4. Draw it out. If you aren’t taking a pencil and making your own charts, graphs, illustrations, diagrams, mind maps, topical doodles, etc. then you are losing out on one of the best memory mastery techniques there is.

Most students only draw in their notes what the professor draws on the board or shows in her PowerPoint.  For shame. Copying down what you see before you will help recall, but it’s nowhere near as powerful as coming up with your own illustration. Recall from earlier posts, the most powerful way to recall info is to use elaboration–doing something with the info. So do something with the info–illustrate it.

“But I ain’t a good drawrer,” you protest. Pshah! You don’t need to be. These pictures aren’t for anyone but yourself. Use stick figures, basic geometric shapes, and labels. You’ll be fine. For an in-depth how-to, take a look at The Back of the Napkin, by Dan Roam. My own review of the book ended up at, “not worth buying, but definitely worth looking through.” You may decide to buy … more power to ya. BONUS: Most of us recall images much more easily than words.

Take a look at these examples. Note that we ain’t talking Mona Lisa here; legible is all we are going for. The one from the NASA engineer led to a tremendous breakthrough in the aerospace field.

Never Forget

Part Three of 5 Easy Review Tricks series — See the other parts at the bottom of this post.

3. Follow the Triple The Time (TTT) Rule Long Term. Continue to learn/review in loops over days and weeks, not just during a given study session. Review a given set of notes/flashcards/vocab list 24 hours later, 3 days later, 9 days later, etc.

So why not just review every day? You could, and it would work, but the review materials would accumulate faster than shirtless rednecks on a Cops episode. If you follow the TTT rule, review materials are still recalled on an optimal schedule without having massive reviews on any given day. BONUS: Psychologists who study such things have found that if you struggle to recall a fact and then finally do successfully recall it, the memory trace is stronger than if you never struggled at all. Each time you review after you’ve tripled the time, you struggle a bit to recall the fact, making your memory stronger than if you had actually reviewed it every day.

It should be clear at this point that the real challenge becomes sticking to that TTT schedule. You can do that by carefully tracking each item reviewed and scheduling future reviews on a calendar or by using a slick website such as smart.fm. I’ve outlined a simple, effective method of keeping up with everything, and it’s fully explained in my Secrets Smart Students Know ebook.

Part Two of 5 Easy Review Tricks series — See the other parts at the bottom of this post.

2. Learn in loops. Learning a fact is like repeatedly squashing flat a blade of grass until it stays flat. If you try to squash that grass flat by stepping on it once a week, it will recover each week and you’ll have to squash it anew. If however, you squash it every few minutes at first, each time you squash it it will take longer to start to spring back up. You’ll be able to wait longer and longer between each grass squashing episode, and you’ll eventually get the dad-blamed grass to stay the heck down. (I was going to use “pushing down little kids” as my metaphor instead of “squashing blades of grass,” but my better judgment kept squashing my sense of humor).

That’s exactly how you get a troublesome fact to adhere to the inner-lining of your cerebellum. Review the fact frequently at first. Each time you review it, the memory will stick longer (it’s moving into long-term memory). You can move to less frequent reviews, until the gol-darned fact finally stays the heck stuck.

Review Question 1: Learning a fact is like… ?

Review Question 2: In what way is it like that?

If you thought of pushing down a little kid for question 1, shame on you. Emotion (in this case, humor … or maybe horror) really beefs up memory though, doesn’t it?

So when you are learning that vocab list or going through your flash cards, review each item as you’re continuing to learn new items. Let’s say you learn that poderoso is the Spanish word for “powerful”. Learn another word, then quiz yourself about thirty seconds later; “poderoso means ?.” Learn some more words, then loop back and quiz yourself on poderoso about a minute and a half later. Keep slowly lengthening the time between each review of the word. And, of course, your going through this process with each subsequent word you learn.

In a perfect world, you would quiz yourself on that item again just before you forgot it.  A general rule might be to review a new fact at intervals of 30 seconds, 1 minute and thirty seconds, 3 minutes, 9 minutes, 27 minutes, 1 hour and 23 minutes, etc. tripling the interval each time. But don’t sweat getting the intervals perfect. Just keep looping back to each fact.

Combine this with the previous trick, “write a quick question,” and you’ll be well on your way to memorizing text book chapters! I read a paragraph, write a quiz question or two on a flash card, and immediately quiz myself. Then I read the next paragraph, write a few more flash cards, and then review the first flash cards, etc.

Review Question 1: Learning a fact is like… ?

Review Question 2: In what way is it like that?

These questions are easy now, because you already reviewed them once not very long ago. Review them again in four or five minutes, and you’ll have them permanently plastered in your skull forever, with minimal effort.

Part One — See the other parts at the bottom of this post.

Choose the answer below that best completes the sentence:

Aaaargh! I’ve been through this ____________ 50 frakkin times, and I still can’t remember it all!

A. Asinine text book chapter

B. Drool-inducing stack of flash cards

C. Styooopid vocab list

D. Bummunching set of notes

E. All of the above

Answer: Doesn’t matter. If you’ve ever found yourself pounding your forehead against the wall while thoughts similar to these oozed from your wounded psyche, never fear. Bandage up your bean and read on as I reveal some simple review tricks that will make future study sessions involve much less floggin’ of your noggin.

1. Construct quick questions. Whether your muscling through a tedious text book chapter or gnawing on a pile of class notes, stop every few seconds and convert the information into a question (or two, or three) that your prof might ask. Here’s a zample…

You read…

According to Plato, abstract ideals possess a more fundamental reality than any given, imperfect, real-world example of that ideal. The ideal of a perfect circle is more philosophically real than any actual example of a circle, which can never be truly perfect in our imperfect world.

That’s the type of textbook sentence that leaves absolutely no impression in your cranial creases. If you just read it and move on, you’ve wasted time and gained nothing. So stop right then and force yourself to convert that sentence into a possible test question such as

Why does Plato view as more fundamentally real the idea of a perfect circle rather than an actual physical circle?

Just writing out the stinkin’ question forces you to actually understand the sentence. Granted, it takes longer to study this way, but you’re actually processing the material (LEARNING) rather than mindlessly reading.

Make yourself write at least on quiz question for every fact you want to learn. Go ahead and put question and answer on a flash card while you’re at it for easier studying later.

Take a screen shot of your results, so you’ll be able to compare yours with mine, and make sure to read through the short article after you submit your results … valuable memory stuff there.

My memory really reeks compared to many of my friends, so I was pleasantly surprised with my results. I rocked on some things, like recalling the digits in order and the words at the end of sentences, but I used the techniques I teach to help out … mainly chunking and mnemonics.  Just goes to show; even a memory feeb like me can bulk up with a little know-how.

1. Make sure you can do ‘em. Having a hulking, obnoxious, hairy task sitting on your to-do list glaring at you is a recipe for procrastination. Chop that beast down to size. No single task on your list should take more than an hour. If it takes longer than that, you need to break it down into a series of smaller (less procrastination-inducing) tasks. Example: Take “Move to New York” and cut it down into, “Get boxes for packing,” “Schedule move with moving company,” “Work on ‘kiss-my-@$$’ attitude,” etc. “Move to New York,” is scary. “Get boxes for packing,” is cuddly and doable.

2. Schedule ‘em. First thing each morning, sit down with your list and schedule each item on it, start to finish. Example: “10a to 10:30a – Schedule move with moving company.” Benefits: forces you to think realistically about how long the task will take and gives you a minute-by-minute here’s-what-I-should-be-doing-now game plan for the day. Giving each task a time anchors it concretely into the day’s schedule.

3. Rank ‘em. First things first, right? Each morning as you schedule the days tasks ask yourself, “What is the one thing I MUST get done by the end of the day, even if I don’t do anything else?” Schedule that task accordingly. Note: just because it’s the most important doesn’t mean you have to do it first, but it does mean you should schedule it for a time when you know you won’t be distracted or interrupted. Of course, you’ll probably have several important things each day. Make sure those get special scheduling too. Any of the less important to-do items can be relegated to times when your schedule is a bit more iffy.

4. Trash ‘em when needed. That to-do list ain’t the boss of you. Some times the best thing to do is trash a to-do list item in favor of a sudden opportunity. You shouldn’t feel guilty about nuking “do laundry” from your list if you suddenly get free tickets to that monster-truck rally or the grand opening of the All-You-Can-Eat Curry Castle. See your list as a suggested best schedule. That way you will be free to roll with the day’s punches and modify on the fly. Since you’ve already ranked the most important items, you’ll know which ones you can reasonably reschedule for another day if need be.

5. Keep ‘em with you. Easy access is muy importante, no? Keep that list in your back pocket, on your iTouch, or in your Kate Spade. BUT, that’s also why you shouldn’t keep it on your computer. You want to be able to quickly check that list while driving 70 down the freeway. A computer-based to-do list can make that task an organ-donating experience, which, of course, shoots your schedule all to H-E-double hockey sticks.

The long and short of it is use that to-do list; it will help. But make sure to use these five power-user tricks to get the most out of your daily to-dos.

No, it’s true, at least according to Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. Of course, you can’t watch just any ol’ television tripe; you’ll need to watch shows with complex plots that force you to pay attention and work a bit to figure out what the heck is happening. Shows such as E.R., Lost, and Flash Forward should fit the bill.

A sparing application of boob-tube therapy may be just what the psychologist ordered. So watch a little TV guilt free.

A heads up; apparently the examples are drawn only from scientific literature. Didn’t seem to make much diff on the test words I typed in, but just so’s ya know.