form an intelligent reply?
These are common instances where a good memory is important.
Memory is more than recalling information for exams or trivia
games. It's an important work skill that you can develop and
improve. Whether it's remembering key statistics during a
negotiation, or quoting a precedent-setting action when making a
decision, or impressing clients with your knowledge of their
product lines - your ability to remember is a major advantage.
People with good memories are often seen as knowledgeable, smart,
competent, and dependable. And there are many techniques you can
use to develop your own ability to remember information - and then
recall it when and where you need it.
Take Care of Your Health
The basis for a good memory is a healthy mind and body. You can't
expect your brain to function at its best if you don't take care
of the body that feeds it. Here are some key issues that you need
to address:
Eat well - Make sure key vitamins are in your diet, including
folic acid, vitamin B12, and antioxidants. These improve the
sharpness of the mind. If necessary, take vitamin supplements.
Drink plenty of water - Most of us are dehydrated and don't even
know it. When you don't drink enough water, your body and mind
become weak and tired. Water makes red blood cells more active and
gives you more energy.
Get enough sleep - During sleep, your brain recharges itself.
Studies have shown that your brain needs sleep to change new
memories into long-term memories.
Don't smoke - Limit caffeine and alcohol use (excessive alcohol
can seriously affect your short term memory). Get enough exercise.
These basic health tips allow you to maximize your brain's
abilities.
Use Mnemonics
Mnemonics are simple memory-improving tools that help you connect
everyday, easy-to-remember items and ideas to information you want to remember.
Later, by recalling these everyday items, you can also recall what
you wanted to remember.
There are many mnemonic techniques:
The Number/Rhyme Technique - This allows you to remember ordered
lists. Start with a standard word that rhymes with the number (we
recommend 1 - Bun, 2 - Shoe, 3 - Tree, 4 - Door, 5 - Hive, 6 -
Bricks, 7 - Heaven, 8 - Gate, 9 - Line, 10 - Hen). Then create an
image that associates each with the thing you're trying to
remember. To remember a list of South American countries using
number/rhyme, you might start with:
One - Bun/Colombia: A BUN with the COLUMn of a Greek temple
coming out of it.
Two - Shoe/Venezuela: VENus de Milo coming out of the sea on a
SHOE.
Three - Tree/Guyana: Friends call GUY and ANnA sitting in a
TREE.
Four - Door/Ecuador: A DOOR in the shape of a circle/globe with a
golden EQUAtOR running around it.
The Number/Shape System - Here, create images that relate to the shape
of each number, and connect those images to the items in your
list. Let's use the same example:
One - Spear/Columbia: The shaft of the SPEAR is a thin marble
COLUMn.
Two - Swan/Venezuela: This time, VENus is standing on the back
of a SWAN.
Three - Bifocal Glasses/Guyana: GUY has just trodden on ANnA's
bifocals. She's quite cross!
Four - Sailboat/Ecuador: The boat is sailing across the golden
line of the EQUAtOR on a globe.
The Alphabet Technique - This works well for lists of more than 9 or
10 items (beyond 10, the previous techniques can get too
difficult). With this system, instead of finding a word that
rhymes with the number, you associate the things you want to
remember with a particular letter of the alphabet, from A to Z.
This is an efficient way to remember an ordered list of up to 26
items.
The Journey System - In your mind, think about a familiar journey or
trip: For example, you might go from your office to your home.
Associate the things that you want to remember with each landmark
on your journey. With a long enough, well-enough known journey,
you can remember a lot of things!
The Roman Room System (Loci Method) - This technique uses location
to stimulate your memory. Connect your list with items you see in
a familiar room or location. You might find associations with
things in your kitchen, in your office, or at a familiar grocery
store.
Members of the Career Excellence Club
can read the Bite-Sized Training session
Remember! to review
and practice some of these mnemonic techniques.
Mind Mapping
Mind maps (also called concept maps or memory maps) are an
effective way to link ideas and concepts in your brain, and then
"see" the connections firsthand. Mind mapping is a note-taking
technique that records information in a way that shows you how
various pieces of information fit together. There's a lot of truth
in the saying "A picture speaks a thousand words", and mind maps
create an easily-remembered "picture" of the information you're trying to
remember.
This technique is very useful to summarize and combine information
from a variety of sources. It also allows you to think about
complex problems in an organized manner, and then present your
findings in a way that shows the details as well as the big
picture.
The mind map itself is a useful end
product. However, the process of creating the map is just as
helpful for your memory. Fitting all the pieces together,
and looking for the connections, forces you to really
understand what you're studying - and it keeps you from
trying to simply memorize.
Challenge Your Brain
As with other parts of your body, your mind needs exercise. You
can exercise your brain by using it in different ways, on a regular
basis. Try the following:
Learn a new skill or start a hobby - Find activities that build
skills you don't normally use in your daily life. For example, if
you work with numbers all day, develop your creative side with art
classes or photography.
Use visualization on a regular basis - Since much of memory
involves associating and recalling images, it's important to build
this skill. Get plenty of practice with this!
Keep active socially - When you communicate and interact with
people, you have to be alert. This helps keep your brain strong
and alive.
Focus on the important things - You can't possibly remember
everything, so make sure you give your brain important things to
do - and don't overload it with "waste." The "garbage in, garbage
out" philosophy works well here.
Tip:
While it's important to develop a good
memory, remembering unnecessary things (such as tasks you
need to do, or things you need to buy) is hard work. What's
more, because these consume short-term memory, they can
diminish your ability to concentrate on other things. They
can also leave you stressed, as you struggle to remember all
of the things you have to do.
Write these things down on your
to-do
list! This way, you don't have to remember everything. And
if your memory fails, you know where to look for the
information you need.
Keep your brain active with
memory games and puzzles - Try Sudoku, chess, Scrabble, and Word Twist as well as trivia games,
pair matching, and puzzles. These are popular ways to practice
memorization while having fun. And explore brain-training sites
like Lumosityas a way of pepping up
your mind.
Key Points
Your memory is a valuable asset that you should protect and
develop. Even if you no longer have to memorize information for
exams, the ability to remember quickly and accurately is always
important.
Whether it's remembering the name of someone you met at a
conference last month, or recalling the sales figure from last
quarter, you must rely on your memory. Learn and practice the
above techniques to keep your mind healthy.
You have only one brain - so treat it well, give it lots of
exercise, and don't take it for granted. You never know when
you'll need its skills to be at their best!
We welcome appropriate reprinting and reuse of Mind Tools material,
however, you must
get our permission first!
To do this, please visit our Permissions Center.
MindTools.com is one of the Internet's most-visited career skills resources. Click here to see analysis.
Mind Tools
Free eNewsletter
New Career Skills - twice a month PLUS Remember! Workbook Free!
Subscribe to our free e-newsletter, and get
new skill-builder tools every two weeks. Plus get our Remember! Workbook worth US$9.99 free when you subscribe!
"Great
newsletter. Simple and not too long. Great articles. Thank you."
Mandi J Luis, Burlington, Ontario, Canada
What People Say
About Mind Tools...
"I love this newsletter! As a manager I can relate to
all topics and use them quite often within myself and my team."
Christina Wall,
Davenport, IA, USA
"I have been receiving your newsletter
and using your website as a resource for a while now. I wanted
to let you know that you have done a great job at providing
useful business tools and explainations on how to use the
tools. Before finding your site I used some of the information
while consulting with clients. Now I just refer people to
your site and it saves me time."
Time
Management
