It's the life changing book you'll never forget!

"Chapter 5: The Three Steps to Remembering

The memory process has three steps:

1. Absorbing new information
2. Storing it
3. Retreiving it

Absorbing new information

The most important rule for absorbing information into our memory is to pay attention. Focussing attention turns all of our mental energy to the job at hand and triggers the brain systems that make memories permanent.

As mentioned, the more connections we can make between the information we are taking in and the knowledge we already have - ie. existing patterns in the brain - the more likely it is to be stored in our long term memory. When we make these associations, it strengthens our old memories as well as stopping the new memory from slipping away.

When we involve all of our senses, we remember things much more clearly. I am not only talking about five senses - vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste - but also about kinaesthetics, or movement. Think how often memories are triggered by one of the senses - a whiff of perfume, a familiar place, an accent, a particular way of walking. It's important to use as many of our senses as we can. Vision, in particular, is one of the strongest memory systems. About 40 percent of the brain is devoted to visual functions - more than any other single function. So visualising - forming pictures in the mind's eye - is one of the most, if not the most effective tool for storing information in the long term memory.

Emotions also are important to memory. When the information we are taking in is connected to an emotion , it receives a high priority. That's why it's easy to remember the highs and the lows in our lives.

The brain also likes things that are new and different. When we release adrenaline, it 'fixes' memories in the brain. By going to new places (such as museums), meeting new people, learning a new sport, etc, we are making new cerebral connections.

Storing new information

Information is stored in memory through repetition or practice. Practice makes permanent. We remember the times tables we learned at school because we repeated them many times.

Think of all the other things we remember through repetition - songs, poems, phone numbers, how to get home, and so on.

But repetition needs to take place over time. This is more effective than practising a lot in one day. Practising regularly for a short time is more productive. If you really want to make sure you remember the information, go back and revise it after one week, one month, three months... This is particularly helpful if you are studying.

Retreiving information

We either choose to recall information from our memory or memories by activating a trigger - a smell, a sight - and they just pop up. But what we do recall will not be a mirror image of the information we took in. Because of our beliefs, values and perceptions, information is reconstructed before being retreived. Of course, it's not the 'pop-up' memories that cause us problems - it's all those other things we try to remember that have us racking our brains. Our recall depends on how strongly the information is 'fixed' in our memory.