Three Rs of Remembering

In order to remember something, three things must happen. First, you must receive and learn a piece of information. This is the "Recording" step. Second, you must store this information in your brain (the "Retaining" step). Lastly, you must "Retrieve" the information out of your brain in a useful way.

The mind has a huge capacity to record and retain memories but it is not so good at retrieval. In fact, most memory failures occur at the retrieval step. Unfortunately, there is not much that you can do to directly improve retrieval, but learning good techniques for recording and retaining information will indirectly improve retrieval because the information will be more organized.

A good analogy is a library. If the books were randomly put onto shelves, it would be impossible to find anything. The library records each book in the card catalog and organizes the shelves so that retrieving a particular book is an easy task.

Proper "Recording" improves "Retrieval." Using good memory techniques will help you improve the way you organize information in your mind.