Four tips on how to remember everything better

Every manager could use a better memory. Recalling the content of a conversation with a team member, remembering names of colleagues or details from meetings might seem like minor details but they could dramatically improve how you are perceived by people around you, colleagues and subordinates alike. Here are four very simple yet very effective tricks which will enable you to remember things more easily.

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Immediate repetition

According to Psychology Today, it is important immediately to repeat newly acquired information. If you rely only on receiving information and remembering it, you are highly likely to forget it. Remembering something requires not just passively accepting things, but actively using them, which is why you must repeat them at least in your mind.

Saying it in your own words

When trying to remember something, a frequent problem is that the given information is formulated in a way that is unnatural to you, which makes it harder to remember. Avoid this by translating the information into your own idiolect, i.e. putting it in your own words and using your own terminology.

Word associations and own experience

Another trick to remember something is to put individual words or points of the given information in the context of your own experience or combining them into a single idea using other words. For example: you meet a new colleague who has the same surname as your uncle and likes to ride motorcycles. Imagine this new face on a motorcycle, and the next time you see them you will definitely remember their name.

Division

The last, yet very effective method is to subdivide information into smaller segments and remember these. You are unlikely to remember a nine-digit number, but if you divide it into three sets of three, the chances of recalling the entire sequence correctly increase dramatically.

 

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Article source Psychology Today - a U.S. magazine and online community focused on psychology
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