Five Ways You Could Become a Memory Champion

Frustrated at forgetting stuff? Some simple tricks could have dramatic positive effects.

By Claudia Hammond
29 March 2019

Most of us wish we had better memories. If only we didn’t get to the shop, knowing we must
buy three things, but only remembering two. If only we didn’t go upstairs, only to forget why
we went up there. If only we could read information and take it all in easily, instead of it
disappearing quickly from our minds.

There are plenty of tried and trusted memory techniques, some of which have been around for
decades – such as the use of the mnemonics and memory places. But what are scientists
looking at now? More research will be needed before we can be certain of the best ways of
putting these in practice, but what can the newest research tell us about the kinds of
techniques we might see more of in the future?

1) Walk backwards

We might think of time and space as very different things, but even in the way we talk there is
more crossover than we might realise. We put events “behind us”. We “look forward” to the
weekend. The exact way we do it varies with culture, but in the Western world most of us
think of the future as stretching out in space in front of us while the past stretches out behind
us.

Researchers at the University of Roehampton decided to exploit this link in our minds between
time and space to find a way to help us to remember events better.

They showed people a list of words, a set of pictures or a staged video of a woman’s handbag
being stolen. The people were instructed to walk either forwards or backwards 10m (33ft)
across a room in time with a ticking metronome. When they were tested afterwards on their
memory for the video, the words and the pictures, in each test the backwards-walkers
remembered more.

It was as though walking backwards in space encouraged their mind to go back in time and the
result was that they could access their memories more easily.

It even worked when they just imagined going backwards, rather than physically doing it. This
2018 research fits in with some intriguing research done with rats in 2006. When rats learn to
navigate their way around a maze, neurons called place cells fire at each location. The
researchers found that as the rats pause in a maze, the neurons associated with each location
they’ve learned along the route, fire in reverse order. So going backwards in their minds helps
them to remember the correct route.

And now brand new research has shown that when we humans remember a past event we
reconstruct the experience in our minds in reverse order. When we first see an object we
notice the patterns and the colours first and then work out what it is. When we try to
remember an object it happens the other way round; we remember the object first and then,
if we’re lucky, the details.
2) Do a drawing

How about drawing your shopping list instead of writing the items down? In 2018 a group of
younger and older people were given a list of words to learn. Half were asked to do a drawing
of each of the words, while the other half were instructed to write the words down while they
learned them. Later the people were tested to see how many words they could remember.
Even though some of the words were very tricky to draw, such as “isotope”, the act of drawing
made such a difference that the older people became as good as the younger people at
recalling the words. Drawing even made a difference in people with dementia.

When we draw something we are forced to consider in more detail and it’s this deeper
processing that makes us more likely to remember it. Even writing a list helps a bit, which is
why when you get to the shop and realise you’ve left your shopping list at home, you can still
remember more items than if you hadn’t written a list at all. Doing a drawing takes it one step
further.

And if those of you who are good at Pictionary are thinking this technique might work even
better for you, you’ll be disappointed. The quality of the drawing made no difference.

3) Do some exercise, but get the timing right

It’s been known for some time that aerobic exercise such as running can improve your
memory. Regular exercise has a small general effect, but when you want to learn something in
particular then a one-off bout of exertion does seem to help, at least in the short-term.

But research suggests that if we get the timing just right, the memory boost might be even
stronger. People who did 35 minutes of interval training four hours after learning a list of
pictures paired with locations were better at remembering the pairs than those who did the
interval training straight away.

In the future researchers will be working out exactly when exercise is most beneficial which
might vary depending on the kind of things you’re trying to remember.

4) Do nothing

When people experiencing amnesia as the result of a stroke were given a list of 15 words to
memorise and then given another task to do, 10 minutes later, they could remember just 14%
of that original list of words But if instead they sat in a darkened room doing nothing at all for
15 minutes, their score rose to an impressive 49%.

The same technique has been used in various studies since by Michaela Dewar at Herriot Watt
University. She found that in healthy people a short break straight after learning something
even made a difference to how much they could remember a whole week later. Now you may
be thinking, but how do we know that the people didn’t spend that 10 minutes in a darkened
room cunningly repeating the words to themselves so they didn’t forget. To prevent this
Dewar cleverly had people memorise hard to pronounce words in a foreign language which
they couldn’t possibly repeat to themselves.

These studies show us just how fragile new memories are, so fragile that even a short break
can make a difference to whether they hang around or disappear.

5) Take a nap
If walking backwards, drawing, exercising or even taking a break sounds too much like hard
work, how about taking a quick nap? Sleep is thought to help consolidate our memories by
replaying or reactivating the information we’ve just learned and that sleep doesn’t have to
happen at night. Researchers in Germany found that when people were given pairs of words to
memorise, they could recall more of them after a sleep of up to 90 minutes then after
watching a film.

But very recent research suggests this technique works best in people who are accustomed to
regularly taking a nap in the afternoon. This led Elizabeth McDevitt and her team at the
University of California Riverside to wonder whether it was possible to train people to nap. So
for four weeks the non-nappers took to their beds for a daytime snooze when they could.

Unfortunately for these people the naps still didn’t boost their memories. So maybe a longer
training period is needed or perhaps there are some people who just need to walk backwards,
draw, run or simply do nothing instead.