For this week we are going to focus on studying and memory. We all have heard of the famous “SQ3R”. It stands for Skim, Questions, Read, Recite and Review. If you have ever taken a class aimed to help you study better it must have talked about SQ3R. Lucky for you, today I won’t go into it because I am sure we’ve had enough of that. What we will go into are some tips on remembering things based on how memory works to our advantage.
For us to recall and understand something, we have to read the information over and over again. However a few things should go on between re-reading. The memory has short term, working and long term divisions. The short term only stores information for about 5 seconds. The working takes whatever is remembered from the short term and recalls it for about 5-20 seconds. Whatever is still remembered is then transferred to the long term memory.
A lot happens when we consume information, we don’t only consume a definition or a list, we consume things like the material of the paper, the sounds around us when reading, the chair we are sitting on etc. Once something is read, before the next read we should workout or do some form of exercise to increase power, we should test ourselves on the material to see what we really know and recall and what we need to focus more on. Then we should try to associate what we know with things that are not abstract or mundane so we can have a better chance at remembering it. So the next time you read the material it would be for review and reinforcement of the neural connection that is made from understanding it.