Tips to help improve your memory

Have you often forgotten the name of an important work acquaintance? Or have you found yourself forgetting what your colleague shared at the important work meeting? You are not alone and if you’ve been forgetting things lately, here are some tips to help you improve your memory.

Need some tips to improve your memory?
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1) Listen attentively

One of the reasons why people forget things – is because they weren’t listening in the first place. You may be there in person but your ears aren’t completely listening. For example, an employee who is texting his or her spouse during an office meeting may have a higher chance of forgetting what was discussed, compared to someone who was listening with rapt attention. It may sound quite obvious but it’s true.

2) Practise multi tasking

If you practise multi tasking, it will help with your memory over time. For example, turn on the television and pay absolute attention for about one minute. Then let yourself daydream for the next one minute. Keep on going at this, and you will soon find that you will not lose focus so easily due to simple distractions in the background.

3) Form a sentence

If you have to remember a list of items, such as a shopping list of groceries, it will help to form a sentence to help you out. For example, if the items you need to buy on your shopping list are milk, eggs, grapes, corn & strawberries, you could come up with the sentence, “My elderly grandmother can sew.” As you may have noticed, every letter in the sentence relates to the first letter of a word on the above shopping list. And it will be a lot easier to remember a sentence rather than a random list of words.

4) Connect new information with something you already know

If you are meeting a new business acquaintance for the first time, you may often struggle to remember his or her name. Try and connect the person’s name with people whom you are are familiar with, or even celebrities and this may help. For example, if you are being introduced to a person named “David Low”, you can try and connect him to football superstar David Beckham because they share a first name. Then imagine David Beckham kneeling very low down in order to remember the surname of “David Low.”

Now what was the string supposed to be for me to remember?
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5) Don’t bother recalling information that’s on the tip of your tongue

I am sure that most people have come across this before – there is something that you know on the subject, but you simply can’t recall it when you need the information, even though it’s on the tip of your tongue.

Next time this happens to you, don’t bother trying to remember the information – by doing so, you are actually practising not to remember it. Instead, go and get this information from your source again, and when you need it, you will most likely find it so much easier to recall.

6) Review new information before you sleep

As the consolidation of your memory typically takes place when you are sleeping, try and review any new snippets of information that you need to remember – right before you doze off. This may help you to remember more of the information you were supposed to recall, when you wake up the following day.