Sunday, January 24, 2021

Memory Hack For Improved Recall & Better Studying



Some people like to do lists - other people think to do lists are too anal or stuffy, right? Or demotivating. Some people like to make it up as they go along and fly by the seat of their pants.

Some people like to plan and outline and have structure... Okay, everybody is different, then there's multitasking, right? You think can we do two things at the same time?

On there's some man jokes there! Uh, according to science, and according to research, multitasking is a bad idea. Contrary to popular belief you lose a lot of time switching between task a and task b... Then switching back to task a again.

Um, i'm not convinced about that. I think there's a wayto do that which we're gonna talk about this week. You might seem to get more done, that way it's arguable...

Okay, you're more likely to make mistakes. You're more liable to forget things. What does seem to work is focusing on one task at a time and taking breaks to to let your jets cool, to let your circuitry cool down.

You'll actually accomplish more that way by "concentration of aim" right? So you've maybe come across the pomodoro method... We're going to talk about that this week as well. So striving to complete a task, no matter how long it's going to take you is also not a good idea.

I found that out when I was studying for exams at school and stuff. I used to think if I studied for, like, six hours straight and hammered this topic, then it will go in better and what I found was actually, I ran out of motivation and I got really fed up and I ended up shutting the books and walking away... And through my study of nlp and hypnosis, I learned about a thing called the law of primacy and the law of recency, the law of primacy & the law of recency you'll be familiar with if you've ever been to see a movie.

Because typically, you remember how this movie started and your probably remember how the movie ended, but the bit in the middle maybe a bit vague and that's because the brain tends to remember the start of something the start of a song.

It's usually really easy to recall and the end of a song, the bit in the middle will be a bit fuzzy. The start of a conversation... The start of a book... Usually quite easy to remember. The end of the conversation.

The end of the book. Usually quite easy to remember the bit in the middle.. Blurry. Okay? So you're actually better... Instead of doing six hours studying, you'd
actually be better studying for like 50 minutes and then stop. Take a 10 minute break and then do another 50 minutes and stop, 10 minute break and then take another 50 minute chunk so then what you have is a primacy and a recency, a primacy and a recency.

A primacy and a recency. A start and a stop. A beginning and an end, so that way you end up with 4,5,6 beginnings and 4,56, endings.

Meaning 4,5,6 x additional recall. Really interesting. Who knew?