How to improve your memory by exercising recall

Posted by Faizel Mohidin on Sep 27, 2009 in Mind Mapping, Mind Maps in Education | 0 comments

This week’s article is a short one, but a very important one, if you really want to learn how to improve your memory.

How many times did you ‘hit a blank’ at a crucial moment, whether it be during an exam or an important speech?

The common belief held by most people is that the ability to recall information at will, seems to be only for the gifted – the geniuses of our world. Yet there are thousands of cases of ordinary people that have learned techniques on how to improve their memory with great success.

There is no magic to recalling information when and where you need it, but it does take some work on your part. You won’t develop a good memory by ‘accident’. You have to work at it.

If you have done any formal learning, you would have spent many hours putting information into your brain. How much time have you spent exercising the ability to get it out? Have you spent time practising your recall, or did you try it for the first time in the ‘big game’, your exam?

Michael Jordan’s example

Let’s use the analogy of a good basketball player. I’ve used Michael Jordan’s example on numerous occasions. Even people that don’t know or love basketball, know Michael Jordan. Many believe he is the greatest basketball player that ever lived.

This is what he has to say:

“It is always surprising to hear people who talk about achieving success in their field. Yet, instead of being willing to put in the hard work they look for short cuts. They look to gain as much as they can by working as little as they can. To look for shortcuts is a fool’s game, no one ever achieved excellence in any great undertaking by subscribing to the ethic of laziness.

I’ve always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come. I don’t do things half-heartedly. Because I know if I do, then I can expect half-hearted results.”

The website 4EvaYoung.com has the following to say about Michael Jordan:

At age 35 he was still working harder than most of the players half his age, and he was still out maneuvering them on the basketball courts. He out hustled, out played, and out skilled his contemporaries a fraction of his age.

Jordan’s secret was his work ethic was like no other, even at an age where he had already proved he was the greatest living basketball player, he still worked harder than everyone else to continue to develop his game.

What did Michael Jordan work at?

One of the things that he exercised was shooting hoops. He was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, shooter that ever lived, yet he spent thousands of hours during his career practising, researching and rehearsing for the big game.

There are varying reports on how many hoops he shot in the average day. But the consensus by most is that the figure is more that one hundred hoops a day.

How does this help you?

If you want to improve your recall ability, you must practise recall. It’s as simple as that!

Yet this is the biggest mistake most learners make. They spend time and effort on Study Guides, Tutors, Books, Study Methods, Memory Techniques and Studying, yet they don’t practise their recall.

It’s like Michael Jordan listening to his coach, watching videos of great shots, reading books and books on shooting and then going into the big game without practising what he has learnt.

It is during the practice sessions that you can fail as many times as you want until you get it right.

On exam day, you need to be able to recall the information perfectly every time.

We practise the wrong things

We build a huge ‘in’ memory muscle by exercising it when learning or studying, but we spend very little time developing the ‘out’ memory muscle. We need to spend as much time, if not more time exercising our recall ability.

Your approach should be able to recall the information perfectly – everytime!

This takes hard work and effort, but the Mind Map is the greatest tool ever invented to help you perfect your memory.

Let’s see how we can use the Mind Map to do this.

I assume that you used the approach described in the article ‘Using a Mind Map as a Memory Map’ to get information into the brain.

Now you will have to test your ability to get the information out.

Draw a blank template of the Mind Map that you want to recall. If you are using Mind Map software, this is quite easy. If you are using hand drawn Mind Maps, you will have to draw a new blank template that matches the framework of the original Map. I normally make a few copies of empty templates.

The reason that I make an empty template, is to satisfy my brain’s natural need to complete things.

Now try to fill in the blanks of the Mind Map. Try to walk along the branches as you did when you memorised the Mind Map and fill in the items as you come across them.

Walk along the main branches first to fill in the overview. Skip the branches you can’t remember and come back to them later. Your brain will naturally want to ‘fill in the blanks’.

Once you have completed the overview branches, your chances of recalling the rest have dramatically increased. You should be able to fill in an overview Mind Map from memory in about five minutes.

Simply practice this over and over again until you can recall it at will. Try to recall the colours, the shapes and the position of the branches for the Mind Map that you want to remember.

Once you can recall the main branches, they will act as a trigger for the rest.

By only recalling the main branches during practice sessions can be equated to a basketball player practicing shooting hoops from a stationary position. No matter how good you are as a basketball player, you can never forget the basics. By practising stationary shooting, you will automatically improve your shooting on the move as well.

This does not mean that you must ignore shooting on the move, it just means that you have to continue with your practising of stationary shooting.

Building a huge ‘Out Muscle’.

Recalling the main branches will exercise your ‘out’ muscle and the bigger this muscle gets, the stronger it gets and the stronger it gets, the better you ability to recall information gets.

By doing this over and over again, you will find that you start developing a photographic memory; the ability to recall the Mind Map image in your Mind’s eye perfectly every time.