How to Memorize Anything - Aditi Singhal and Sudhir Singhal

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Sara needs to memorize vocabulary words for her SAT exams. She has to
memorize nearly 1000 words. She keeps a target of memorizing 40 words per
day. She successfully achieves her target on the first day as well as on the
second, but as she starts memorizing on the third day, she feels as if she is
forgetting the words memorized in the first two days. As the days pass, she
finds herself memorizing new words daily but the problem is that she cannot
retain the words for long. The more she memorizes, the more she starts
getting confused about the earlier memorized words.
Like in the case of Sara, most students find it difficult to retain memorized
information till the time of the examination. What good is spending time and effort on
memorizing if one cannot retain it till the time it is required.
It’s just like a pitcher with a hole which is never going to be filled with water
because of constant and continuous leakage.
To avoid this leakage and utilize the unlimited capacity of brain to store
information, data needs to be processed and stored systematically.
Strong associations with prior knowledge, clear, vivid, imagery followed by a
periodic revision plan are the key steps for retaining any information for longer
duration.
3. RECOLLECTION: The ability to recollect and use stored information when
required is called recollection. Indeed, every action or words we speak are the result
of recollection or retrieval of our memories. This process will also yield better
results only if the registration and storage of data has been done in an organized and
systematic manner. The state of mind at the time of recollection is also a key factor in
the process of retrieval.