Remembering important things and forgetting unimportant ones. That’s what you want, right? I can imagine you asking yourself “How can I remember things better?”
In this article you’ll get answers to the questions below, among others, scientifically substantiated.
- Why do we forget certain things and remember others?
- How does our brain decide what is essential information?
01
How do you remember things in your brain?
Did you know that the chance is greater that we remember information when we both see and hear it? The same signal then enters your brain from 2 senses at the same time, and through this coupling your brain determines that it is important to remember. The strongest coupling, by the way, is with an emotion. And that is why we remember emotional events best of all. The strongest emotion is fear. Now you understand why you have a photographic memory for certain events.
02
Train your memory and remember everything from now on
But repeatedly firing the same brain cells by practising and training also works. Consistent movements, input from a single sense, as long as it is regular and consistent, therefore also works very well.
But the combination of multiple senses with emotions and a lot of repetition works best.
03
Your memory at night
At night, during our sleep, our brain performs a kind of clean-up. In doing so it decides which information should be kept and which can be discarded. This is also how your memories are decoupled from all emotions. As a result, you wake up after a night’s sleep with a lovely cheerful and tidied-up mind.
During this nightly “tidying-up” our brain turns the chaos in our head back into order. Connections that grow stronger are the ones you used most during the day, and these last longer. Meanwhile, connections you used least actually shrink, and these memories are slowly forgotten. We also call this “use it or lose it”.
04
A good night’s sleep to remember something for a long time
A tip: if you work on something or study day in, day out, you prepare your brain to store the information for the long term. But when you study all night and therefore sleep too little or not at all, you deprive your brain of the chance to store it well for the long term.
During the day you train and study, but at night you learn and implement!
The importance of a good night’s sleep for our decision-making and memory cannot be emphasised enough! 😉
Do you still have a question?
Work smart and sleep well!