A Schedule For Making Memories Stronger

So if you want to remember something long term, you're probably going to need to review it repeatedly. Follow this time plan to make a memory permanent.

Despite some cases where individuals appear to have retained an extraordinary amount of trivial information from their past, most memory experts believe that we don't remember anything.

There are three factors influencing variation from person to person:

1. The difficulty of the material
2. How meaningful it is to us
3. Our own state of mind at the time

Here's an idea for you...

Whenever you're learning something important, straight away plan to review it at least at intervals of a day, a week and a month later. Use a calendar or diary to plan out when you will  review the material. Feel free to modify the schedule to fit you're revising for an exam in two weeks' time, then the month review will obviously not be needed, but you may want to review more in the early stages. Just use the the general principle of organizing the majority of reviews soon after you first encounter the information.

Here's a suggested schedule for reviewing information you want to store in long-term memory:

• One hour
• One day
• One week
• One month
• One season (three months)
• One year

"Voters quickly forget what a man says."
                                                                                          Richard M. Nixon 

To give a memory the best possible chance to be stored longer term you need to review it at least several times. A review can simply mean reminding yourself of the information, but ideally it involves testing yourself on the information you want to encode long term. 

After learning something new, make it a habit to quickly review the main details, such as the main points that were decided upon. the review the information an hour afterwards, and just before you go to bed that night.