Friends often encounter this situation in daily life and study: an English word you just memorized appears in the text but you can’t remember its Chinese meaning; a commonly used But suddenly I can't write Chinese characters; I seem to remember a formula very well, but I can't remember it when I use it; There are gaps in my memory of a text or a political question. If someone reminds you, you will quickly memorize it. It's a pity that no one reminded you but you couldn't find any clues to get back to it. There are many similar situations. Whenever this happens, you may doubt your memory ability, and you may feel that memory is a weakness of yours. When others can recite a text fluently but you are still memorizing it over and over again, you may even complain that you are born with a stupid head. So how can you improve your memory?
Speaking of memory, we have to talk about our brains. Our human brains are different from computers. It is not like a container. If you put a gem in it, it will always be there. As long as you don’t move it, No one else can touch it, as long as the container is not broken, no matter whether it is three years, five years, eight years, or ten years, it will last forever and will not be lost. And our human brain is more like a mud pond. If you put a gem in a mud pond, it may still be floating on the surface today and within reach, but it may be half sunk in the mud tomorrow. It may be completely buried the day after tomorrow, and then gradually sink. Deep until there is no trace left. Not only does it sink, it also undergoes changes. If you put Lao Wang next door today, he may become Lao Zhang upstairs the day after tomorrow. A beautiful woman today may become a rough man tomorrow. This makes it difficult to recall something that has been remembered, sometimes it cannot be recalled, and sometimes it is wrong when recalled. This is forgetting. Memory, in a sense, is the process of fighting against forgetting.
The following will introduce you to several memory rules. These memory rules are simple and practical. Mastering them can minimize forgetting, improve memory efficiency, and improve memory.
1. Review in time: choosing time means saving time
German psychologist Ebbinghaus (we can use the homophony of "ice rat" to remember this name, I believe friends who have seen it will remember this name for a long time.) Through experiments, we found that forgetting is not uniform. Our memory is also like that of some people with less perseverance. At the beginning, our minds are hot and we work enthusiastically, but as time goes by, our energy loosens. We dawdle and can't do half a day's work in a year. . The same is true for forgetting. After you first memorize a bit of knowledge, you forget it quickly, and the further back you go, the slower it becomes. Generally speaking, after learning new knowledge, review it for the first time that night, the second time the next morning, the third time on the seventh day, the fourth time one month later, and the fifth time six months later. After doing this five times, long-term memory or even lifelong memory can basically be formed. On the surface, five reviews seem like a lot of work. But in fact, each review takes much less time than the first time to study or review, and it is also slightly less time than the last review. If it takes an hour to study for the first time, it usually takes only ten minutes to review for the first time. When reviewing for the fifth time, maybe three or four minutes is enough.
2. Make good use of the "golden time of memory" before going to bed and after waking up.
When remembering, the content absorbed into the brain first will interfere with subsequent information, causing the brain to contact the latter. The information is not deeply impressed and is easily forgotten, which is called proactive inhibition (suppression of what is reported first and ingestion later); postactive inhibition (interference of later ingestion, suppression of previously ingested) is exactly the opposite of proactive inhibition, due to acceptance Learn new content and forget what you have seen before, causing new information to interfere with old information. It's like a house where those who enter first don't want to let in those who come later, and those who come later want to squeeze out those who entered first and occupy the magpie's nest.
After knowing this rule, we can make full use of the two excellent prime times for memory before going to bed and after waking up! The period before going to bed can be mainly used to review the content learned during the day or before. Since it is not affected by postreactive inhibition, the memory material is easy to store and will be transferred from short-term memory to long-term memory. In addition, according to research, memory does not stop during sleep. The brain will summarize, organize, encode, and store the information it has just received. So the time before going to bed is really precious. After getting up in the morning, since you will not be affected by proactive inhibition, memorizing new content or reviewing the content reviewed last night will be fresh in your memory throughout the morning.
Therefore, do not waste the time before going to bed and after waking up. If you can make full use of it, you can get twice the result with half the effort.
3. Break the parts into wholes and use group memory skillfully
American psychologist John Miller once conducted a relatively accurate measurement of the breadth of short-term memory: Measuring the normal adult The memory span of a person at one time is 7±2 items. If there are more than 7 items, the memory effect will be poor. This "seven" is called the "magic seven" or the "strange number seven". This "seven" can be 7 characters, or 7 Chinese characters, or 7 groups of two-syllable words, 7 groups of four-character idioms, or even 7 sentences of seven-character poems. It can be seen from this that the size of short-term memory span does not depend on the meaning of the material being memorized, but on the number of materials being memorized!
We can take advantage of this feature when memorizing and allocate the content that needs to be memorized into 7 groups, and the capacity of each of these 7 groups can be appropriately increased. In this way, each group is equivalent to an integrated block, which increases the content of integrated blocks and the memory efficiency should be greatly improved. For example, if you remember the surnames of hundreds of families one by one, you have to remember 100 groups. If you remember "Zhao Qian, Sun Li, Zhou, Wu and King Zheng" that is, four groups of four, you only need to remember 25 groups. Compared with 100 groups, memory efficiency will of course be improved.
4. Timely screening and classification
There are two brothers who work together to sell salt. They have to pick up 100 kilograms of salt to sell elsewhere. In order to save some food money, they also pick up 120 kilograms. Steamed bun. The younger brother is lazy, and when he sees the salt, he rushes to pick it up. The elder brother had no choice but to obey him. On the road, there were always 100 kilograms of salt, but the amount of steamed buns became less and less day by day. In the end, there were only three or four taels left. The elder brother was relaxed and at ease, but the younger brother was in disarray. Similarly, when we learn a batch of knowledge, after memorizing and reviewing, the degree of mastery of each knowledge point is not uniform. Some have already mastered it well, some are not familiar with it, and some have not memorized it at all. So how should you allocate your energy during the next review? Should you allocate it equally or treat it differently? Often students take the trouble to do twenty majors indiscriminately, treating everyone equally and impartially. Those who understand, those who don’t, those who are familiar with, those who are not familiar with, allocate the same time and spend the same energy. If it is already very familiar, it is a waste; if it is not too familiar, it may be just right; if it is very unfamiliar, it is obviously not enough. It looks like a bowl of water is flat, but in reality there are uneven droughts and floods. This is like picking up a burden of salt. It takes a lot of effort but has little effect. Therefore, every time you review, you can try to recall first, and divide the content to be remembered into two categories according to the degree of recall: First, it can be easily recalled. Once you have memorized it, you can put it down. ?Make a mark on this type of knowledge to indicate that it belongs to the first category; the other category is unfamiliar and completely impossible to recall. These are the focus of review. It requires more time, more energy, and repeated review. ?After repetition, another batch will inevitably become the first category,? Then mark it as the first category and put it away. In this way, every time you review, the content will be less than the last time, and the burden will be lighter than the last time. It is focused, concentrated, not only fast, but also efficient. This is the beauty of the screening method.
The above are some common rules for improving memory. If you want to have a memory that is beyond ordinary people, you need to go through special memory training and learn some memory methods, such as the association method, the digital code method, and the memory palace method. , singing method, etc., and can be achieved through unremitting efforts and training. It's like playing table tennis. Ordinary people can play it, but to play at a level similar to that of professional athletes, only through professional training.