75 Ways to Keep Your Memory Sharp as We Age
Be In the Moment
- focus on learning.
- You need to pay attention to your environment
- To learn how to stay in the moment,
- Don’t multitask
- Create a Learning Environment
- You may be accustomed to background noise (like traffic), or you may need complete silence,
- understand your learning style.
Use All Your Senses
- If you’re learning something, involve as many senses as possible to help retain the experience.
- Drawing and writing includes the use of motor skills that help you to remember information as you stimulate motor pathways.
- If you utilize these motor skills in a task, don’t try something new for a few days.
- For instance, if you lack charts and diagrams for your reading materials, create them yourself s
- Take notes on index cards or in a notebook as you listen to a lecture
- Sound includes talking to yourself
- Talk with another person about the information you’ve gathered.
- If you’re studying information that includes models (like a car engine) touch various parts
- Attach your ideas to an inert object for your learning process.
- Along the same lines, you can attach steps within a learning process to actual stairways or to stairs that you draw.
- Although taste and smell both evoke strong memories, they aren’t very convenient for organizing or holding information in your mind.
Use Mnemonic Devices
- Mnemonic devices can provide clues to help you remember things.
- Use positive or amusing images
- Make the images colorful and three-dimensional, they’ll be easier to remember.
- Use alliteration to help memorize certain data.
- Rhymes also are useful for memorization.
- “Chunk” information, or arrange a long list into smaller units or categories that will be easier to remember.
- Connect new data to information you already know.
Organize
- Disorganized people report more memory problems than those individuals who are accustomed to organization.
- Write things down, but write them down in appropriate places.
- Lists are great for handling stress – even if the list is a long one, it will be rewarding to cross items off as you complete them.
- Learn how to prioritize.
- Use online or paper calendars to remember important dates.
- Use both words and pictures to help retain information
- Break detailed ideas down into simple thoughts that you can convey to someone else (or to yourself).
- Similarly, if you understand basic concepts, this memory will help you to retrieve isolated details about that concept.
- When you can’t write something down, visualize those ideas as being compartmentalized in your brain, much like you would file information away into a filing cabinet.
- Keep a pad, pencil and small flashlight by your bed to write down ideas that you have at night.
Overlearn
- Spend some time with new material a few hours after you’ve been introduced to it. Review notes and try to consolidate the notes into a broad concept or idea.
- Review notes and other information at intervals throughout the next few days.
- Review material until it becomes second nature.
- Retain a Positive Attitude
- If you don’t want to learn something, chances are you won’t learn it.
- Tell yourself that you want to learn and that you can learn and remember the information at hand.
- If you constantly tell yourself and others that you have a bad memory, this action actually hampers the ability of your brain to remember.
- A positive outlook and positive mental feedback sets up an expectation for success.
Exercise Regularly
- Exercise increases oxygen to the brain, and oxygen is important for brain function.
- Physical exercise reduces the risk for disorders that lead to memory loss, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
- A mix of programs that involve both aerobic exercise and strength training are of greatest benefit, with exercise sessions lasting at least 30 minutes.
- Exercise may enhance the effects of helpful brain chemicals and protect brain cells.
- Exercise helps to control blood sugar levels.
- Exercise may increase self-confidence, and may reduce anxiety and depression and help you to retain a more positive attitude about life.
Manage stress
- Stress can make it difficult to remember and to concentrate.
- Physical exercise can help to relieve stress. Even a simple walk can help to clear the mind.
- Jokes, soothing music, and even a short nap can help to break the stress.
- On the other hand, arousing, exciting, momentous occasions, including stressful ones, get filed away very readily.
Try to remember all that, K?
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I love this site. I will tell my parents to check it out. They are both early 70s but brilliant at keeping themselves young, using many of the methods you mention here.