How to improve short-term memory

Pieces of information that are held in your mind are short-term memory. It is also called “active memory” because you must make the short-term data active in your mind. For short-term memory, you must pay attention at once. If you pay attention for a longer time, the more chance you’ll forget what you try to hold in your mind.

So, to reduce forgetting rate, you must repeat more. Repetition has functions which are to help your brain keeping information into short-term memory longer, and to transfer the information into your long-term memory.

To help you improve you short-term memory, you should exercise and practice to chunk. To chunk means to group long numbers or data into smaller chunks. For example, number 202843509, you can break it into 3 chunks that is 202-843-509. Another example to chunk data, the given words are: ant, sunflower, chair, sofa, zebra, jasmine, butterfly, cupboard, and rose. The good way is to chunk those words into groups of similar items. You can break them as: 1st group for animals (ant, zebra, butterfly), 2nd group for flowers (sunflower, jasmine, rose), 3rd group for furniture (sofa, chair, cupboard).

There are many benefits for short-term memory. It helps you in your daily life, such as when you get information of you customers’ names and telephone numbers from your co-worker. You’ll know who and what your co-worker is talking about. Short-term memory also helps you to attain daily objectives. If the data is out of your mind, there’s more space for new temporary data.

Source : memorygood.com