Memory can worsen as we age, but it is often possible to do something about it. Here, memory experts share their advice on how to improve your power of recall. You can train it, just like learning how to ride a bike or drive,” says Sania Alam, the founder of Futuristic Learning, which provides memory-training education.
Alam, based in the US, has coached memory athletes who have broken six Guinness World Records. But the times we are living in are not conducive to maintaining a strong memory. All of these things are ageing our brains.
You see people at a very young age who are beginning to have memory issues.” How can we tackle this? In 1995, Sahakian published an article in the British Medical Journal with Martin Orrell, emphasising the need to learn new things to reduce the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s – in other words “use it or lose it”. So, remember to use your brain through education and other challenging activities, so that you can keep it fit and functioning better for longer.” Reassuringly, you don’t have to k instead.
Experiments have shown that students who have mobile phones in class do not perform as well in tests; even having a mobile phone that was off next to you acts as a distractor of your attention.” “We have to use these specific techniques. It’s not magic,” says Katie Kermode, a memory champion from Manchester, who started competing in 2008 and set the world record for remembering names, and numerous other titles since. When trying to memorise something, Kermode advises using the journey technique, which she learned when she was nine to memorise the order of the planets in the solar system.
The goddess Venus clears it all up and puts it into a bag and throws it. It lands on the Earth … It goes on like that, making each planet into an object or a person, and making them into a story, so they link from one to the next,” says Kermode. You have to work a little bit, but it really helps you to memorise anything that you want to.” Similarly, you can create a “memory palace”, which has its roots in the work of the Ancient Greek poet Simonides of Ceos and was more recently popularised by the memory expert Tony Buzan, who died in 2019.
In everyday life, thinking of a route that you know well and placing things to remember along that route, is really helpful with recalling a shopping list, for example. It can be used for remembering a speech or presentation, too. I would say that is a different part of the brain.” Kermode uses symbolism to turn abstract concepts into something concrete she can visualise.
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