I've noticed that my memory ain't what it used to be.

I know that a healthy diet, with a focus on certain 'brain foods' like omega-3s, and regular exercise contribute to a healthy brain...

I'm curious about mental exercises, training & techniques to boost memory.

Trying to avoid scams and spending money on ridiculous "35 audio casette tapes for only 9 easy payments of $99.99!"

I have been doing some mindfulness meditation, which I'm starting to see have an impact.

But what else is out there?

I want next level memory. Derren Brown style.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the user at 09:42, Tue 25 Nov 2014.

I don't know who Brown is, but,

For improvement, practice, and lots of it.

Generally I like to make games or fun activities that use whatever ability I want to practice.

You might do this thing where you occasionally stop, close your eyes and try to remember every detail of your surroundings (this improves awareness as well), or you might play memory games where you take playing or tcg cards and draw some random ones and put them in a pattern in the morning and try to remember the cards and pattern throughout the day.

Learn contract bridge.

In reply to OceanLake (msg # 3):

Try to make sense of all the charts in an old Rolemaster or FGU game.

I've had issues with this due to something bad happening:

Try doing crossword puzzles
Having someone test your memory

But like Dark said: Practice.

Make lists, because having a handy reminder never hurts. Word association works. Do things that challenge the brain, like mystery novels or, like Rex said, crossword puzzles. Basically do things that make you think.

Someone once told me that picking up another language is good for the brain. Idk how effective it is though.

Part of the work I do is retail so yes, writing everything down is def. useful.

Derren Brown - a British mentalist, probably about... 43 years old, I think?

Which is to say, my prodigious memory is upheld by Google and Wikipedia and, you know, bluffing.  Practicing might work better, though, for whatever it is we were talking about.

Well, practice is good.

But it all depends on the kind of mind you have - for some people, writing things down improves their recall of such things. For others, that won't help. Some people work best reading stuff over and over they want to remember, others might find it useful to say what you want to remember to yourself.

Generally though, you won't remember everything. So focus on working out how to remember what you really want to.

I've given the TCG card trick a try this morning. Just to practice storing memories! haha.. I'm saying the order to myself.

I think my problem isn't so much remember lists, etc. It's more remember information from discussions. Be it a work meeting, or a chat with my fiance. I tend to struggle to remember little details.

I'm not sure I'm happy with the "It's just a guy thing" excuse. Though if you have any peer reviewed studies to prove that, please, share the links for THE GOOD OF HUMANITY!

In reply to ashberg (msg # 10):

These is always chess.

That's more of a ... strategy & planning exercise, no?

But you're right. I haven't played chess in some time.

I already do crosswords fairly regularly.

If your goal is remembering verbal communications otherwise stripped of context, I think you can safely join the overwhelming majority of management everywhere. I'm just going to use the word meeting for verbal conversations of weight, because I've had a lot of those lately.

There's a reason high-class meetings have assistants that take notes after all. Or at least someone records the conversation to make notes of later for take-aways.


Lots of reasons a spoken word might not stick in your head.


Verbal conversations often have no surrounding environmental cues. They start with "Hey you remember this and that?" as opposed to having props. Sensory engagement is very important. If you can show someone what you're talking about (or see the subject, etc.) more senses are becoming involved and memories can take shape better. Within reason -- information overload has the opposite effect.

Assuming you don't have good presenters, scribble your own visuals on scratch paper and make quick little notes.


After-meeting review is essential for many people. Take a few minutes after the meeting to figure out just what it was you talked about and decided on. Take notes as necessary. If you come up with questions, great -- find someone to ask and clear it up ASAP. Just the extra talking about the meeting will help both of you remember key points.

For that matter, pre-meeting review to firm up in your mind what it is you're going into the meeting *for* is also valuable.


Disinterest is probably the biggest reason you won't retain something. You don't register something being said as having any impact on you personally, you don't understand something and are fine with someone else handling that aspect, and maybe you feel nobody really cares what you think anyway.

Meeting leaders should generally solicit information from relevant parties and not invite people to discuss things that do not affect them one iota. For example, something (ineffective) we do at my job: Have ginormous meetings, discussing 15 different topics with 50 people for an hour and a half, when any individual probably only cares about 10 minutes of the whole thing. (Waste of everyone's time.) Even when I make a super effort to focus, and I'm pretty good at paying attention, I drift away repeatedly.

Getting yourself in the *right* meetings and out of the wrong ones can do a lot for your sanity. If the mega-meetings are (as expected) ineffective, make your own short meetings with the people that are actually relevant, and talk about just that one thing.


Your mention "a guy thing," I take to mean for discussions about decorating or clothing that you are socially assumed to not personally care about. That might be a relationship topic more than simply a memory issue. If you "tune out" you can't expect to retain much no matter who is talking to you or what their topic is.

I would say though that framing and "scheduling" discussions about topics you find tough to get engaged with can help. Talking to you about color choice while you are/want to be watching TV is probably a recipe for failure, so how about you both agree to discuss something at a set time. Ideally, armed with visual and other sensory cues like color swatches and in the location under consideration (to continue the assumed example).

I wonder. Note taking might be a good idea. I have a weird memory, someone can tell me something that I can sometimes forget a few seconds later, even if it is important. Yet I have been known to walk up to people and continue conversations exactly where they were left off, confusing the other person, especially if weeks have passed by... weird.

Chunking.

No, not food.

Chunking.

Pick a series of data.  For many children - The Bible and the Quran have worked well.  For others, baseball statistics, stat-blocks from card games, etc.

Generally, I would suggest something that comes in clear strings, or is already pre-chunked (if you enjoy Magic: The Gathering, this is a good start.)

Method: Select PART of that chunk, read it.  Walk away from it.  Go make tea, breakfast.. whatever.  Return to it without looking. Then try to recite it aloud.  View it.  Test just how much you *THINK* you got right.  Then read the item again.  Try to either re-write/redraw it.

Steps (for those who like lists)

1) Identify a chunkable item
2) Read it. [Only a few seconds]
3) Walk away and do something for at least 1 minute.
4) Recite it while standing near it, but not viewing.
5) View it - Compare.
6) Repeat, but write/draw it.

Purpose: Create discrete moments of memory will eventually force the mind to behave like the muscle that it should be.

How to Improve: Chunk larger.

Steps

1) All as before.
2) Examine the entire item (If a card - attempt to memorize the artwork, the artist name, the stats, everything.)

How to Improve again: Comparative memory.

1) Pull together three items that are related (3 Bible verses side-by-side, three cards that play well together or have similar traits.)
2) Repeat for each item the original steps.
3) Then, while VIEWING one item - recite the other items.
4) While VIEWING one item - compare the others.

Wear more funny hats.

I think this would work! I think I'll actually try this out.

I'd also suggest doing more activities that require you to remember things. Read often (if you don't already) and take notes on the things that stand out to you. Try to remember what you wrote down then go back and check yourself. Immediately after you finish a chapter/section/whatever try and capture the main idea and major points that you remember then go back through the section and check yourself.

Keep a journal and try to write in it every day. This will get you in the habit of going back through everything that happened on a given day and selecting the highlights.

Also, what exactly are you trying to remember? It may be that you're memory isn't so much 'bad' as it is normal. Most people forget things if they aren't written down in some place they regularly refer to. I am certainly no exception.

Wait, what were we talking about?

In reply to kouk (msg # 18):

Something about funny hats?

I started keeping a work journal some time ago -- just sit, at the end of the day, and detail what I did that day and what I'm still working on, what stood out, &c.  This would be in summary to quickly jotted notes about who I called and what we talked about (and when), and that sort of thing.

I can vouch for it; it's immensely helpful -- and not just for improving your memory (you get very conscientious about realizing you'll need to remember certain details later and so you commit them to memory) but for actually being able to produce written records of specific details that mostly get forgotten otherwise.
This message was last edited by the user at 19:25, Thu 27 Nov 2014.

Some awesome ideas here! Thanks everyone.

Funny hats hasn't seemed to work so far.

I'm learning a couple of languages on my phone in the Duolingo app, and I'm finding as an unexpected but very welcome development, my memory does seem to have improved.  I've always had an atrocious memory, so this is important. Although maybe I just forgot what my memory was like previously.

Fish oils definitely work.  I tracked my production at work over 3 months and they definitely worked.  I stopped because they were extremely pure, expensive, and I had to take very high doses multiple times a day.  At sustainable doses they are much more subtle and have a positive effect on overall brain health, including memory.

Circulation.  Make sure your circulation is as good as you can get it, which is why regular exercise is good for your brain.  The oxygen regular exercise brings to your brain tissues improves all functions.  Even 30 minutes of brisk walking is good for this.

Sleep.  Make sure you are sleeping well for at least 7 hours a night.  Sleep lets your brain clear metabolic toxins which will cause brain damage over time if you are not letting your body clear these toxins.

Metals.  Get checked for metals (lead, tin, mercury, etc.) which may have built up in your body over years.  They interfere with memory.  You can flush them with a cheap supplement DSR or something like that.

Learn something new.  Learning something new like a language, a dance, juggling, anything stimulates the cerebellum which manages all coordination, physical, mental and emotional.

Nutrition.  Take a multivitamin, a fish oil, eat a balanced diet, cut out fats and sugars.  This will give your body and brain the nutrients they need to function and will restore good intestinal bacteria which counteract bad intestinal bacteria.  Bad intestinal flora create toxins which cloud memory and cause fatigue.

Cruinne's journal idea is very good because journal requires to you reflect on things which happened throughout the day (remembering), process them and write them down.

Practice practice practice!  When you practice a mental skill like math, remembering passages from books or other info, you are building and strengthening those physical neural connections in your brain.  Like physical exercise, it's a drag for about 3 months then it gets a lot better.

Learn speedreading.  I noticed memory improvement once I was fairly practiced at speedreading techniques.  Your eyes and brain take in and process the written word much faster than one can subvocalize, and if you're plodding along at subvocalization speed the brain becomes distracted.  Focus improves too.

A memorization technique I have used successfully is read a passage in a book, then say it to yourself from memory as far as you can, then go back and read it again, say it to yourself again, and repeat that until you can say the whole thing to yourself from memory.  This is time consuming, but I have used it very successfully.  Even singing a song you like from memory works.

Memory loss is usually not from degradation of a person's brain tissues, but from other things interfering with their normal functioning, like toxins, disease states, poor sleep, or just not doing anything mentally demanding.  The brain will become out of shape just like a muscle.  If you demand more of your memory and give it the exercise it needs, it will adapt.