ReadersDigestAustraliaNewZealand-April2018

April• 2018 | 67

READER’S DIGEST

house or a point along your commute,

for instance. Finally, make up a story

about the items, which will help you

connect them in the correct order.

Here are a few of our favourite

tricks that can help you to remember

things in your everyday life.

To Re m e m b e r: New words

Tec h n i q u e: Change routine

In a classic study conducted at the

University of Michigan in the 1970s,

a group of students studied a list

of words in two separate sessions.

Some studied in a small cluttered

room and some in a space with two

windows and a one-way mirror. One

group of studiers spent both sessions

in the same room, while the other

split the sessions between the two

environments. During a test given in

a completely diferent room, the stu-

dents who studied in multiple places

recalled 53  per cent more than those

who studied in just one room.

Subsequent studies showed that

varying other aspects of your envi-

ronment (the time of day, the music

in the background, whether you sit

or stand, etc.) can also help recall.

The theory is that your brain links

the words to the context around you,

and the more contextual cues you as-

sociate with the words, the more your

brain has to draw upon when it’s try-

ing to remember them.

To Re m e m b e r: You r PIN

Tec h n i q u e: Count it out

You could use your birthday, of

course, or your phone number, but

identity thieves have a way of fer-

reting those out. Instead, try this tip

from Dominic O’Brien, an eight-time

World Memory Champion. Write a

four-word sentence, then count the

number of letters in each word. For

instance, “his is my PIN” = 4223.

To Re m e m b e r: Facts and figures
Tec h n i q u e: Give yourself time
Mum was right: cramming is not
the best way to memorise things. To
learn and recall statistics (or pretty
much any kind of factual informa-
tion), reviewing the material period-
ically over a longer span of time is far
more efective than repeating it in a
shorter one.
his technique dates as far back as
1885, when psycholog ist Hermann
Ebbinghaus discovered that he could
learn a list of nonsense words if he re-
PHOTO: THE VOORHES peated them 68 times in one day and