How to remember anything

Effective strategy to improve your memory

Apr 23, 2024

"Memory is the second sight"
James Lendall Basford in Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897.

Hello! How are you? I hope all is well. Today, we'll explore how you can improve your memory and prevent forgetting things that are important to you. This is an essential topic that I wish I had known during my school years. Much of education relies on memorizing content, yet no one has ever explained to us how to do it effectively, something I never quite understood.

We all need to have a good memory. Memory is a tool for being more creative, as it allows you to link ideas like puzzle pieces. Memory also serves to retain valuable information, pass an exam, learn a language, skill, or simply remember memorable experiences.

Forgetting Curve

Today's research begins here. This concept was originally described by psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in the late 19th century and represents how the retention of information decreases over time. From his experiments, we know that most information is forgotten shortly after being learned, and the rate at which we forget gradually decreases.

The forgetting curve, therefore, has a steep slope at the beginning (we forget quickly) and gradually stabilizes, meaning long-term memory retains information better. Do you remember ever studying hard for a test the night before and hardly remembering anything days later? There's your reason.

But why do some things never get forgotten while others are forgotten quickly? Several factors come into play:

Complexity of the subject: familiarity, coherence of information, theme...
Presentation: audio, video, text, and use of mnemonic techniques.
Physiological aspects: stress level, sleep quality, distractions...

In other words, how the information is presented, if it has easy-to-relate concepts in some logical order, if it's familiar to us, if we're overwhelmed, worried, and more factors will affect our memory.

So, in a few days or weeks, half of what was learned is forgotten unless we review the information. This is where the key lies, reviewing the information. For this, I propose a technique that is really powerful and not the usual way.

Spaced Repetition

Spaced repetition is a technique based on periodically reviewing what we want to remember. The technique was developed by Hermann Ebbinghaus, the same person who described the forgetting curve. The technique has proven its effectiveness in numerous experiments (Smith & Scarf, 2017), even helping people with Alzheimer's (Kapler et al., 2015; Oren et al., 2014), as you can see, it works well.

The key is to reactivate the memory, that is, to schedule reviews of the information just before it starts to fade from your memory. Repeating the process helps consolidate the information in long-term memory. Refer back to the graph above and see that the more times you review something, the lower the slope of the curve.

Steps to apply spaced repetition

Create cards or use a spaced repetition tool: You should create, either on paper or in digital format, cards with a concept, image, or something that allows you to remember what you want to study on one side. On the other side of the card, put the complete explanation. If you do it digitally, try Anki or Quizlet, which make the process much more convenient.
Establish spacing: After reviewing a card, rate how easy it was to remember its information. If you easily remember all the information just by seeing the concept, wait a little longer before reviewing it again. If you had difficulty remembering it, reduce the time interval between repetitions. The key is to increase spacing as you remember better, thus greatly enhancing your long-term memory (Pa et al., 1995).

If you remember well, review less frequently; if you remember poorly, review more frequently.

Here's a personal example to inspire you on how you could apply it yourself. Since I started learning Mandarin Chinese four years ago, I've used spaced repetition to learn vocabulary. In my case, I use Anki to regularly review the new words I've added. As I remember them easily, the words appear less frequently. I have words that I haven't reviewed for months because they are completely consolidated. Gradually, you manage to make your head an orderly room full of books, where each volume is in its place.

If you're interested in spaced repetition for the specific case of learning a language, I recommend you read the book "Fluent Forever" by Wyner, G. (2014), where you can find more detailed information.

📚 References

Basford, J. L. (1897). Seven seventy seven sensations.
Ebbinghaus, H. (2013). Memory: a contribution to experimental psychology. Annals of Neurosciences, 20(4), 155-156. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4117135/
Kapler, I. V., Weston, T., & Wiseheart, M. (2015). Spacing in a simulated undergraduate classroom: Long-term benefits for factual and higher-level learning. *Learning and Instruction, 36*, 38-45. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959475214001042#!##!
Oren, S., Willerton, C., & Small, J. (2014). Effects of spaced retrieval training on semantic memory in Alzheimer’s disease: a systematic review. *Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research: JSLHR, 57*(1), 247-270. [Enlace](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24023380/)
Pa, W., Ej, G., & Ja, M. (1995). Two components of long-term memory. Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis, 55(4), 301-305. https://doi.org/10.55782/ane-1995-1090
Smith, C. D., & Scarf, D. (2017). Spacing Repetitions Over Long Timescales: A Review and a Reconsolidation Explanation. Frontiers In Psychology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00962
Wyner, G. (2014). Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language and Never Forget It. Harmony. https://books.google.co.ve/books/about/Fluent_Forever.html?id=gs1vDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y