Introduction: Student always looks for ways to improve memory as in student’s life they need good memory to learn lessons over which they totally rely upon during the exam time. It’s safe to say that not all are born alike and not all have equal memory strength and those who have good memory may perform better than others.
Having said that, let’s start our article for the ones who would like to improve memory for better performance in academics or in life per say.
Apparently there are proven ways that could help someone to improve over all brain function which could help them store more information and the stored information can be recalled as it is, whenever, required without the loss in the quality of the information.
For those of you who are looking for improved performance of memory storage and quality recall of stored memory then you are at the right place.
Let’s get you started; here are pointers that will help you improve memory without the use of any supplements.
- Sleeping or Napping: Both the body and the mind needs rest to recover from stress and strain that comes from daily living. Time and again researches have backed that having at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep is necessary for good cognitive function and makes tasks like consolidating memory and recalling memory
Take quality of sleep as a serious priority, make sure that you are having undisturbed daily sleep patterns for better recovery. It might be that your schedule is hectic or you are not able to hit the right amount of sleep then go for napping in the mid afternoon. Researches also confirm that taking short naps around 20 minutes have a positive effect on your overall mood and mental cognitive function, rather if you miss a good night sleep then take a nap.
- Regular exercise: Exercising to improve memory is one of the best ways because exercising is not just good for mind but the body equally gets benefited from it. The positive effect it has on improving both muscle and mental strength is incredible. Regular exercise promotes secretion of good hormones in the brain and effects neuro chemical to sharpen the brain.
The process of memorizing lot of information at the same time is taxing and in a student life the majority of task they do is sit, study and memorize information in their text books. Somehow this makes many students live a very inactive lifestyle spending most of the time at the table sitting and studying. Making an exercise regimen for minimum of three days a week with an added little intensity will help them improvise on the long run. One could take up from walking, running, cricket or football they all are great way to materialize your exercise regimen in reality.
- Practice Using Acronyms: Use of acronyms is also an ancient way to remember a group of words if they are put into a sequence. The use of acronyms comes into play where you can use already existing acronym to remember a mathematical formula or you can come up with your own.
For instance do you remember the trigonometry formula Some People Have Curly Brown Hair to represent beauty
S =P/H (sine = perpendicular / hypotnuse)
C=B/H (cos= base/ hypotnuse)
T= P/B ( tan=perpendicular /base).
Don’t you think that it is now easy to remember a complex formula like that with an easy sentence? Same way the information represented in the NEWS (North, East, West, and South) can be remembered easily. Hope it makes sense to you all. The practice of using acronyms is comes back from ages and it is an amazing way to store information in the brain. What’s more interesting is that it makes the recollection of the memory easy.
- Making short notes: Writing is another way to improve memory and stimulate brain function. Making short notes of things you remember help you store and recall better. The effect of writing is such that it activates brain cells and stimulates your reticular activating system (RAS).
RAS is involved in almost everything we do and perhaps all learning requires minimal level of arousal in order to attend, remember, concentrate and put information into memory storage. One should also test itself by writing, learning and recalling this way you train your brain to make the information available when required.
- Eat Healthy: For a healthy life a balanced diet is a must, not only it provides essential nutrients to the body to make it function better but it also supports in more energy and enhanced good mood.
Students should focus on including eggs, vegetables, almond, walnuts, flaxseeds, etc. Include things which are easily available like seasonal colorful vegetables and coconut oil.
- Solve puzzles: Similar to physical exercise doing mental exercise like solving puzzles, crosswords, playing games on phones. Playing video games might come with a bit surprise to you all but yes studies have shown that playing video games at regular interval improves area like semantic memory which improves memory recall.
Remember to use all these methods to improve brain function and not to spend more time over it than your studies or job. The more you use your brain, that will help the prevention of cognitive decline and will make you stay mentally fit and hence you will have improved memory.
Conclusion: There is so much more to write on this topic, because everything we do requires our involvement of brain and the matter of fact is the more we use our brain the more it gets better. We should always strive to get better at things like doing same old things a little differently which again will improve our mental faculty.
