Have you ever been in a situation where you have info about the
answer but a bit confused as to which is the correct one or you may wonder I
studied it a fortnight ago how can I afford to forget it so early. Some days
back I read a comment in the insight website that a person had a doubt that(I
don’t remember it properly it’s a rough description of what it was) “I have
finished all the NCERT and most of my cultural part along with Bipin Chandra and M .Laxmikant it took me six months to finish all this but the problem I am
facing is that I fail to recollect things ” , Well that is a very common thing
to happen with so much of new information getting percolated every day
one would probably forget most of the things studied at a later stage of
time and then either get demoralized or start again from square one. Even I
faced the same problem and I was tensed (dare not think about the Tele brand
advertising) anyway I visited many websites and failed to receive any concrete
measures to address this paramount problem, so I thought of taking the job in
my hands and envisage a strategy which would keep in touch with whatever I
studied at frequent interval of times (don’t think I have invented something,
it is revising things, but in more interactive way and with good results)
Before
we start
Question: why do people fail to recollect things?
Well if
you are expecting a technical answer with terminologies like brain
mapping, synape etc then I would possibly disappoint you, do you ever
forget what is 2 plus 2 or who is the prime minister of India ? I believe the
answer should be a big “no” the reason for these achievements is that they are
well stored in an organized manner in our memory and you keep them hearing or
reading all the time, hence we can conclude the more organized you studies are
more efficient you will be
So
there are three parameters to be considered
1.
How
organized your studies are
2.
How
frequently do you revise
3.
How
much do you scribble (writing practice)
The
first two parameter forms the input part of the preparation whereas the third
parameter forms the output and as you all know more is the input more will be
the efficiency of your preparation, on these lines I will start with the theme
of article.
How
should one plan to study?
I
adopted the idea after understanding how preliminary readings work (i.e. in
three reading pattern).even we are going to follow the same pattern
Reading one
Casual
and basic reading forms the essence of this reading i.e. one should just read
to attain following goals
1.
Read
and understand what the topic is all about.
2.
Underline
all the important sentences.
3.
encircle
important and unknown words and find their meaning ,write down these meaning
with a pencil in the same page of textbook so that you can refer them if you
need them in future
4.
underline
things (plan ,projects, policy, terms, historical events, people ,clauses,
places, institute….[]…) try to write them in a separate book or page
(recommended).
5.
Ex: you
are studying about solar system and there is a sentence “ planet earth has one
natural satellite” then naturally there would be a question in your mind which
planet has the largest number of natural satellite so you can write this
question on your page and at the end of day you can search them and keep the
page in the book itself
6.
Remember
there is no need to do any in-depth research on topics a casual approach but
well-connected one is required in this part of reading.
So in
this part you have read a chapter you have tried to answer all the questions
which could arise and jotted the word meaning. Remember you should make this
reading in the shortest possible time
Second Reading
If you
are done with first reading then you can go for this level but before we start
let me clear two things
1.
Point
no 4) in first reading can be shifted to reading two part if you wish to
2.
You
should always maintain a time elapse of 7 to 8 days b/w first and second
reading.(this is due to the fact that if you read something in day one and you
read it again in day two you are not much enthusiastic and you cannot remember
it for long time so do follow the time gap )
§ In this part one has to study everything in detail (remember I
am not suggesting you to change your style of studying or remembering things )
§ Try to invest more time in this reading at least twice or
thrice the amount of time you spend on first reading
§ You have already written word meaning and explanation to
question which aroused in your mind, this will help you to sail easily in your
second reading
§ Try to be more analytical in approach in this part, frame
questions from prelims and mains point of view try to answer them
mentally (you can write the question above the topic this question will be used
in third reading
§ Try to focus most (how to have good focus is discussed below) as
this is no casual reading you have to make sure that you completely understand
things.
§ Try to establish and clear all you doubts in this stage itself
remember piling up of doubts can be very dangerous.
If you
are done with this part then I believe you are done with the topic and it is
time to move for the third reading
Third
reading
Time
gap should be maintained anything b/w 25 to 30 days.
§ In this part you are supposed to revise whatever you studied in
the quickest possible way and then start answering questions which you framed
during your second reading (remember you wrote these questions above the
topics)
§ You can also search for questions asked in UPSC mains from the
topic you covered. In this manner you not only cover up question papers but
also the questions which aroused in your mind
§ If you have a friend ,share this strategy with him/her when
(s)he frames questions they will be mostly different from your question
(though you guys may be studying same topic and framing question on same sub
parts but both of you have different way of thinking and hence you can have
additional questions and more viewpoint on same topic)
§ Seek help from your friends to get them reviewed.
§ Now you have been in contact of a topic for more than 40 days
which will help you to remember things for long run
§ Maintain a book where you write your answers .divide the book
into different sections viz polity, history, current affairs etc etc
§ Revise from this book at
an interval of every two months.
§ So every time you are revising from your notebook you are
revising your own imaginative thoughts and this is bound to help you for a
exams where your syllabus roughly increases by a newspaper every morning.
Remember
this is no quick fix ,this technique is not for people with low patience, it is
an highly organized task you will be investing a lot so think before you start.
Some more tips to
increase efficiency
§ Use technology at its best as you are supposed to have three
readings time management is crucial use google calendar to sync your mobile to
receive message about your further readings or simply maintain a diary or add a
reminder to you cell phone.
§ concentrate and focus on
what you are doing (it’s a common habit of day dreaming while studying fighting
with criminals, doing social service and all those dreams must be stopped at
the nascent stage itself) if you are facing this problem in acute manner then
here is what I do
§ I used to keep a countdown of 30 mins(8 to 10 slots making it 5
to 6 hours every day) ,now in this 30 mins I concentrated and focused the most
without thinking about anything else I followed it for 10 days to make sure I
have sufficient level of concentration though at the initial days I used to get
distracted within 15 mins
§ from 11th day onwards I started to increase the time by one
minute per day (i.e. on 60th day I could concentrate for around 120 mins in a
row with very less distraction) though I reduced my slots to 5 or 6 at max (120
mins each)
§ The above process has proved result (well I was the guinea pig )
anyways don’t go above 120 mins coz it gets too hectic moreover take a break of
15 to 20 mins after every slot this will make sure you are in good mood to
start again.
§ Reward yourself with good amount of recreation and self analysis
slots, you should know your performance at every stage of preparation so that
you can manage if you are lagging.
§ People belonging to working class can also take some tips from
this technique.
§ When I am depressed or frustrated or lack energy, I close my
eyes take a deep breath and say this in my mind “Working against the will is
termed as hard work”,if my will is to sleep I go against it and work towards my
goal.
§ I have found wonderful results with improved and organized
structure of studies hope the article fares to your purpose.
How to train your mind
to remember anything
By Joshua Foer, Special to CNN
June 11, 2012 -- Updated 1003 GMT (1803 HKT)
Editor's note: Joshua Foer is a writer and the author of "Moonwalking With
Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything." In 2005, he
attended the USA Memory Championship as an observer. After learning to train
his memory using ancient techniques, he came back to the same contest a year
later and won it. Foer spoke at the TED2012 conference in March. TED is a
nonprofit dedicated to "Ideas worth spreading," which it makes
available through talks posted on its website.
(CNN) -- Once upon a time, the
idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory was not nearly so
strange a notion as it might seem to be today. People invested in their
memories, in laboriously furnishing their minds.
Over the last few
millennia, we've invented a series of technologies -- from the alphabet to the
printed book to the photograph to the iPhone -- that have made it easier and
easier for us to externalize our memories and essentially outsource this
fundamental human capacity.
These technologies have
made our modern world possible, but they've also changed us. They've changed us
culturally, and I would argue that they've changed us cognitively. Having
little need to remember anymore, it sometimes seems as if we've forgotten how.
One of the last places
where you still find people passionate about the idea of a disciplined,
cultivated memory is a strange contest held each spring in New York called the
USA Memory Championship. Contestants compete to see who can memorize the most
lines of poetry, the most names of strangers, even the most random digits in
five minutes.
The sport of competitive
memorizing is driven by a kind of arms race. Each year someone comes up with a
new technique to remember more stuff more quickly, forcing the rest of the
field to play catch up.
Three-time World Memory
Champion Ben Pridmore invented a memory system, which he alone has mastered,
that allowed him to memorize the precise order of 28 shuffled packs of playing
cards in one hour. He used a similar trick to memorize the precise order of
4,140 random binary digits in half an hour. Even more incredible than the mere
fact of this feat is that this is not an innate talent, but rather a skill he
taught himself.
While there are lots of
different tricks for remembering better, all of the techniques used in these
memory contests ultimately come down to a concept that psychologists refer to
as elaborative encoding. And it's well illustrated by a strange kind of
forgetfulness that psychologists have dubbed the "Baker/baker
paradox."
The paradox goes like
this:
A researcher shows two
people the same photograph of a face and tells one of them that the guy is a
baker and the other that his last name is Baker. A couple of days later, the
researcher shows the same two subjects the same photograph and asks for the
accompanying word.
The person who was told
the man's profession is much more likely to remember it than the person who was
given his surname. Why should that be? Same photograph. Same word. Different
amount of remembering.
When you hear that the
man in the photo is a baker, that fact gets embedded in a whole network of
ideas about what it means to be a baker: He cooks bread, he wears a big white
hat, he smells good when he comes home from work.
The name Baker, on the
other hand, is tethered only to a memory of the person's face. That link is
tenuous, and should it dissolve, the name will float off irretrievably into the
netherworld of lost memories. (When a word feels like it's stuck on the tip of
the tongue, it's likely because we're accessing only part of the neural network
that "contains" the idea, but not all of it.) But when it comes to
the man's profession, there are multiple strings to reel the memory back in.
Even if you don't at
first remember that the man is a baker, perhaps you get some vague sense of
breadiness about him, or see some association between his face and a big white
hat, or maybe you conjure up a memory of your own neighborhood bakery. There
are any number of knots in that tangle of associations that can be traced back
to his profession.
As I describe in my book
"Moonwalking With Einstein", the art of remembering better in memory
competition -- and to remembering better in everyday life -- is about figuring
out how to turn capital "B" Bakers into lowercase "b"
bakers.
It's about taking
information that is lacking in context, lacking in meaning and figuring out a
way to transform it so that it makes sense in the light of all the other things
that you have floating around in your mind. Pridmore uses a complicated
technique to memorize decks of playing cards and strings of binary digits, but
we can all take advantage of the Baker/baker paradox.
If you want to make
something memorable, you first have to make it meaningful.