Why We Forget and How to Remember Better, page 29
Test Yourself
The best way to study is to test yourself. The act of retrieving a memory makes it easier to retrieve it again later. Look at your highlighted textbook, underlined notes, or marked-up prospectus. Turn each concept, idea, formula, pathway, vocabulary word, financial figure, or other information you need to learn into a flashcard with the question on one side and the answer on the other. Then test yourself with the flashcards. (Note that there are smartphone apps that have similar functions. As long as you can do the different types of testing and sorting that we describe, they should probably work as well as physical cards.)
As you are testing yourself, sort the cards into two piles, those in which you easily knew the answer, and those in which you didn’t know the answer, got it wrong, struggled with it, or guessed. Test yourself again on the cards you had trouble with. Keep repeating the process, periodically re-studying the cards you knew well so you’ll strengthen that knowledge too. Don’t be afraid of making errors; as long as you check your answers and correct your mistakes, you will remember the correct information.
What if you’re going to be taking an essay test? After you’ve mastered the material that will go into the essays with your flashcards, test yourself by writing practice essays. Your professor uses short-answer tests? Create some of those and practice. You’re going to be presenting a slide deck in a meeting and you need to prepare for unanticipated questions? Enlist as many colleagues as you can to give you any and all possible questions that could come up, and study those as well.
Depending upon the material, you may also benefit by taking practice tests that others have developed. You might find relevant tests online or in books that will help test your knowledge and—particularly if explanations are provided—help you learn the material. One of the reasons that many people benefit from taking a class to improve their performance on the standardized tests that are used for entrance to colleges, graduate schools, and professional schools is that such classes typically emphasize testing, testing, and more testing.
Space Out Your Studying—Avoid Cramming
In addition to testing yourself, it is critical to space out your studying over a number of sessions. How much should you space it out? Enough so that a little bit of forgetting occurs between sessions. Then the relearning takes more effort—which is the point. You may start spacing your studying by just a few minutes or an hour or two, but the interval should lengthen as you gain a better grasp on the material. Sleep is important, so spacing it out a day with sleep in between is generally good once you can remember the material for several hours. But don’t stop there—revisit the material a week later, and once a month after that if you want to remember it for the year-end test (and for the rest of your life).
Lastly, avoid cramming (doing all your studying in a short period of time). Sometimes you can get away with cramming at the last minute, but more often you’ll do poorly on the exam or in the meeting. Most importantly, the knowledge you learn by cramming will likely vanish completely in a few weeks. It is a poor way to study.
Vary Your Studying
To build not only a strong but also a detailed memory of whatever content you’re trying to remember, it is important to study in multiple ways from multiple vantage points. For example, once you can generate all the answers to the questions on your flashcards, turn the cards around and see if you can generate all the questions from the answers. Think about the company from the perspective of the leadership, managers, frontline employees, customers, and stockholders. Imagine historical events from each group’s point of view, not just those provided in the textbook, and think about any current-day parallels. When learning a biochemical pathway, think about different ways the system could break down and what consequences would arise.
Interleave Your Studying
Along with varying your learning by studying in multiple ways, it’s beneficial to interleave these different types of studying. So, even better than first testing yourself on all the questions and then testing yourself on all the answers, take your flashcards and divide them into two piles. Turn one pile upside down (so that the questions are facing up on one pile and the answers are facing up on the other) and shuffle the cards back together. Now test yourself on all of the flashcards. Once you’ve done that, turn the cards over and do it again. In this way you’re interleaving different types of problems that you’re giving yourself to learn the material. Use these same principles for learning that doesn’t lend itself to flashcards. It’s better to work on problem types ABCDABCDABCD rather than AAABBBCCCDDD. So, to consolidate your understanding, solve one type of math problem and then another, rather than solving a set of problems that all require the same underlying concept or procedural technique.
Study Under Different Conditions
In order to be easily able to retrieve the material you’re studying under any conditions, it’s important to vary the conditions in which you’re studying. For example, if you are studying advanced cardiac life support, it’s important that you can quickly recall that material whenever you need it. So, study the material in the morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Study in your bedroom, the clinic, and the hospital. Quiz yourself on the material indoors and outside. The more you vary when and where you study, the more easily the material will come to mind in any context.
Solve the Problem First, Then Learn How to Do It
Your teacher has assigned a series of problems you have to solve for your homework. The only issue is, you haven’t yet learned how to solve these types of problems. Did your teacher make a mistake? Are they just being mean? Not at all. As counterintuitive as it may feel, you’re more likely to remember material if you try to figure out how to solve the problem first—and then read the chapter telling you how to do it—than if you read the chapter first. Similarly, in the working world, it’s best to first try solving most problems on your own, and then—after struggling with it for a bit—go to a colleague or your boss for help.
Of course, there has to be the possibility that you can solve the problem (or get close to the solution). The term we use for this type of “right-size” problem is desirable difficulty, meaning that it is possible to solve the problem with your existing knowledge and a lot of effort, so it’s not too hard nor too easy. By trying to solve the problems from the homework or the project first, and then going back and reading the chapter or speaking with a colleague (and correcting your answers, as needed), you’ll be putting in the effort you need to build a strong memory of the material.
Strategies When Retrieving Memories
Stay Calm: Relax
You are already running late for your appointment when you realize you can’t find your keys. Although it’s natural to begin to panic, work to stay calm and relax. Stress will only make it more difficult for you to remember where you left your keys or to recall whatever material you’re trying to bring to mind. Remember that retrieval failures are common and there’s no need to get upset about them. Of course, it’s easy to say you should stay calm, but harder to do in practice. We recommend a few basic approaches:
• Take one or two slow, deep breaths as you feel your belly expand. These large, slow breaths will trigger your parasympathetic nervous system, which will help you relax.
• Keep in mind that everyone has these retrieval failures, your difficulty is likely temporary, and the information you are seeking is likely to come to mind soon.
• Know that you have all the techniques we’re about to describe at your fingertips to help you remember.
Once you are calm, you can begin to use the retrieval strategies outlined in this chapter.
Minimize Interference and Blocking
When you are struggling to retrieve information to answer a question, try to resist the natural urge to run through all possible specific answers—and never keep saying the wrong answer if you know it’s wrong. Although well intentioned, these attempts will actually interfere with your retrieval and block the correct answer. So, if your friend asks you, “What’s the name of that movie you were telling me about last week?” it won’t generally help to go through your favorite movies of all time or the current movies playing (unless you already know it’s likely to be on one of those lists). Running through those lists will just block the right answer.
Create General and Diverse Retrieval Cues
When searching for information from your memory that doesn’t come easily, try bringing to mind broad and varied retrieval cues. Think of other things that you do know related to the information you’re searching for. Or think of a time when you were discussing or learning the information. For example, if you’re trying to recall which movie you were discussing with your friend, rather than run through a list of movies, try recalling other details and topics of the conversation you had that day. Think about the emotions you were experiencing and the expressions on your friend’s face. These general and diverse cues will help you to recall the information you’re looking for without blocking it.
Return to the Internal and External Context of Your Learning
Another good technique to recall information is to imagine yourself back in the same time and location you were in when you were learning the information in the first place. If you’re looking for your keys, mentally retrace your steps when you got home. Also think about your internal context—how you were feeling—at the time. In doing so, you may then recall you were so thirsty that, keys in hand, you went right to the refrigerator to get a bottle of water. (Sure enough, there are your keys, sitting on the refrigerator shelf.) If you’re having trouble recalling which colleague has the dairy allergy, think about where you were when you were having that conversation and other topics you discussed at the time.
If you’re trying to bring material you’ve learned to mind when you’re in the middle of an exam or presentation, mentally time travel and try to picture yourself back in your classroom, office, bedroom, or wherever you were when you were learning the material you’re trying to retrieve. Visualize the textbook, homework assignments, prospectus, or websites you reviewed. If you studied to music, think of the tunes that you were listening to at the time. If you like to drink hazelnut coffee while studying, imagine that flavor in your mouth.
Protect Against False Memories
False memories are common. Remember that when you retrieve a memory you are actually reconstructing it. For this reason, it’s easy for mistakes to become incorporated in your memory, such as two memories becoming mixed up with each other.
Evaluate the Details
The best way to avoid false memories is to evaluate the memory you have just retrieved. Is your memory vivid and full of sensory details? Although not a guarantee of authenticity, the more specific details that your memory contains, the more likely it is to be real and accurate. Memories (or parts of memories) that are vague and contain only general information may be false or distorted half-truths. For example, if you are asked if you went on Disney’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride, and you remember the loud cracking and clicking sounds that periodically occurred, and how parts of it vibrated and shook so much you thought it was going to shake apart your spine, these specific sensory details clue you that it’s probably a real memory. But is it a memory of Thunder Mountain? It can be worth spending time searching for additional specific details to make sure that there wasn’t another, similar rollercoaster, that was the source of your vivid memory. On the other hand, when asked about whether you went on the Haunted Mansion ride, if you think you did but can only remember it being a spooky ride in the dark, these vague and general notions suggest that it’s as likely to be a false memory as a true one.
Could It Have Happened That Way?
Another way to evaluate whether a memory might be false is to compare its contents with factual information. For example, you may recall that you took your daughter to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney World when she was 10 years old, but when you realize that it wasn’t built until she was 12, you know that must have been a false, distorted, or otherwise mixed-up memory.
How Well Should You Remember This Content?
Perhaps a childhood friend says to you, “Remember when we went ice skating on that pond in sixth grade?” Simply thinking about this question might trigger you to have a vague memory of skating on a frozen pond with your friend in sixth grade. But is it really true? If you went ice skating on ponds dozens of times growing up, it will be difficult for you to sort out whether the particular memory you’re bringing up is true or false. However, as we mentioned earlier in this chapter, things that are distinctive are easier to remember. For this reason, if you only skated on a pond once or twice in your life, these experiences would be distinctive, and you would be more likely to vividly recall the memory of skating on the pond with your friend if it had actually happened. In this case, despite your vague memory, you can respond, “No, I don’t think that was me skating with you on the pond in sixth grade, because I’m sure I would have remembered that.”
Did You Use Extra Effort? That Will Help for Next Time
Were you able to retrieve the memory you were looking for, but only with much effort and perhaps some of the techniques we outlined in this chapter? If so, that’s great! The extra effort that you put in to recall that memory will help you retrieve it more easily next time.
What About Your Learning Style?
Do you need to know your learning style to know the best way to study? No. Don’t try to learn things by auditory or visual means alone. Everyone learns better when they draw on all their aptitudes. Although you may have a preference for how you like to learn new material, that doesn’t mean that translates into how you are best able to learn. Be careful not to confuse learning that seems easy with learning that will stick with you. Don’t forget that we remember things better when we put effort into them, not when they come easily.
What is important is that your learning matches the nature of what is being taught. For example, art history, anatomy, and geometry should be learned visually; literature, poetry, and music theory should be learned auditorily. For material that could be learned either way, although using both methods is always preferable, most studies show that, if you had to choose, learning visually produces the best retention of the material. For example, if you can turn spreadsheets into bar graphs, line graphs, pie charts, Pareto charts, and other visual displays, they will be easier to remember.
Study Together—and Alone
There are many benefits to studying in small groups. Critical thinking skills often increase as you learn from others how to get past sticking points and problem areas you may have faced alone. You may also better appreciate the breadth and depth of the material. Be careful, however, of studying for exams or preparing for presentations in a group if you alone will be required to recall all the information. Otherwise, in the middle of the exam or presentation, you may end up with the realization that although the group as a whole might have known the answer to the question, you as an individual do not. We therefore recommend that you study both in groups and by yourself—this way you get the best of both approaches.
Sleep as a Strategy
Whatever you are studying, you’ll remember it better if you sleep after you put in effort to learn the material. So, if you have 10 hours of material to learn and 10 days to learn it, you’ll master the material better and remember it longer if—in addition to everything we mentioned earlier in this chapter—you study the material an hour each day rather than cramming 10 hours the day prior to the exam. (Note that if the 10 hours of material are 10 unrelated units that don’t build on each other, make sure you review some of the material you previously learned each day.)
It’s also helpful to review the material shortly before bed—that will increase the chances that sleep will strengthen your memory for the material. If you enjoy listening to calm, relaxing music while you are studying, try listening to the same music while you are getting ready for sleep; this may also increase the chances that sleep will strengthen your memory for the material.
Don’t stay up all night studying; you’ll remember the information better if you give yourself time to sleep. And make sure you get enough sleep each night—the studies show that students who sleep well for several weeks prior to the exam do the best on it. Make sure you get enough sleep each night.
Reflect upon Your Retrieval
Lastly, if you’re trying to improve your memory abilities, it’s worthwhile to reflect upon whether your memory worked for you at your recent client meeting, job interview, social event, or exam. Were you easily able to recall the names, dates, locations, and other material you wanted to? Or did you struggle—or fail—to retrieve the content you needed at the time? If you did well, congratulations! If not, using the list at the end of this chapter of all the different strategies we presented, write down whether you used each one a lot, a little bit, or not at all. Think about whether strategies you didn’t use (or only used a little) might have enabled you to master the material better. Use that information for the next time you need to prepare for a meeting, presentation, exam, or interview.
What’s that you’re saying? You’ve been using all the strategies in this chapter but you’re still struggling to remember names or the material you need to learn for your job or course? The information in Chapters 24 and 25 may be just what you’re looking for.
