One of the many functions you can improve with biohacking is your memory. Your memory is essential to you living your life as best you can. How many times have you forgotten something important and ad to suffer the consequences because of that? Although this is impossible to avoid completely it makes sense to try and limit this so it happens as little as possible. The best way to do this is using memory hacks to improve your memory. These memory hacks are the best way to improve your memory, and are backed up by scientific and testimonial evidence. Memory hacks won’t only improve your memory and make sure you don’t forget things, but has also been shown to increase your intelligence quotient.
Tactical Sleep
You probably wouldn’t think that your brain performed many functions while sleeping, and only really allowed it to rest, but it actually does so much more than that. Sleeping the right way can boost learning, problem solving, and most importantly your memory. This is backed up by a multitude of scientific studies. This is one of the easiest memory hacks to use, because sleeping is obviously very easy. A 2010 Harvard study asked participants to complete a complicated maze. Some of the participants were allowed to nap for a while after the first try. On the second try, only people who dreamed about the maze actually did better on the second try. This is might be because the brain uses dreams to reactivate and reorganize something you learned recently.
Nback
One of the best ways to improve your memory is to play a memory game called nback. This game is backed up by scientific research, and has been shown to increase your working memory easily. One of the best things about this memory hack is that it has been shown to only take 5 weeks to take affect, but using this game myself I have already noticed an improvement in daily life after only using it a few days. The game is free and can be downloaded from the app store, or played online for free as well.
Compound Memory
One interesting thing about your brain is that you can actually remember one thing better if you start to learn about something else straight afterwards. Let me explain, in 2007 university students were asked to memorize a series of words. After they studied the list and tried to memorize it, they were then shown a slide show with with pictures that were related to the words they memorize. The distracted students were later asked to take a recall test, and performed better because of the distraction. Because you are distracting yourself after learning something the brain tries to work harder to make sure you remember the information you were originally fed. This memory hack is great because it can also help to reduce stress if you distract yourself with something else.
Association:
Remembering names is something a lot of people have trouble with, but with this simple memory hack it’s no longer problem. Say you’re going into a board room meeting people some people, you don’t know very well, and are worried your going to have trouble remembering their names when it comes to it. All you need to do is draw up a map of their names, and where they’ll be sitting. Next to their names write something about them that sticks out in your mind, like one has spiky hair, one always wears a red tie.
Simple Repetition:
One of the best techniques for remembering people names is to repeat it many times as you can in your head, and out loud. When you are speaking to them and they introduce themselves try to mention their name as often as possible. Obviously don’t say it too much or it’ll come off as weird, but you should be able to slyly slip it into conversation regularly. Saying it in your head repeated will also help.
Remember a million passwords, by only learning one:
This memory hack is amazing because it allows you to remember an infinite amount of passwords, while only remembering a single base password. The trick is to remember one password, which can be anything as long as you remember it, and then to build upon that whenever you need another one with part of the websites address. Say your password was “C7F2” which might be your initials, and house number as they are easy to remember. Then when you want to make a password for your ebay account, you would add the letters of ebay to the end in a random order. So your password would be C7F2YBEA. As long as you remember the rule, you can have an endless amount of passwords. Even if you haven’t been to website for a while there would be few variations as long as you can remember the base password.
Teach it to someone else:
One of the best memory hacks is to try and teach it to someone else. This proves that you fully understand it if you can teach it to someone else, and unless your are a teacher and already teach regularly it’ll be an unusual experience which means you’re more likely to remember it.
Exercise:
To improve your memory in the long run the best option is through regular exercise. A study conducted by Dr. David Jacobs, found that people who exercised regularly while their still young had much better memories in their old age. Exercise can also help improve other functions of the brain like problem solving and creativity.
Numerical Methods:
Large numbers can be some of the hardest things for people to remember. But in every cloud there’s a silver lining, and because it’s so hard a lot of people have put in the effort to try and create solutions to this that anyone can use. Because of this there are quite a few systems out there you can us including the major system, and the Red Table.
Palace Memory Hack:
This hack is commonly known as memory palace, and is probably the most effective tool for long term memorization in the world. It’s the technique used by all world memory champions. Some people can use this technique to memorize an entire text book in only a few hours. The hack has been used for hundreds of years and was invented so that people could remember long messages after only hearing it once, and then be able to travel for days or weeks, and repeat the message exactly, without making any mistakes. To do the technique you need to picture a memory palace, which should be a place you know very well.
exercise
Let’s say you want to remember a shopping list, which includes broccoli, and cereal. You would try to link the words to very powerful images, and imagine they are in your memory palace. If the first room in your memory palace is your bedroom, and you want to remember broccoli, associate broccoli with something as strange as you possibly can, for instance you might imagine there is a giant broccoli man sleeping in your bed, and you want to get him out, so you can go to sleep.
The broccoli man smells like gone off broccoli, and won’t leave so you give up and leave your room. You enter the hallway which is the next room in this memory palace, and you don’t see anything at first, but them something sharp pricks your bare feet, and you look down to see a walking cereal box, holding a knife, he’s trying to kill, and behind him is a trail of dead cereal boxes, you realize it’s a serial killer, and runaway into the next room.
The crazier and more vivid the image is the more likely your are to remember them, so try yo make them as strange as possible. After a while you should have a lot memory palaces and be good enough at the technique to remember pretty much anything.