Ideally I would love to be able to easily recall something I read from a book, or easily recall something someone told me in a conversation.
Eg, “Why am I going to learn this?”
The other good question I’ve heard is “how does this relate to other things I know? — are there connections?”
What I found is that without a direct challenge to your understanding after reading something, be it through formalised tests, questions or social competition, you forget to learn. Your attention and learning mechanisms become defective.
Asking yourself a few simple questions about what you just read and how it is useful or important to you helps a lot.
My recollection (hah!) is that there's no known way to just make your brain remember stuff better on its own, but if there is something specifically you don't want to forget, there are a bunch of ways to make sure it doesn't get forgotten.
One interesting thing about the nature of this kind of memory is that chess players, if they're really good can do this with many boards and recall years of games. But only if the positions make sense. When you give chess players a board with randomized, nonsensical placement, most cannot remember it and are no better than your average person.
I took away from it that extreme memory is often related to the skill overall. You can only memorize something if its embedded in a context, deep in your muscle memory and 'makes sense'. I suppose this is why mnemonics exist.
Logical boards are very similar to other logical boards, and only the delta needs to be remembered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
The amount of information that people have reported being able to store using this method is truly remarkable. You might find this case study of an individual who used the method to memorize 65000+ digits of pi interesting:
Ex: You'll find it impossible to memorize music until you learn how to think and remember notes. Once you understand rhythm (8th notes, quarter-notes), and pitches (C, D, E, F, G, A, B C), you start to remember music.
You then study common patterns, such as Blue's Scale (C, Eb, F, F#, G, Bb). Or common chord patterns (I - vi - IV - V progression), and suddenly music is just "oh, right, the common chord progression in this rhythm".
Its not that people are memorizing more-and-more information. Its that they're memorizing __LESS__ information, but smarter information. Its far easier to remember "Loved" by The Beatles is the common-chord progression in 4/4 common time, rather than actually trying to memorize the individual notes and rhythm.
Then you can kinda-sorta forget little details (maybe play a few mistakes), but no one else remembers it as well as you do (not because your memory is better, because you have a better system of memorizing). So those little mistakes are forgotten by the audience.
-------
I'm playing Age of Empires 2, and the same thing for build orders. As a beginner, memorizing "2 houses -> 6 on sheep -> 4 on wood -> 7th food on boar lure -> 3rd house + mill -> 4 on berries" is difficult.
But then more advanced build orders are "British build order" is same as standard, except with 5 on sheep to handle the +25% bonus to shepherds.
It is said that you can only ever remember 7 things at a time. But those 7 things can be advanced concepts built up of *other* sets of ~7 things.
There is a similar phenomenon in chess where grandmasters can very quickly memorize a board position from a game, but are basically no better than any random person off the street at memorizing the position of pieces placed randomly in a way that would never occur in a game. They aren't actually memorizing the position of pieces, they're memorizing the game state in a way that makes sense to them and lets them re-create the position of the pieces.
So, practically, a good way to train your memory is to learn more about the area in which you want to be able to remember things.
I don't think this helps with the concrete example of "something someone told me in a conversation" though. It might help with "something I read from a book" though because you could encode that information better if you know more about the subject.
However you can use memory technics that will help you remember. There's the memory palace, there's creating a story so silly about what you are trying to remember that it helps you remember the items and there's also spaced repetition. Which is a technic that reenforces memories just as the brain starts to forget them.
No one really knows if practice improves memory but it can't hurt.
I learned this from maintaining a mood journal for the last year and realizing that I can recall events in my life much more easily than before I did this.
This is also how I learned to program. I rewrite examples in tutorials instead of copying and pasting, and I read things instead of watching videos. It has served me extremely well. I can still mostly implement fundamental data structures without hitting Hacker Rank, for example, despite not having done them in quite some time.
I also don't bother remembering things I can delegate to memory aids, like my email, calendars, or the Reminders app on my iPhone (which is a ROCK SOLID app; kudos to the developers at Apple who maintain this lifesaving tool). This applies to phone calls, shopping lists, personal events, etc. I said that my memory was horrible earlier because without these aids, I will forget (and have forgotten) stuff all of the time!
ymmv, of course. Everyone is different!
I know some students in medical school, and they swear by Anki to learn all the data they have to learn.
I haven't found a way to improve general abilities, but Anki has worked well to keep my memories fresh.
(The cost is that I spend an hour a day refreshing my memory. The benefit is that I recall everything that's in Anki.)
You can ensure the physical machinery of your brain is functioning well enough to operate at it's best. There's four keys to help here, first sleep enough to be well rested, second regularly exercise aerobically so your circulation pushes enough blood and nutrients around to feed your brain adequately, third and related take some ginko biloba but do not overdo this (make sure you research this) and finally drink enough water. If your brain was already 100% this will make no change, but for most people they can get significant to dramatic improvements to achieve their latent memory potential.
Then you can program your mind to consider what information is important and attach emotional significance to it, which will help you remember further and easily without repetition or memory palace techniques, though they will take you even further.
I've enjoyed one particular exercise. Its based off a story I read where Navy Admirals are able to study a deck of 52 cards and remember the entire order in 60s. So basically, take N cards and spend 60s memorizing them, then let another 60s pass, then test yourself. I think the most I ever got was like 12 cards.
I tried also doing more long term exercises, i.e here's a sequence of 4 cards, I'll come back in 7 days and try to recall the order.
Overall, the improvements were marginal.
Maybe there are better exercises, but something I've found to be orders of magnitude more effective is simply note-taking. Mac notes are really convenient for this because they're searchable. It's a tedious habit to form and takes discipline when starting, but IMO really pays off in the long run when the content aggregates.
My dream hobby project is to create a kind of "second brain" program that is primarily note taking but sits on top of a "knowledge graph" so i can kind of google search my memory, or view it like a twitter feed. I know there's a million apps our there that probably fit this bill, but I already have a specific vision in mind for this app.
In my academic experience, teachers and professors were so adamant about not memorizing that I had under-utilized it as a skill. It was nice to employ it for once even if just to learn that it is a skill that can be improved.
My wife's late grandfather used to spend a lot of time memorising religious scripture and solving mathematical puzzles and coming up many by himself.
He was extremely sharp till the second of his death. Very articulate and completely aware of everything. I've come to think of memorisation as mental exercise that spills over into other "parts" of the brain and generally functions as something to "keep you young".
You would probably like Joshua Foer's book Moonwalking with Einstein.
Developing memory is not a panacea for intelligence or a replacement for sound thinking. Some elite memory athletes assert that they're not that smart and attribute their success only to working very hard at memorizing.
The alternative explanation is magic. Take your pick.
ELi5: What happens in your brain when you forget something? and then how does the brain recall forgotten information?
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/uneyo3/e...
Similar to the chess examples elsewhere in this thread, the key to a good memory is utilizing more of the brain when storing them. When reading a book, if you vividly experience a certain passage instead of just reading/memorizing the words, the text will become more easily accessible in various situations, e.g. when you feel similar to the main character.
For conversation, trying to recall the context (place, time, surroundings), may just bring the quote you search for to the forefront.
This is distinct from how you store "facts", which is more like a hash table you can scan through. Episodic memory is more abstract and can be suppressed by a number of factors, such as negative emotions about parts of the context.
Disclaimer: not a neurologist, mostly speaking from own experience.
1: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220407141911.h...
2: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-01-memories-brain-potent...
That's something I'm naturally pretty good at (which is a blessing and a curse), so I don't really know how to help you, but I can confirm it gets a lot harder when my exposure to the thing to recall was when I was tired, or not eating well, and regular excercise helps with mental tasks in many ways; distractions usually don't help, but the distractions may be memorable, so there's that.
I think this can probably be somewhat trained. Reading books and taking quizzes about the books could be a way, but if you study the book instead of read it, you're practicing studying, not whatever this unstudied recall is. You could try taking the quizzes immediately after, until you get good, then try to increase the time between exposure and recall. There's some amount of content where you watch a film clip and then they ask you about details, but those are usually trying to trick you/are more about attracting your attention to one thing so you ignore something else.
There are individuals who create memory palaces and are able to memorise hundreds and hundreds or random letters or numbers. This is just practice, anyone could do it.
Beyond that it becomes easier to remember things as you know more about a topic. This is because of associativity that happens, and the synpapses will allow for associativity and priming. This will create networks that you can pull from!
Examples: "Linear systems with 2 variables" just think about it builds you understanding and it is easier to remember something you understand. Than you read chapter and get second opinion on problem. Bonus point if book has exercises on end of chapter. Then after thinking and before reading go to last exercise in chapter and read it, to answer "why" question, best exercises for this are "Alice have 3 apples ..." style exercises. Try to solve it before reading.
This method works best for STEM books, but it can be fun to try it on history, fantasy books if the have spoliery chapter titles.
The most effective unintentional method of memorization is to be profoundly embarrassed or frightened by forgetting or not knowing something - it will stick with you forever. I don't know of any way to systematize that though.
The basic idea of spaced repetition is that we tend to forget things on an exponential curve with some exponent. As the item is re-enforced in our memory, the exponent gets smaller so that we remember it longer.
Many flash card systems use some type of spaced repetition [2], using information on what item you got wrong to adjust the estimated exponent. For practical purposes, this means reminding yourself of an item you just learned in the next minutes, hours and days will help re-enforce it and then reminding yourself in the coming days, weeks and months to help keep it.
The basic idea behind mnemonic devices, as I understand it, is that we are predisposed to remember experiences rather than facts, so turning facts into experiences helps with recall. This is one tactic to help people recall large numbers of digits of Pi, say, by converting the digit sequence into an experience (walking through a house with each number representing an item, color, etc.). I've also heard this is why people with synethesia are better at recalling some types of information.
There are many articles about memory competitions and various methods to help prep for such competitions [3]. There's also a cottage industry of memory coaching [4].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic#Applications_and_exam...
[2] https://faqs.ankiweb.net/what-spaced-repetition-algorithm.ht...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Memory_Championships
Unfortunately since then it receded, so you sort of have to use it afterwards as well (What I use for CS is more of like indexing then memorization — I remember quite well whether I have met an information and where (often remembering the query that will show me the same page))
Don't forget that technology can be a useful fallback and/or way to confirm that you remembered details correctly (and you won't, always; it's always possible to improve, though). Good luck!
You did this throughout school, didn't you? Read a book, took notes, identified the key topics and summarized them with your own insights.
Reading a book 'for fun' and then doing the above is much harder. For one thing, there is no teacher curating the books for length and clarity, and there is no test you're preparing for.
Writing things down helps fix them in memory.
Will gains in that task generalise? Ay, there's the rub.