Meaningfulness

One aspect that affects your ability to remember something is how meaningful the information is to you. A doctor is more likely to remember medical facts than a lawyer, who is in turn more likely to remember legal information. What this means is that the more you know about a topic, the faster you will learn additional information. The familiarity and meaningfulness of the information will provide cues to help your memory.

You can use this to help make material that you want to learn more meaningful. If the topic you are trying to learn is unfamiliar, try relating it to something familiar. As you study, see if you can find similarities to something that you are very knowledgeable about. The more familiar things that you can associate with a particular fact, the more ways that you will have to remember that fact.