Challenging the Forgetting Curve like Sherlock Holmes 6 incredibly effective Tricks
to help you remember
what you've learned

The Abundance of Information in Everyday Life and its Effects on our Memory

Nowadays, smartphones and tablets enable us to access any information in no time at all. This is very helpful in many situations - and AI opens up completely new possibilities.

This allows us to record an incredible amount of data that needs to be stored. At the same time, this means that we are often less able to remember analog information and knowledge from everyday life. This effect can be explained very well with the forgetting curve according to Ebbinghaus.

The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

The “Ebbinghaus Curve” shows at what time intervals people retain or forget what percentage of newly acquired knowledge.

According to Ebbinghaus, just 20 minutes after learning, only 60 percent of the knowledge can be recalled. After one hour, 55 percent has already disappeared from our memory. After 24 hours, we only remember 34 percent of the information and six days after learning, only 23 percent can still be recalled.

Would you have thought that? For this reason, information such as names of people who have introduced themselves to you, addresses and passwords often disappear quickly from your mind. Or you only remember fragments of it. It would be nice if you could retain what you’ve learned for longer, wouldn’t it? You can actually work on this: you can give your memory a boost with the following six tricks.

Six effective Tricks to help you remember what you’ve learned

Trick No. 1: Ask yourself for Information - be your own Teacher!

The first trick is very simple and easy to implement: repeat the content you have learned out loud over and over again as if you were quizzing yourself before an exam.

By saying it out loud, you can check again whether you have really understood everything and can correct your information if necessary. This approach also helps to ensure that the information is remembered more deeply. 🧠

Trick No. 2: Structured Approach - capturing Texts more effectively with the SQ3R Method

The SQ3R method consists of five steps. Each of the letters in the term stands for an English word: Survey, Question, Read, Recite and Review.

In the first step, you get a rough overview of the information. The second step is about asking the right questions in the right places.

In step 3, you read the text really actively. It is helpful to mark particularly important aspects in color. Which sentences are important to grasp the meaning of the text? What are key terms? 🔑

The fourth step is to recap: after reading a section, take a short break and try to summarize the most important information and answers to your questions in your own words. You might even say them out loud (see trick no. 1). This active repetition will help you to internalize what you have read.

And the final step is to review your summaries regularly, focusing on the key aspects and finding out if you can still answer your questions. Do this step shortly after reading and then at regular intervals.

Try to make the five phases of the SQ3R method a fixed part of your reading routine. Over time, you will then find it easier and easier to carry out the individual steps automatically. Once you have internalized this method, you will be able to grasp and apply the content of each text more effectively.

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Trick No. 3: Spatial Memory - internalize Knowledge with the Loci Method

The principle of the Loci method: you link facts, information or numbers in a playful way with places in your familiar surroundings. The method makes use of spatial memory. “Loci” means something like ‘place’ or ‘location’.

The famous novel detective Sherlock Holmes 🕵️‍♂️ had a “mind palace” in which he stored numerous memories of past conversations or information about people. This helped him to solve tricky cases.

This is how the Loci Method works:

Choose a place that you know very well and that you could even describe in your sleep. For example, your home. Visualize a fixed route through this place. For example, imagine yourself walking from the front door through the hall into the living room, from there into the kitchen, then into the bedroom, then into the bathroom and then onto the balcony.

Then think of a vivid, unusual scene for each of these stations. These images are particularly easy to remember. Associate the individual stations with a piece of information that you want to remember. This can also be facts or figures. For example, if it’s about shopping in the supermarket, it could look like this:

• Entrance door: Imagine that a huge loaf of bread 🍞 is blocking your entrance door.
• Hall: There is a donkey in the hall eating spaghetti 🍝 from the wardrobe.
• Living Room: A giant chicken is sitting on the sofa and laying eggs. 🥚
• Kitchen: Apples 🍎 hang from the ceiling everywhere in the kitchen.
• Bedroom: The bed is filled with orange juice 🥤 like a swimming pool.
• Bathroom: Fresh spinach grows in the sink. 🥬
• Balcony: A large chocolate bar 🍫 melts in the sun on the balcony.

Go through the entire route several times in your mind. It is important that you choose the same sequence each time. Whenever you reach a station, recall the image stored there and the information associated with it.

The route can help you not only with your mental shopping list, but also for all kinds of purposes where you need to remember information. Using the Loci method, you can store a large amount of information in a structured and effective way and retrieve it when required.

Trick No. 4: Visualize and link Knowledge with mind Maps

You will be familiar with this learning method from school, for example. Mind mapping is about visualizing ideas in a simplified and clear form, which has a positive effect on memory performance in several ways.

In mind maps, associations and links between different pieces of information become visible. The good thing about this is that your brain remembers information that is connected more easily. Mind maps also organize information hierarchically - starting with the central topic, they branch out into subtopics and details. This hierarchy helps you to better understand and remember the structure of the information. Creating a mind map also requires concentration and focus on the topic, which allows you to check the content again, which promotes deeper understanding.

Trick No. 5: Passing on Knowledge to others

If you share your knowledge with others and explain it to them, your own memory will also benefit greatly. This requires you to reproduce the information in your own words and link it to your existing knowledge. This is called elaborative repetition. By explaining knowledge, you put it into a context and apply it. When explaining, questions and feedback from other people can also help you to rethink your knowledge and clarify any ambiguities.

Trick No. 6: Repeat, repeat, repeat…

Probably the simplest trick at the end is pretty self-explanatory: repeat what you’ve learned over and over again. 😁 The more often you do this, the longer you’ll eventually be able to remember the information.

Challenging the Forgetting Curve like Sherlock Holmes

If you use these tricks in a targeted manner, you can optimize your own memory performance, so that you can store information and learning content for longer than the forgetting curve predicts.

The individual tricks can be used at will and effectively combined with each other. Which tricks have you already tried out in everyday life and found to be good? Have you already built your own mind palace? 🕵️‍♂️