By HCL Tech Sri Lanka

Exam preparation may be a stressful time for students. You must try to remember information in a short amount of time, and then you must apply what you have learned.

Do you have trouble remembering things when you are studying? You are not the only one who feels this way. Many people have trouble recalling their exam notes. However, there are ways to increase your memory and train your brain. Here we will give you five hacks to improve your memory and capacity.

1. Sleep

Strange? Yeah, we know. But it is one of the best ways to improve your memory. It is critical to get enough sleep to remember information. Your mind becomes foggy if you do not get enough sleep. It has been found out through scientific research that memory can be increased by 40% with appropriate sleep, allowing you to focus and learn more effectively. Sleep helps to consolidate a memory so that it can be remembered more easily in the future. So please consider sleeping seven or more hours which is the recommended duration for a healthy lifestyle.

2. Mind Maps

Mind maps involve writing down a major concept and brainstorming new and related ideas that spread out from the center of a mind map. You can map knowledge in a way that will help you better understand and retain information by focusing on important themes written down in your own words and looking for connections between them. They’re a creative and logical note-taking method suitable for any level of learning by association because they enable you to make powerful visual connections between concepts, and in turn improve your understanding and keep the subject matter longer in your head.

3. Speak aloud

Have you ever noticed that if you say someone’s name out loud, you’re more likely to remember it? This is a typical tactic employed by people, particularly when meeting a large group of new people. The production effect is a term used by psychologists to describe this phenomenon. This effect states that saying something out loud increases the likelihood of remembering it. If you are having trouble remembering a notion, say the majority of it out loud to no one in particular. You will be surprised at how much easier it will be to recall the concepts when it comes time to take the exam.

4. Break Information into Small Segments

Breaking large streams of information into manageable parts improves the chances of your short-term memory storing it. It is essential to take the material into your brain in little doses when it comes to important tests. When our brain is bombarded with a large amount of information at once, it can become overwhelming, and our natural reaction is to become stressed. As a result, try to break down all the relevant information into manageable chunks. We are more likely to internalize the knowledge since it is less overpowering.

5. Study Groups

Even days before the exam, everyone knows how overwhelming it may be to be unsure about a concept and its application of it. While you may be perplexed by this concept, someone in your class is almost certainly an expert in the same specific area. Also, it is possible that you may have expertise on another matter that your friend is confused about.

Having said that, conducting study groups is usually beneficial, and why it is very popular among college and university students. Students in these groups can assist one another in internalizing concepts that they are having difficulty with. Even teaching others about a new concept can help you internalize it even more. After all, when the subject matter is interesting, knowledge is better stored in the brain.