HOW TO TEST YOURSELF TO INCREASE YOUR MEMORY

If you're having trouble remembering, it's not necessarily the fault of your brain. The problem is that you are not studying the right way. One thing most people don't realize about memory is that we can do things to make it better.

You can increase your ability to memorize what you are attempting to learn by testing yourself in a certain way. If you challenge yourself to recall the information you have just memorized, and you succeed, you have increased your memory of that information ten-fold! The trick is that when you test yourself, you have to be able to recall the information correctly, so make sure you test yourself close enough to when you learned the material. If you try to remember the information and have trouble recalling it, then you've waited too long -- testing yourself didn't help.

Also note that you don't want to test yourself too soon after you learn the material either. The timing of when you test your recall is important. You want to wait as long as possible and still be able to recall the information correctly. If you test your recall directly afterwards, then you'll strengthen your memory of the information, but not as much as if you had waited longer. If you wait too long, you've lost it and have to re-learn it all. You need to wait as long as you can, and still recall the information correctly. Each time you test yourself and get it right, you strengthen your memory and increase the time until you have to review it.