How to Improve Your Memory

In short

• The best-supported ways to improve memory are testing yourself, spacing practice over days, sleeping well after you learn, and regular aerobic exercise.
• Rereading and highlighting feel productive but do little for long-term memory compared with recalling information from scratch.
• Memory starts with attention, so information you take in while distracted is stored less flexibly.
• Some change in memory with age is normal, and the brain keeps its ability to learn and adapt at every age.
• If forgetting is getting worse or getting in the way of daily life, talk to your doctor.
  

To improve your memory, practice pulling information out of your head instead of putting it back in. Test yourself rather than rereading, spread your practice over several days, sleep well after you learn something new, and get regular aerobic exercise. These are among the most consistently supported findings in memory research, and they work at any age.

Here is what each method is, why it works, and how to use it.

How memory works

Memory runs in three stages. Encoding is taking information in. Consolidation is stabilizing it so it lasts, much of which happens during sleep. Retrieval is getting it back out when you need it. A weak link at any stage shows up as forgetting, which is why the methods below target different stages.

Why memory feels harder with age

In a study of 345 adults across the adult life span, performance on memory and processing speed tasks declined gradually and steadily from the twenties onward, while vocabulary and general knowledge kept growing. That pattern is normal. It means fast recall of new details gets harder, while what you know keeps accumulating. The methods below help at any age, and several of the studies behind them were run in older adults.

How to improve memory: eight methods

1. Test yourself instead of rereading

This is the single most useful change most people can make. In a well-known experiment, students who read a passage and then practiced recalling it remembered substantially more a week later than students who spent the same time rereading it. The rereaders felt more confident, but they forgot more. A follow-up study found that repeated retrieval drove long-term retention, while extra rounds of study added little.

In practice: close the book and write down what you remember, use flashcards, or explain the idea out loud to someone. The effort of recall is what makes the memory stronger.

2. Space your practice over days

Cramming works for tomorrow and fails for next month. A review of 317 experiments found that spreading practice across separate sessions produces better long-term retention than massing it into one, and that the longer you need to remember something, the wider the gaps between sessions should be. A large review of study techniques rated spaced practice and self-testing as the two most useful of the ten methods it examined, and rated rereading and highlighting low.

In practice: review something new the next day, again a few days later, then a week or two after that.

3. Sleep after you learn

Sleep is when the brain consolidates what you took in during the day. Research reviews of sleep and memory describe how the brain replays and strengthens recent memories during sleep, and how memories are better retained after a period of sleep than after the same time awake. Studying late into the night at the expense of sleep works against the thing you are trying to achieve.

In practice: keep a regular sleep schedule, and if you need to remember something important, learn it before a full night of sleep rather than after one is cut short.

4. Get regular aerobic exercise

In a randomized trial of 120 older adults, a year of aerobic walking increased the size of the hippocampus, a region central to forming new memories, by about 2%, and the gain was linked to better memory performance. In the stretching group, hippocampal volume declined over the same year. The walking program started at 10 minutes a session and built up to 40 minutes, three days a week.

In practice: brisk walking counts. Consistency over months matters more than intensity.

5. Give new information your full attention

You cannot remember what you never fully took in. In a brain imaging study, people who learned a task while doing a second task at the same time performed it about as well, but they relied on a different memory system and came away with knowledge they could apply less flexibly later. Divided attention changes what kind of memory forms.

In practice: when you need to remember something, such as a name, a password or a set of directions, stop other tasks and give it a few seconds of focus. Repeat it back.

6. Use a memory technique for lists and sequences

The method of loci, sometimes called a memory palace, means placing items you want to remember along a route you know well, such as the rooms of your home, and walking the route in your mind to recall them. In one study, people with no prior training practiced the method for six weeks. Their recall improved, and their brain network patterns shifted toward those of competitive memory athletes. The improvement was still measurable four months later.

In practice: try it with a shopping list or the points of a talk you need to give.

7. Keep learning things that are hard for you

Novelty and difficulty matter. In a study of older adults, people who spent about three months learning a demanding new skill, digital photography, quilting or both, improved on memory tests compared with people who did social activities or easy mental tasks for the same time. The researchers concluded that the benefit came from the sustained mental challenge.

In practice: pick a skill that stretches you, such as an instrument, a language or a craft, and stay with it past the point where it feels easy to quit.

8. Bring your stress response down

Short bursts of stress can sharpen memory for the moment. Long-term stress is different. A major review of stress research describes how sustained exposure to stress hormones affects the hippocampus and the frontal regions that support memory and attention. Slow breathing, time outside, exercise and enough sleep all help bring the stress response back down.

How to improve memory fast

If you need to remember something by tomorrow, these help most:

1. Recall it instead of rereading it. Write out what you remember, then check what you missed.
2. Do two or three short recall sessions spread through the day rather than one long one.
3. Put your phone away and close other tabs while you learn, so the material gets your full attention.
4. Get a full night of sleep before you need it.
   

Lasting improvement comes from making these habits, alongside exercise and sleep, part of how you live week to week.

Where brain training fits

Memory depends on other brain functions working well. Attention decides what gets encoded, and processing speed shapes how quickly the brain can work with what it holds. These functions can be trained, because the brain keeps adapting throughout life. That adaptability is called neuroplasticity.

The Sens.ai at-home system combines brain stimulation, neurofeedback training and an objective assessment of brain function. Neurofeedback shows your brain its own activity in real-time through sound and images, so it can learn to self-regulate.

The Sharp Mind Mission is the protocol the app recommends to people who report brain fog that has crept in with age. In the Sharp Mind whitepaper, 42 participants were measured on an event-related potential (ERP) task before and after the Mission:

• Measured (quantitative): processing speed improved 10.2%, with 84% of users improving. Reaction time improved 7%, with 95% of users improving. Errors fell 40.6%. The 70-person comparison group showed no improvement.
• Self-reported (qualitative): after one month, 73% of users said their mental clarity and memory had improved.
  

The ERP task measures speed and accuracy. The memory result is what participants reported about themselves, and we label it that way.

The protocol is fifteen minutes a session, three to five times a week, with impact observed and measured after weeks of use. The full results are in the Sharp Mind whitepaper on our results page.

The assessment is also never a rerun of the training. You are not tested on the exercise you practiced, so an improvement reflects a change in how your brain is working rather than a better score at a game. You can read more about the system on our At-Home page.

When to talk to your doctor

Occasional forgetting, such as a misplaced key or a name on the tip of your tongue, is part of normal memory at every age. Talk to your doctor if forgetting is getting worse over time, is getting in the way of work or daily life, is something people close to you have started to notice, or began after an illness, an injury or a new medication. A doctor can help you find out what is behind it.

Questions people ask

See what your brain can do

Sens.ai measures, stimulates and trains your brain in one at-home system, so you can see what is changing instead of guessing.

References

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