If You Forget As Fast As You Read, This Is For You

4 Ways To Hack Your Memory and Remember What You Read

Knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing. ~Peter Sage

If you read a lot, but seem to forget most of the information you so eagerly soak up, this is for you. I’d like to give you 3 things today:

1. A wake-up call.
2. An explanation of why it’s necessary and how it’ll help you remember better.
3. Four hacks you can use to memorize stuff more easily.

Let’s go!

In 2016, I learned something from a different book every single day and then wrote about it. Here’s the biggest lesson that taught me:

Rhymes are easier to remember.

Today, facts are available at the click of a button. Yes, knowing stuff makes you interesting, but you’ve been around for a while, so I bet you already have a ton of cool stuff to talk about at parties.

Being book-smart just for the sake of being book-smart is a vanity metric for your ego.

Don’t just learn for the sake of learning. Be a practitioner. Use the information you consume. It’s only as good as what you do with it. That’s what matters.

Ironically, learning things just in time when you need them will also help you remember them better.

Why?

There are two types of memories:

1. Memories you make a conscious effort to form.
2. Memories you form unconsciously through experience.

The first type of memory is stored in your hippocampus. It’s what happens when your new neighbor John introduces himself to you and you go: “John, John, John, John, John…” in your head, over and over again, to not forget it.

The second type is stored in your neocortex. When you went to Disneyland with your grandparents for the first time, got ice-cream, it fell on the floor, and the nice lady behind the counter gave you a new scoop, this experience ends up there.