7 Brain Hacks to Learn and Memorize Things Faster

In today's modern age, the ability to swiftly pick up new abilities is important.

Every day, whether you're a student, a professional, or a parent, you're learning something new. It could be learning how to play the guitar, learning a new language, calculating the square root of a number, or speaking in front of a crowd without losing your cool. Our thoughts are continually changing as new information enters in.

Learning new abilities is undeniably difficult and time-consuming, but what if science could help speed things up a little?

There are different strategies to develop your brain to memorize information faster and learn more effectively.

1. Get some exercise to cleanse your mind.

Working out is beneficial to our bodies, but it also has numerous advantages for our minds. If you're having writer's block or just can't always get past that difficult arithmetic issue, try walking it off or getting in a brief gym session.

Exercise improves memory and cognitive processing in both younger and older persons, according to a 2013 study. After a brief 15-minute exercise session, study participants exhibited improvements in memory and cognitive thinking.

2. Practice yoga

Yoga is a simple technique to strengthen your brain's grey matter, which is responsible for muscle control and sensory experiences such as speech, memory, decision-making, and vision.

Yoga practitioners have been proven to have less cognitive failures in studies. Another study from 2012 discovered that just 20 minutes of yoga improved study participants' brain functions, allowing them to perform higher and faster both on speed and accuracy assessments.

3. Avoid multitasking at all costs.

We often pick up our cellphones mindlessly to answer a text or check our social media feed while we're in the middle of another task in our technology-driven society. Multitasking can be useful in some instances, but when it comes to learning a new skill or recalling information, it's preferable to focus on one item at a time.

Multitasking, according to a study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, reduces our efficiency — especially for complicated or unfamiliar tasks — because it takes extra time to shift mental gears each time an individual switches between multiple tasks.

4. In the afternoon, study or practice

Even if you're a "morning" or "nighttime" individual, one study found that focusing on a task in the afternoon has a stronger effect on long-term memory training than other times of the day.

5. Write down what needs to be memorized over and over

Continuously jotting down the same item may appear to be a lot more work, yet this simple action will improve your memory recall. Lists of facts or problems, rather than attempting to learn them passively through re-reading, have been demonstrated to boost the ability to memorize them.

Another study discovered that taking lecture notes by hand rather than typing them down on a computer helped pupils remember the content of the lecture.

6. Make connections between new information and what you already know.

According to the Loma Linda University School of Medicine, relating new knowledge to what you already know is a wonderful brain-based approach for memory retention.

"If you're studying Romeo and Juliet, for example, you can correlate what you learn about the play with prior knowledge you have about Shakespeare, the historical time in which the author lived, and other pertinent material," the institution notes.

7. Share on what you've learnt to others.

According to Loma Linda University, sharing newly acquired skills or knowledge is a better approach to better memorize the new information in your brain. The act of putting information into your own words aids your brain's comprehension, and there are a different creative methods to break anything down in order to teach it to others. It's a win-win situation for everyone involved.