The Two Most Effective Memory Hacks for Academic Success

The power to forget is the natural condition of the human species. Hermann Ebbinghaus demonstrated this in the 1880s. Our ability to forget comes along with many benefits. 

But as learners, the power to forget is antithetical to our aspirations to develop ourselves into erudite, creative, and inventive people. I want to remember what I learn forever. Don’t you?

The one sure way to deliberately maintain your recallability of particular pieces of knowledge is through memory retrieval practice. That concept might be new to you. What we’re referring to is the exercise of testing your memory. Testing might be a repugnant word and conjure memories of anxiety-filled experiences. No doubt, the word testing carries a lot of baggage. But testing has an excellent side. Every time that you retrieve something from memory, you enhance your ability to recall it in the future successfully.

The easiest way to carry out retrieval practice on your own is by using flashcards. You can also practice by having friends quiz you. When your teacher tests you during class discussions, gives quizzes, or exams, you are being helped to build recallability, even when you fail to recall! 

I’m many decades beyond the formal academic phase of life. Still, as a lifelong learner, flashcards are my go-to for building recallability of the things that I want to remember.

The benefits of the testing effect and retrieval practice have been proven hundreds of times in cognitive psychology research. 

In my mental model of retrieval practice,  I imagine this exercise as taking my brain into the gym and jumping on a piece of equipment that I explicitly designed to maintain my recall for just that particular piece of knowledge. Each flashcard in my collection is a bespoke apparatus in my mental gymnasium.

Warning: Although flashcards are a powerful tool for strengthening recallability, you should not use them as a primary tool for initially learning something! Don’t skip the steps of actively consuming and comprehending the learnings. First, go and learn and later work on developing the recallability of what you’ve learned.

In the iDoRecall system, first, you must abstract and curate the essential takeaways from your learning materials. Convert these key concepts and facts that you want to remember into spaced-repetition flashcards. Then use retrieval practice to build your robust recallability of what you’ve learned.

Nature had blessed us with virtually an unlimited capacity for storing memories. Storage limits are not the issue. Our struggle is in retrieving our memories when we need them.

Retrieval practice is powerful. How can you make it even more effective?

Research has shown that every time we retrieve a memory, we both change the memory and strengthen our ability to recall it. We have discovered that memories get stored in the synapses belonging to a connected group of neurons. We call this grouping of neurons an engram. 

We have billions of neurons. An average neuron has thousands of synapses. We can safely assume that many of our neurons that participate in one engram that stores a specific memory also participate via their synaptic connections in many other engrams that encode other memories. This schema explains the cognitive science of why our memories are associative. Whenever we recall one memory, we quickly have other memories jump into consciousness in what, at first blush, seems to be a random incident. But this is not such a random stream of consciousness. Very often, we don’t even focus our attention on these arising “associated” memories. So we are not always aware of this experience.

Here’s a classic example that I like to use to demonstrate this phenomenon. 

If I ask you to think of pizza, no doubt, a thread of related and sometimes seemingly unrelated thoughts will arise. For example, your first thought of pizza might trigger a memory of your first date with your significant other. You know,  that time when you went to a favorite pizzeria. That memory of you and your mate might lead to you recall that this very morning s/he asked you to run an errand on your way home from work. And that memory might revive a sense of annoyance you felt upon first receiving this request. So, I said pizza, and you feel annoyed! Even though you love pizza! That’s how is how the associative web of our mind works! One thought leads to another. Their overlapping engrams have them wired together.

So, why is our memory so unreliable?

Nature has blessed us with virtually an unlimited capacity for storing memories. Storage limits are not the issue. Our struggle is in retrieving our memories when we need them. When we get older, we tend to think of this as the tip of the tongue experience and that raises anxieties of do I have Alzheimer's? But this battle is innate for all of us and happens at any age. All of our memories are connected to other memories via engrams. The more interconnections that we develop for a given memory, the easier it will be to recall.

By practicing memory retrieval, we bolster our recallability of that tidbit we’ve learned. This happens because we’re strengthening the synapses of that memory’s engram. But, besides hardening those synaptic connections, we are also creating entirely new associations and engrams. 

Every time we retrieve a memory, we unknowingly link that memory to the current context we’re in at that very moment. There is a famous cognitive science adage,  neurons that fire together wire together. The new associations that we create each time we retrieve a memory in the current context, fires and wires together a brand new engram. Each time we practice retrieval of a fact or concept, we make it easier to retrieve again in the future.

By now, you have probably asked yourself, “Is regular, deliberate retrieval practice a scalable solution for maintaining a large body of knowledge at your beck and call?”

Let’s suppose for a second that you have 20,000 flashcards that represent all of the concepts and facts you want to be able to recall with ease. How should you approach each day? Do you have to practice all 20,000? That is not only impossible; it’s a recipe for a miserable existence.

How can we make retrieval practice scalable?

Here's where spaced repetition comes in. Spacing encourages you only to practice that tiny fraction of your flashcards that you are likely close to forgetting. 

A good spacing algorithm determines which flashcards are due and schedules your daily practices. The algorithm vastly reduces your daily workload.

We’ve heard cases where the learner has to review less than 100 cards a day out of the 20,000 flashcards in their collection. Recently created flashcards generally need more frequent practice during their first month than when they are older. 

Spacing algorithms usually take into account your estimate of how easily you were able to recall the correct answer and how long it has been since you last practiced it.

Spacing does more than make it scalable to manage an extensive collection of flashcards. The other significant advantage of spacing is that it’s most potent to practice memory retrieval when you are close to forgetting the answer. The more effortful it is for you to retrieve an answer, the stronger the effect of building robust recallability for future retrievals.

Key takeaways

Forgetting is the natural state of our being. Let’s accept that is the starting point for all of us. But is that a bug or a feature? That depends. Some things are definitely good to forget. But when it comes to learning, we aspire to remember reliably. I want to remember everything I learn. That is what helped me graduate #1 in my medical school class.

We can overcome our forgetful nature by performing deliberate retrieval practice of those memories we value and want to keep at our fingertips. We don’t want to commit to memory every detail we encounter in our studies. Something that can be Googled in five seconds and doesn’t add meaning to our knowledge base can be left out. But, we need a large and diverse set of knowledge in order to be intelligent and creative creatures.