Best Grades Ever! Book - Compressed

© 2017, Hudson Blair
Best Grades Ever!
Less Effort
Better Grades
7 Simple Tricks
Hudson Blair

Table of Contents
Introduction...............................................................................................................4
Simple Tricks To Fix Your Memory..........................................................................6
You’ve Been Doing It Wrong.....................................................................................8
Memory is About Survival.......................................................................................10
Why Is Memorizing In School Not Simple?............................................................12
Making Memory More Memorable..........................................................................14
1. Break......................................................................................................................17
2. Review..................................................................................................................23
3. Sleep.....................................................................................................................30
4. Engage..................................................................................................................40
5. Organize...............................................................................................................49
6. Imagine.................................................................................................................61
7. Routinize...............................................................................................................72
What Now?...............................................................................................................79
Suggested Books......................................................................................................80
About the Author......................................................................................................81

Introduction
Before I discovered the tricks I’m about to show you, I had a painfully poor
memory. Painfully poor.
Picture it; the year is 1988. I am a sophomore at Texas A & M University,

and I have mustered up the courage to ask out a very cute girl by the name of Jill.
We went out to a nice dinner and then over to Post Oak Mall to catch a movie—I
think Rain Man was playing.
While we were waiting in line to enter the theater, we ran into a friend of
mine who was there with his date. We shook hands. He introduced his date.
They both looked expectantly at my date. I said, “This is my date. . .”

followed by a long pause as I searched my brain frantically looking for some sign
of her name. It was there just a minute ago.
I tried again. “This is. . .” My face reddened. My date looked at me with a

hopeful expectant smile which slowly melted away. I kept hoping she would just
say her name. Nope. She let me hang—not that I blame her. It was embarrassing
for both of us.
I would like to say that was the only time that ever happened. But it wasn’t.

That happened to me twice. Helpful hint; at that point the date is officially
over—you should all just go home.
Perhaps worse; I once forgot my college roommate’s name. Really. As I

said, I have a painfully poor memory.
Still, dates and roommates notwithstanding, my sub-par brain remembers

many things phenomenally well. Unbelievably well.
Your brain does too! Although, maybe your brain doesn’t hold onto some
things as well as you would like. I can relate.
My noggin sometimes leaves me in the lurch on names, but my brain still

remembers loads of stuff I would rather it didn’t. It files away campy punch lines
from bad sitcoms and statistics on the orbital velocity of frozen astronaut poo
(22,000 miles per hour . . . look it up). My gray matter keeps a death grip on odd
little tidbits like the complete lyrics to the Oscar Meyer Wiener song from a long
extinct commercial. My brain records in vivid HiDef that time I spent three hours
at a job fair only to notice at the end that my fly was unzipped. It likes to play that
one back to me over and over again when I’d rather just go to sleep.
My brain is a memory machine that’s truly amazing to behold, yet, as I

said, it’s not even a very good one compared to most brains, including, in all
likelihood, yours.
So the question is, if your brain is so freaking awesome at recalling weird,

obscure, unimportant, and embarrassing things, why won’t it remember the
meaning of the word obfuscation even after you’ve repeated it a hundred times?
Why does it conveniently forget the combination to your bike lock on the one
hundred and twelfth day of school? Why doesn’t it remember to grab the keys
from the ignition before locking the car door?

The question is really, “Why does it remember so much that we never try
to remember and forget so much that we need to recall?” More importantly,
“How can we fix it?”

Simple Tricks To Fix Your
Memory
First, it’s important for you to know. It can be fixed. You can learn to recall
practically anything with minimal effort. I’m living proof.
I fixed my memory in college with a few Simple Tricks. I could call them
“techniques,” or “methods,” or “algorithms,” but that would be overstating it.
These are tricks; about as difficult as learning to stick a dryer sheet under
the front seat of your car as an inexpensive deodorizer or using the sticky part of
a post-it note to clean between your keyboard keys. Tricks are simple. Tricks are
easy to learn. Tricks are quick. Tricks are what these are.
Don’t be fooled though. Because a trick is simple doesn’t mean it isn’t

powerful. Very, very powerful.
Since I first learned these memory tricks at the end of my junior year at
Texas A & M University, I’ve been able to teach them to thousands and thousands
of students, from kindergartners to college students.
So what’s the problem? Why can’t you make your brain quickly and easily
recall that organic chemistry for your next mid-term or that equation for

calculating surface tension. Why can’t you memorize practically anything quickly
and easily?

You’ve Been Doing It Wrong
Have you ever caught a scent and it suddenly brings to mind something
you haven’t thought of in years? Perhaps you catch a whiff of rose-scented
perfume and the smell of bacon frying and suddenly you feel like you’re five years
old and standing in your grandmother’s kitchen again. The smell effortlessly and
completely brings back the memory as if you were there.
How does it do that? Did you spend hours and hours rehearsing that bit of
information?
“This smell should make me remember my grandmother’s kitchen. This

smell should make me remember my grandmother’s kitchen. This smell should
make me remember my grandmother’s kitchen.”
Did you engage in late-night cram sessions to get that through your head?
Did you have flash cards? Were there pages of notes? Did you have a study
group?
You did none of those things. Your brain memorized that smell and
associated it with your grandmother’s kitchen without you ever reviewing it even
once. You must be some sort of genius!

The fact is, we are all able to recall—with perfect clarity—things which we
have never reviewed. Think of some intense event that occurred several years
ago; a big party, a fender-bender, a graduation, or something like that.
Maybe you recall the last auto accident you were involved in. Who was
driving? What time of day was it? What was the weather like? What did the other
driver look like? How long did it take the police to show up?
You can probably recall most, if not all, of those things. You may even
remember where you were headed and what you were wearing.
Now try and recall what you were doing exactly one month prior to that
accident at the same time of day.
Not a clue? Welcome to my world.
What makes the difference? Why can you remember that event with such
lucidity?
You remember the accident because it involved your emotions. It was

alternately frightening, and angering, and then filled with relief or sorrow. It was
also very unusual. You don’t get in accidents every day (one would hope).
But why, do you remember things like the time of day on which the
accident occurred or what the police officer’s name was? Those tidbits weren’t
emotional or unusual or even necessarily important.
We recall those things because the brain doesn’t discriminate between

important and unimportant facts in such situations. It takes a snapshot, or more
accurately, it makes a sense-filled movie of everything that happened, recalling
sights, sounds, smells, feelings, and even tastes. There is a massively important
reason our memory works this way.

Survival
Memory is really a survival mechanism. Memory is what humans have
relied on over the millennia to keep them alive in the toughest of situations.
Your great-great-great-great x10 grandmother, for instance, learned the

most important lessons immediately and well with no need—or desire—for
repetition. Perhaps she heard an ominous buzzing sound and then had a run-in
with an enraged rattlesnake. That buzzing sound—she learned—meant there was
a deadly creature around.
But she didn’t just learn to associate the sound of the rattlesnake with
danger. Her brain wanted to make sure she didn’t get in the same dangerous
situation again. So she also remembered that the rattlesnake was under the edge
of a large rock ledge—we should avoid those from now on. Her brain
remembered that it was a particularly hot day—that might be important. And she
recalled the smell of honeysuckle nearby. Do rattlesnakes hide near honeysuckle
vines? Better remember that too, just in case.
Her brain didn’t know which details might be important, so it remembered

all of them. It would make her that much more vigilant the next time she
experienced some of the same sensory inputs.
Let me back track. That last paragraph wasn’t quite right. She didn’t
remember all of the details. She didn’t, for example, associate the rattlesnake

with the feel of the shoes on her feet; she always wore those. She didn’t associate
the rattlesnake with rocks in general; those are everywhere. She didn’t necessarily
associate the rattlesnake with the feel of her own breathing; again, that’s always
there.
Our brains tend to ignore the ordinary in favor of the unusual. Her brain
selectively picked out the things that were un-ordinary about the situation. Those
would be the most likely clues to help her avoid another rattlesnake in the future.
I’ve been referring to situations of fear or other negative emotions. But the
brain also pays attention to positive emotional situations.
It recalls that fat, red apples taste better than the little green ones. It
remembers that the man with the funny hat and the cane made you laugh, and
that you saw that attractive person in the greeting card aisle at Target.
This is also for survival. Great-great-etc. granddad had to remember where

he saw great-great-etc. grandmom, or you wouldn’t be here. He also had to
remember where to find the tastiest berries to offer a potential mate and how to
make great-great-etc. grandmom laugh, or—again—you might not be here.
All of this tells us all we need to know about how memory works. We
remember best those things that might be important to our survival. These things
tend to be associated with strong emotions. In addition, our brains link the
memory to the unusual—non-ordinary—cues around the event.
Think about it, the things we recall most vividly are often unusual and
emotional events, like accidents or first kisses. Emotions, in fact, are one way
your brain says, “Hey! Remember this. It’s important.”
We never had to force ourselves to review these things. They were very
important and stuck in our brains after a single occurrence. Not so when it comes
to much of what we learn in school.

Why Is Memorizing In School
Not Simple?
The kinds of memory tasks we are asked to perform in academic settings
often go something like. . .
“Learn these three formulas.”
“Be able to tell me the names and locations of the Mesolithic tribes
of Central America.”
“Know the names of each of the cranial nerves.”
If the prof is of the higher caliber, it might be something more like. . .
“Evaluate the geographic situation of Central American Mesolithic

tribal peoples, and explain how their locations might or might not
lend credence to Wittfogel’s Hydraulic Theory.”
To answer that question on an essay exam, you still need to have

memorized details about Wittfogel’s Hydraulic Theory, as well as the names,
locations, and other details concerning those Mesolithic tribal peoples.

So we write those items on flashcards or in our notes. Then we review
them over and over. Eventually, they stick.
When we do this we are engaging in rote memorization—what

psychologists refer to as “rehearsal.” It means repeating something over and over
again until you can recall it. For example, “The study of bees is apiology. . . . The
study of bees is apiology. . . . The study of bees is. . . .” You get the idea.
But, recall great-great-etc. grandmom and her rattlesnake run-in.

Remember what made the details of that incident memorable? It was emotional
and unusual.
Is it emotional to repeat, “The study of bees is apiology,” over and over

again? No. Is it unusual or out of the ordinary? Maybe at first, but not after you
repeat it a hundred times. Does it involve all your senses? No.
In fact, it’s the opposite of the kind of thing we easily memorize. You are
taking the facts to be memorized and stripping them of all emotion, novelty, and
sensory stimulation.
Rote memorization does work. . . eventually. But compared to the other

type of learning we’ve been talking about—“rattlesnake memory” we might call it
—it’s like cooking steak with a candle. Let’s learn how to turn on the gas.

Making Memory More
Memorable
I’ve collected seven simple—and very powerful—tricks for making the most
of your memory. Why these seven?
1. They give instant results
2. They are easy to implement
3. Most students don’t know about them or don’t use them
4. Exceptional students do know about and use them.
When I say “instant results,” I mean instant! These tricks begin working
the moment you begin using them. Before learning these tricks, you study in the
same way you’ve been studying, and you will get the same results you’ve been
getting. But start applying the tricks I’m about to show you, and you’ll be able to
study in a new and better way. You’ll learn things faster and you won’t have to
work as hard to do it. Really!
It actually takes less effort to study this way. It’s like the difference
between walking on all fours and walking on two legs. All fours work. It’s the way
most of us got around for the first year or so of life. But walking on two legs is

much more efficient, fast, and versatile. These tricks will put you—academically
speaking—up where you belong! Just like walking on two legs, this is the way you
were designed to work.
The best part is, these tricks are way easier to implement than it was for
you to learn to walk. Most kids go from crawling to walking efficiently over the
course of a year or more. It’s hard to get everything moving in the right direction
in a coordinated fashion.
Unlike walking, these memory tricks are natural. In fact, you already
know how to do them. You apply these tricks effortlessly already in many parts of
your life. Most people, however, do not use them in academic settings.
One of the reasons I picked out these particular tricks is because most
people don’t know them or don’t apply them to their studies. Most people do
apply these tricks in other areas of their lives. The clever bit is in knowing how to
apply the tricks you already use well in one area to this new area. Psychologists
refer to this as “the transfer of learning.”
According to David A. Sousa, author of, How the Brain Learns . . .
[Transfer] encompasses the ability to learn in one situation and then

use that learning, possibly in a modified or generalized form, in other
situations. Transfer is the core of the problem solving, creative
thinking, and all other higher mental processes, inventions, and
artistic products. It is also one of the ultimate goals of teaching and
learning.
Many top students, especially the ones that don’t seem to work too hard at
their studies—are just better at transferring their learning. They take the things
that work well for their memory in the “real world” and transfer those tricks into
the academic world.

Noted author Cal Newport speaks about this basic truth. While in college,
he noticed that he and other straight-A students didn’t necessarily study any
more than anyone else, nor were they necessarily smarter. They just got better
results. His book, How to Become a Straight-A Student, comes from interviews
of master students from top-shelf schools across the country.
Newport found that top students tended to use the same basic techniques
to boost their scores. By the way, I highly recommend his book. It’s a life changer
for any student!
Let’s take a look at some of the most powerful techniques he and others
have identified. I’ll show you how you can start using these now to get better
grades with less work. Here are seven Simple Tricks to memory mastery.

1. Break
Less Can Be More
I used to work for a brilliant and kind man. Dr. Walter Bradley, the head of
the College of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A & M University, taught a study
skills seminar for incoming college freshman.
In his seminar he told the story of two lumberjacks working together in the
woods. They chopped all day, from morning to night, felling tree after tree,
trimming off the branches, and cutting each trunk into neat, fireplace-sized logs.
Jacques worked steadily and without pause—a manly, tree-chopping

machine. He skipped breakfast, lunch, and dinner, barely even pausing to take a
drink of water. What a work ethic!
Jean Pierre, on the other hand, stopped at least once every hour, and
puttered about with his ax. Jacques noted Jean Pierre’s laziness with contempt.
However, at the close of the day, Jacques was amazed to discover that Jean
Pierre—the lazy loafer—had cut much more wood!

“Mon dieu! How can zis be?” gasped Jacques, in a bad French accent.
Jean Pierre grinned, “Mon frer, perhaps you did not notice. I stopped
frequently to sharpen my ax. It is no wonder you have had such a hard time,
working wiz a dull ax.”
Psychology studies show that this principal applies as much to learning as

to lumber. Study less; learn more. It’s a fundamentally true principal that’s been
known since the Father of Memory Research, Herman Ebbinghaus, first studied
recall back in the late 1800s.1
Ebbinghaus on Breaks
Ebbinghaus discovered that, during lectures, students tended to remember

best that which they learned first. Psychologists call this the Primacy Effect, and
it’s a well-documented truth of recall.
Ebbinghaus’s students also tended to recall better that which came at the
end of the lecture. That is known as the Recency Effect.
Collectively, the primacy effect and the recency effect are known as the
serial position effect. To sum up; the primacy effect means that we remember
better what came at the start of our study sessions and the recency effect means
we recall better what came at the end of our study sessions. 2
Unfortunately, our memory of those things we learned in the middle of the

study session is much poorer. How can this be fixed?
Ebbinghaus uncovered a Simple Trick that increased his students’ recall.

He found the trick by testing out different lecture lengths on his students. Dr.
Ebbinghaus found that a 30-minute lecture, a 60-minute lecture, and a 120

minute lecture were all the same in one important way. Each of the three had the
primacy effect and the recency effect.
His insight was to realize that, by breaking a 60-minute lecture into two
30-minute lectures, he could double the primacy effect and recency effect. He
took his normal 60-minute lecture—with its single primacy and recency effect—
and put a two-minute break right in the middle, effectively making it into two 30-
minute lectures, each with its own primacy and recency effects.
This is the first of the seven Simple Tricks to memory mastery; take
regular breaks when you study. Maybe every 30 minutes or so.
By doing this you effectively double the number of beginnings and endings
you have during the same hour. Twice the primacy effect. Twice the recency
effect.
How to Do It
Set an alarm to go off every 30 minutes or so when you are studying. When
it goes off, take a five-minute break and do something interesting. You will be
amazed at how much more you can recall.
There is actually research on exactly how long the breaks and study
sessions need to be.3 Following these guidelines will help maximize the
effectiveness of your breaks.
Study sessions should be between 20 and 60 minutes long. Less

than 20 minutes and the learning is broken up too much; it’s hard to get the big
picture. More than 60 minutes and you’re giving away free recall by not taking
enough breaks.

Breaks should be between two and 15 minutes long. Less than two
minutes and you don’t get the effect. It’s like you didn’t take a break. More than
15 minutes long and you begin to forget what came before the break. It becomes
counter-productive.
In my own practice, I’ve found that a 30 to 45 minute study session

followed by a five-minute break maximizes my recall and focus. As an
added bonus, the frequent breaks will keep you from tiring as quickly. You’ll find
it easier to study for longer periods. If I do begin getting fatigued, I will lengthen
my breaks to 10 minutes or even 15.
A heads up; I find that I really don’t like taking the breaks. I feel like I was
just getting into the flow of things and then my timer goes off to take a break.
Over the years I’ve learned to force myself to take the break anyway. It really does
increase my recall and allow me to worker longer over all.
BONUS
I always put a quick review at the close and start of each study session. As
we’ll discuss in another chapter, review means forcing your brain to recall the
information. Quiz yourself, in other words.
The last five minutes of each 45-minute study session, I quiz myself over
what I’ve been studying, paying special attention to the things I couldn’t recall so
I won’t miss them again. Immediately after the break, I do another five-minute
review over the same stuff. As you’ll see in the next chapter, this really pays off!
Look here for lots more details and techniques to refine your study
sessions and breaks.

Recommended4
Android Phone App — Pomodoro Timer Lite
The Pomodoro Technique is a particular implementation of frequent

breaks that uses a 25 minute work session followed by a five-minute break. This
not only increases recall on learning tasks, it improves focus on anything you are
working on, since you know a break is coming soon and you only have 25 minutes
to work.
I’ve used this with my own children, with myself, and with my students to
great effect. The one draw back, in my opinion, is that 25 minutes of work just
seems too short for most of my learning tasks.
Android Phone App — HIIT Interval Training Timer
HIIT stands for “High Intensity Interval Training.” It’s a method used in
strength and conditioning training to maximize gains using brief spurts of high-

intensity exercise followed by short breaks. This app is designed to help athletes
track their exercise bouts and breaks. But, while the app is really designed for
physical exercise, it works great for study sessions and breaks as well. It’s not the
prettiest app, but it is extremely versatile. I’ve used it for study and for exercise
with great results.

2. Review
I don’t particularly enjoy reviewing my notes or flashcards. In fact, I’m
downright lazy about it. That’s why I want to do it as little as possible. If you’re
like that too, then you’ll want to review as efficiently as possible. That means you
want to review any piece of information just enough to keep from forgetting it,
but no more.
How much review would that be? What is the bare minimum number of
times you can review something and still get it stuck in your head?
Ebbinghaus on Forgetting
Herman Ebbinghaus pioneered research designed to find how long it takes

to forget a fact. He came up with something now known as the Ebbinghaus
Forgetting Curve.
Let’s say you spend an hour or so to memorize a hundred new facts. In

general terms, Ebbinghaus found that, within an hour, you will have forgotten
almost 50 of those facts. By the next day, you will be down to about 35. A week
later? 20. Within a month you are down to a grand total of 14 facts. You spent an

hour of your life learning a hundred facts and now all you have to show for it is 14
facts.5
What if you have a test on those hundred facts of which you now only
recall 14? If you don’t want to fail, you will need to spend more time relearning all
the facts you’ve forgotten. You might spend 45 minutes or so re-learning the
other 86 facts. But as soon as you stop studying, you’ll start forgetting again,
although at a slower rate, since you’ve already learned the facts once before. By
test time tomorrow, you may recall as many as 50 of those original 100 facts.
Surely there’s a better way. Ebbinghaus found that well-timed reviews can
plug the leak in our memories. His thought was to review the material again just
before it would have been otherwise forgotten.
Each time you review the material, you are moving it further into your
long-term memory. That means you can wait longer before you need to review it
again. Since Ebbinghaus, there has been careful research on exactly how to do
this.
Spaced Review
Complex algorithms have been developed to make sure people are

reviewing facts as efficiently as possible. Websites like duolingo.com and others
use these algorithms to help students learn languages—among other things—as
efficiently as possible. But the basic idea is pretty straight-forward.
In general, quiz yourself on a fact about 30 seconds after you first learn it.
Then, triple the time between each successive review. If, for example, you were
trying to recall that ootiyah is the Kazakh word for very, you would want to quiz

yourself on that in 30 seconds; then again in 90 seconds; then in four and a half
minutes; then in about 15 minutes; and so on.
If you try doing this, you will quickly find that it works well. Unfortunately,
it’s also very hard to keep track of all those time intervals if you’re trying to learn
a lot of different pieces of information every day. That makes it tough to see how
you can integrate this process into your academic life.
How to Do It
Here are two easy ways to review on optimal intervals without killing
yourself trying to keep track of it all. One is low tech, and one is high tech.
The Low Tech Way to Review
First, lets look at the low tech way. Do an initial review a minute or two
after your study session or class.
To put this into practice, I just didn’t put away my notes after a class. I
kept them out and reviewed them as I walked across campus to my next class.
That was my first review.
An hour after that, maybe after my next class, I would do another review of
that initial material. Since I had already seen it in class today and done another
short review, this usually isn’t too difficult and rarely takes more than five or 10
minutes.
I did the next review that night. Again, five minutes was usually enough.
That was my third exposure to the material in less than 12 hours.

Normally, I had no more than three classes on a given day. If each class’s
review took five minutes, and I reviewed three times after the class, that
translated to a total of 45 minutes of review for new material that day.
The next morning, I did another five minute review for each of the
previous day’s classes. I usually did this while riding the bus to campus, but
sometimes I would do it while waiting for a class to start or maybe in longer
breaks between classes during the day.
That night, I would hit that material again. 15 minutes of review would let
me cover the previous day’s three classes.
Then each Saturday I would do a cumulative review of all the material for
each class. I chose to spend my Saturday morning doing this so I didn’t have to
do much studying on week nights, but honestly, if I just used all my spare time
during a normal school day—rather than messing around with friends or wasting
time in the campus library or student center—I could usually get all my review
done during the week and keep Saturdays free.
So for any given class, I reviewed the material…
1. One minute after the class
2. An hour later, after the next class
3. That night before bed
4. The next morning
5. The night of the second day after the class
6. Each Saturday until the test

As long as I followed this schedule, I found that I really didn’t need to
study much at all in the few days before the exam. By that time, the vast majority
of what I needed to know was already in my long-term memory.
Not only that, but research—and personal experience—shows that you will
recall the information that you’ve reviewed in this manner for much longer than
you will if you study by cramming.
That means you do a lot less relearning of material when you take
cumulative classes. You’ll recall the stuff you learned in the prerequisite classes
making your current coursework much easier.
There were certain classes I had that required more review than this.
There were others that required less. I also had to do similar things with my
readings for classes. However, I often found the text and the class went hand in
hand. Being able to recall one meant much less review for the other.
All in all, students find that they actually do less overall studying. I
certainly did. Studying in this manner, I was able to avoid the long hours of
cramming before tests. Not only that, I recalled the information for much longer
periods. It’s truly less study with vastly improved recall.
The High Tech Way to Review
The high tech way to do the same thing is with an application or website
that can take care of those review intervals for you. It will bring up the particular
piece of information to be learned just before you would have forgotten it
otherwise. Apps and websites can do this much more efficiently meaning less
overall review.
The trade off is that you will normally have to enter each fact into the app
or website before you can begin reviewing it. However, entering the data will
function as your first review, so it’s not wasted time.

BONUS
Flashcards, as I’m sure you know, are a really powerful way to review.
However, most people do them completely wrong!
There are a few simple things you can do to make flashcards much more
effective and useful. There are also several common mistakes to avoid. Take a
look here for more insights on effective review intervals.
Recommended
Website, Computer App, iPhone and Android Phone App — Anki
Anki is a flashcard program. Put in your facts and it will make sure you
review them on the optimal schedule. Anki will always bring up that fact for
review—using the algorithms just discussed—just before you would otherwise
have forgotten it. Anki is a website, a desktop application, and a phone app. You
can use one or all of them, since they all talk to each other. It’s not beautiful. It’s
not super user-friendly. It is way effective, and I have used it for years. Best of all,
it’s free in all its forms (except the iPhone app which is $25—go figure).

Website, iPhone and Android Phone App — Brainscape
Brainscape is a much prettier version of Anki. I’ve never personally used

it, but it gets good reviews, and I’ve had students who used it and liked it. It costs
as low as $2.99 a month, if you pay for a year up front. The one-time cost is
$79.99.
Website, iPhone and Android Phone App — Duolingo.com
Besides using massively effective review algorithms, Duolingo is also fun.

It’s a very painless, effective, and even addictive way to learn. Unfortunately, it’s
only for language learning. I would love to see them bring the same format to
other forms of learning as well.

3. Sleep
Sleep On It to Recall It More Effectively
As a college student, I was morally opposed to all-nighters. Not because I

knew they were counter-productive—they are—or because I had seen the research
on how sleep loss decreases brain functioning—it does. I was opposed to staying
up all night studying because of one reason. I liked sleep more than I liked good
test scores. Lucky for me, it turns out that getting my beauty sleep was exactly the
right thing to do.
Sleep; it’s not just for beauty. It’s for brains!
How does it help? It is well known in the scientific literature that sleep
helps your brain and body work better in just about every way.
1. Sleep can help you live longer6
2. Sleep can help you lose weight7
3. Sleep can reduce and prevent all sorts of physical ailments 8

4. Sleep helps keep you sane9
5. Most importantly for our purposes, sleep can help you learn and
remember more effectively10
A US Navy study of recruits in training published in 2008 noted, “In short,

recruits who receive 8 hr of sleep per night scored on average 11% higher [on a
standardized test] than their counterparts who receive only 6 hr of sleep,
supporting our hypothesis that more sleep was associated with significantly
better academic performance.”11
Eric Jensen summarizes much of the current research on sleep and the
brain in his book, Teaching With the Brain in Mind, when he says, “. . . most
encoding, regardless of it’s location in the brain, is enhanced by a good night’s
sleep. And the more complex the learning, the more helpful sleep is.” Encoding is
a psychology term that means to store an item in memory.
Not only does sleep help you remember things more easily and efficiently
initially, it helps you move those short-term memories into more stable long-term
memories. Psychologists refer to this process as consolidation. Hallie Smith, an
author and speech language pathologist writing on the Scientific Learning blog
site says, “Sleep has been shown in numerous studies to play a major role in
memory formation and consolidation.”
In fact, to get these benefits you don’t even have to get a full night’s sleep.
She goes on to say, “Napping for 10-30 minutes has been demonstrated to
increase alertness and improve performance.” 12
My own experience—as well as that of many others—bears out the truth of

this. I often take a short 15 to 45 minute nap during the middle of the day. It
improves my focus, creativity, and performance for the rest of the day with no
noticeable difficulty in getting to sleep at night.

How To Do It
When it comes to sleep “How To Do It” might seem obvious. When it

comes to doing it correctly, however, it’s often not obvious at all.
In the first place, how much sleep do you need? Not, “How much sleep
does the average person need?” You’re not average. How much sleep do you
need?
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), almost one third of
Americans are sleep deprived, and that’s with their rather low benchmark of
seven hours of sleep a night for an adult! 13 But again, you’re not average. Sleep
needs vary by individual and even for the same individual at different stages of
life.
So how can you know how much sleep you need? There’s a Simple Trick
for that too. If you can take a nap at one or two o’clock in the afternoon you
probably need to be getting more sleep. People who are getting enough sleep
usually can’t take a nap during the middle of the day.
What qualifies as enough sleep can vary quite a bit from one life stage to
another. There have been times in my life when seven and half hours of sleep a
night was plenty. There have been other times when 12 hours a night wasn’t
enough. Right now my optimal sleep times fluctuate between seven and half and
10 hours.
Begin paying attention to what your body is telling you. If you find yourself
struggling with drowsiness during work times, you may need to reevaluate your
sleep schedule.
Physical and emotional stress can really increase your need for sleep.
Working out and illness are common forms of physical stress that will increase

your sleep requirements. Emotional stressors might include things such as
changing residences, going through a relational break up, or starting a new job.
Did you know that learning large amounts will also increase your need for
sleep? If you’ve ever traveled to a foreign country, you will have experienced this.
Not only are you potentially processing a new language, you’re learning new
customs, figuring out how the light switches and toilets work, concentrating on
new and different traffic patterns, and more. That means loads of learning all day
long. It is physically exhausting, and you will really find yourself in need of sleep.
Your brain seems to need the extra processing time to consolidate all that new
information.
Other culprits in daytime drowsiness include poor diet and poor bedtime
practices. For example, many people get sleepy about 30 minutes after lunch.
This is not a normal pattern—at least it shouldn’t be.
Often times, drowsiness 30 minutes after eating is due to a blood-sugar

crash that comes from ingesting too many complex carbohydrates at one sitting.
Large amounts of sugar, bread, corn, potatoes, etc. can lead to a crash a little
later. Eat more proteins and fibers to keep that blood-sugar on an even keel and
avoid daytime drowsiness.
Too much caffeine in the late afternoon or evening can also mess with
sleep quality. Even if you go right to sleep when you go to bed, that caffeine in
your system can prevent you from sleeping deeply and leave you yawning
tomorrow. Sensitivity to caffeine can vary throughout your life. Just because you
could drink 32 ounces of Mountain Dew and sleep like a baby in high school
doesn’t necessarily mean that will be the case a few years later.
My own sensitivity to caffeine underwent a drastic shift just after college.

It took me over a month to figure out that my normal caffeine intake—which
hadn’t seemed to affect me at all in college—was suddenly keeping me wide-
awake until the wee hours.

Alcohol later in the evening can also affect sleep. While it may enable you
to go to sleep more easily, it tends to suppress the deeper sleep your body needs. 14
This leaves you feeling less rested the next day.
More recently, sleep experts have identified electronic screens—smart

phones, computers, TVs, etc.—as being major contributors to sleeplessness. 15 Our
bodies are wired to get sleepy in the evening after being exposed to the reddish
wavelengths of light we experience naturally at sundown.
Conversely, we are wired to wake up when exposed to bluer wavelengths

that are more common when the sun is high. Electronic screens produce a lot of
bluer light wavelengths which can fool our body into wakefulness late at night.
They can also decrease the overall restfulness of sleep once we do fall asleep.
But perhaps falling asleep and staying asleep aren’t your problem. Maybe
you just don’t have as much time to sleep as you need. If you don’t have enough
time to sleep at night—maybe because you have to get up early for a job or class
and can’t always get to bed when you would like—naps are your friend.
Napping for Experts
Napping, strange as it may seem, is a learned skill. Many people have been
programmed—from public schools and the working world—to not nap. All our
experience is in how to handle drowsiness by fighting it, rather than by doing
what our bodies are signaling us to do—sleep!
Most people are really good at napping as babies. So how can we learn to
nap again? Let me offer you some tips from my own personal experience. By the
way, I’m not someone who falls asleep easily, especially during daylight hours.
First, invest in a good sleep mask and some foam rubber ear plugs. Not all
of these are created equal. Experiment a bit. Paying a little extra for a soft sleep

mask with a comfortable strap is worth it. The one I use now works fine, and I
picked it up for eight dollars at a local pharmacy.
Regarding earplugs, I get the Mack’s brand Ultra-soft earplugs from

Amazon which come in a bottle of 50 for $8 at the time of this writing. That’s
enough to last me for several years since each pair can be reused many times.
The sleep mask and earplugs can be a little uncomfortable at first. If you’re
having trouble getting used to them, wait until a night on which you are utterly
exhausted and can barely keep your eyes open. Put the sleep mask and earplugs
on as you go to bed even though you don’t need them. Once you fall asleep in
them a time or two, you’ll be good to go anywhere, including naps in your office
or at the school library.
Second, to nap most effectively, set your phone alarm for 30 to 45

minutes. I put it on vibrate as well, so I’ll feel it if I don’t hear it through my
earplugs. I’m a very light sleeper, though, so I usually hear the alarm even when I
have my earplugs in. If you’re a heavy sleeper, you may be able to forgo the
earplugs altogether.
Another alternative is to use your phone earbuds instead of earplugs.

These usually keep the environmental noise down enough that I can go to sleep,
but it allows me to keep the alarm really loud.
It usually takes me a five to 10 minutes to drift off to sleep, so I set my

timer to 40 minutes. The goal is to sleep around 30 minutes. If you can fall right
to sleep, you may need to set your timer for less; say 30 to 35 minutes.
I’ve found that I can train my body pretty quickly to take these short naps.
After a few days of consistent naps, I begin waking up just before the alarm.
Third, the 30-minute time constraint on your nap is important. Many

people hate taking naps during the day because they say it makes them sleepy or
groggy. That’s because they woke up during the middle of their sleep cycle when

they were in the deeper part of their sleep. Sleep for 30 minutes or so, and you’ll
wipe out your sleepiness without feeling groggy later. 30 minutes gives you the
benefits of sleeping without allowing you to go into the really deep part of your
sleep cycle.
You also don’t want to destroy your ability to get to sleep at night. Don’t
overdo it by taking a two-hour nap. Again, for me, 20 or 30 minutes in the middle
of the day is usually perfect.
Finally, here’s a simple and very effective trick for falling asleep quickly.
Lay down and get comfortable. Close your eyes. Now think of a new random
object every seven or eight seconds. Doesn’t matter what it is. For example, I
might think of a lizard. I’ll try to picture it clearly in my mind. Then in a few
seconds I might think of a nail. And then a hummingbird. And then a barbecue
pit. Just whatever random thing comes into my mind.
If random is hard for you, remember this list; one – gun, two – shoe, three
– tree, four – door, five – hive, six – sticks, seven – heaven, eight – gate, nine –
line, 10 – hen. Just think of each thing for seven to 10 seconds—don’t sweat the
exact time—and then go on to the next thing. If you can get all the way through
the list without falling asleep, you’re probably not tired enough to really need the
nap.
I can’t recall where I originally heard about this technique, but it’s always
worked fantastically for me! It apparently comes out of the research of Dr. Luc
Beaudoin at Simon Fraser University. The explanation for the technique was that
our brains tend to think of a succession of random things just before we naturally
drift off. By mimicking that, we can put ourselves in the right state to doze off. 16
And it doesn’t just work for napping. I find it works equally well for going
to sleep at my regular bed time. Speaking of. . .

Getting to Sleep at Night
There have been large portions of my life where getting to sleep at night
was no problem. There have been other portions where I’ve not been so lucky.
Over the years I’ve figured out what works well when I’m trying to go to sleep.
First, don’t sweat what time you go to bed as much as what time you wake
up. If you force yourself to get up at the same time every morning, no matter how
tired you are, your body will quickly take note. At first you may have two or three
days where you’re really sleepy. Supplement with a short nap if you can, but that
night, lay down as soon as you feel the least bit tired.
I find that if I’m always getting up at the same time, my body quickly gets
into the habit of getting sleepy at the same time every night. Warning; if you blow
through that sleepy-time some night, it throws things off and you may have to
wait an hour or two before you get sleepy again. Don’t let that stress you out. This
is normal. Do something low key, semi-boring, and unstressful until you find
yourself getting sleepy again.
Second, avoid things that keep your body from winding down. Heavy
exercise too close to bed time, caffeine, and computer or phone screens, are well
known sleep destroyers, as mentioned before. Make sure to leave yourself at least
an hour before bed time when these things are off limits. There are also helpful
apps that will shift your phone or computer screen to redder wavelengths at night
so you can still get sleepy (links below).
Third, if you have a mind like mine that tends to race from one subject to
another, especially when you’re stressed out, this trick is for you. I’ve found that a
mildly interesting podcast or audio book on a sleep timer will knock me out. It
can’t be too interesting; just enough to focus your attention. I listened to all of
Peter the Great, by Robert K. Massie, this way.

As an added bonus, you’ll quickly get a feel for how long it actually takes
you to go to sleep. I thought it normally took me 30 minutes or more to fall
asleep. However, when I started listening to books at bedtime, I quickly learned
the truth. I usually didn’t get through more than five minutes before I was asleep.
I could tell how long it took me to fall sleep by where I had to rewind to the next
night before I recognized the text.
Even though five to 10 minutes to fall asleep was fairly normal, there were
nights where I might listen to an hour or more before I fell asleep. At least I was
listening to something worthwhile rather than staring at the clock and getting
more and more stressed about not being able to fall asleep.
Finally, I am a follower of Jesus Christ. He loves it when I come to him

with my needs, so I regularly pray that he would use the night for whatever he
wants. I give my sleeping, dreaming, and waking to him each night. That way,
when I do wake up in the middle of the night, I know that’s what he wants. Again,
the time is then not wasted. It has a purpose, and I don’t get stressed out about
the sleep I’m missing.
BONUS
Check out these posts on my website for lots more on sleeping and naps.
The posts also will suggest other helpful resources for all things zzzzz.

Recommended
Android Phone App — Blue Light Filter – Night Mode
Blue Light Filter can adjust your screen to redder wavelengths in the
evening to help you get to sleep more easily even if your on your screen a lot. An
onboard timer can automatically turn the feature on and off at set times, so you
won’t have to remember to turn it on each evening.

4. Engage
In my early college years, I relied heavily on being exposed to the material
to get good grades. By exposure, I mean I listened to the lecture, I read the
chapter, I watched the prof, I saw the PowerPoint, and so on. I thought that if I
just observed the material, I would be able to get good grades.
I used this method because it worked well for me in high school. In

general, I found my high school classes pretty easy if I just paid attention. My
teachers helpfully emphasized and re-emphasized the things that we were to
know. Often, I could get good grades without even taking notes, because the
teacher continually exposed us to the material that would be on the test.
As a former public school teacher, I can tell you that I personally went to
great pains to make sure my students did well on the tests. I wanted them to excel
so they could demonstrate mastery of the material. By extension, that would
mean I had done my job. For that reason, I not only discussed the material in a
lecture, I quizzed them on it, I had them play games and engage in activities to
help them recall it, I gave them readings on it, I had them watch videos on it, and
more. A reasonably intelligent student in my class would have had a hard time
not learning the material.
I’ve been in some public schools where the teachers didn’t much seem to
care about whether or not the students learned. However, that was the exception

in my experience. I found that most of my teachers—and most of the teachers I
taught with—cared a lot about whether students learned.
Then came college. The big difference was that many profs seemed much
less concerned than my high school teachers about making sure I did well on the
test. They didn’t worry about helping me retain the information. Explaining a
concept once and providing a few examples was normal, in contrast to the
repeated review of the material my high school teachers engaged in. Don’t get me
wrong; I’m not blaming the professors. Students should take charge of their own
learning. After all, the student is the one with the most to lose.
College professors often mentioned key concepts only once or twice before
a test. Indeed, they sometimes didn’t mention tested concepts at all, expecting
that I would glean the important information from the readings they had
assigned at the start of the semester.
There was another big problem. In high school, teachers made sure to
communicate mainly the information that we would be tested over. College
professors, on the other hand, threw masses of information at us and only tested
on a small part of it.
It is an amateur mistake to listen to a college lecture or read the assigned

texts and hope you’ll remember and understand the material with no further
effort. That’s about as effective as watching exercise videos on YouTube and
expecting to get fit.
Hopefully, this is not a mistake you are making. However, my experience

is that most university students are still making this mistake in some areas, even
if they are better about it than they were in high school.
Simple exposure to the material is not going to be enough to get the grades
you want, especially once you get into higher-level courses or into honors classes.
What is required is that you get proactive and engage with the course content.

Active vs. Passive Learning
To become an excellent turnip you simply sit around and wait for someone
to dump manure on you. That makes for a great vegetable, but not a great
student. So why sit in class and wait for knowledge to be dumped on you?
Turnips are passive, and even the best students can lapse into passivity in some
academic situations.
To become an excellent hawk, you roam far and wide with your eyes
peeled for anything that looks tasty. When you see it, you dive on it, kill it, and
take it home to the kids. That’s also–figuratively speaking–how to make a great
scholar. Hawks are proactive, and that’s what you need to excel as a student.
BONUS: It’s actually a more fun and interesting way to do school. Being proactive
increases focus and decreases boredom.
During a lecture or while reading a text, you are cruising, hawk-like, eyes
peeled, looking for any little tasty bit of learning you can find. Once you see it, go
and get it! Own it! Kick it’s hiney and eat it for dinner.
Elaboration vs. Rehearsal
Did you ever try to iron a shirt with a cold iron? Could you get that shirt
nice and smooth and wrinkle-free without the heat? Sure, but it would take
forever! Ironing a shirt is oh-so-much faster when you’ve got heat.
Trying to learn stuff by going over it again and again—known in the

business as, rehearsal—will work, eventually. You can do it, but it’s sloooooow
and it’s a lot of work. If you’re just reading your notes over and over, or reviewing
those flash cards over and over, or reading those texts over and over, you my
friend, are using a cold iron.

Heat that iron up by elaborating on what you’re trying to learn. The mental
equivalent of heat is what psychologists call elaboration or elaborative rehearsal.
You’ll still have to do some rehearsal, but it will take much less to get the
information learned if you are elaborating as you rehearse.
Notice how the word elaboration has labor built right into it; e-labor-
ation. Elaboration means taking the information and working with it somehow.
For example, instead of reviewing the word turbid and it’s definition over
and over, I would elaborate by writing some sentences using the word. Another
way to elaborate would be to use the word in conversation with a friend.
It sounds simple—and it is—but that’s how to bring the mental heat!

Research shows that elaboration is much more effective for recall than just
reviewing it over and over again.17 18
How to Do It
Elaboration
There are many different ways to elaborate on your learning. Many of

these can be done while you are reading the text or listening to the lecture. Here
are some of my standbys.
1. Ask yourself questions about what you are learning. Where have I heard
this before? What does it remind me of? Is this true? How will this be
tested?
2. Turn verbal information into visual information by drawing a picture,

chart or diagram.

3. Turn visual information into verbal information by describing what you
see. Both 2 and 3 also take advantage of something psychologists refer to
as dual coding which has also been shown to increase recall.19
4. Relate the information to something you already know. For example, “That
Mussolini character reminds me a lot of my hockey coach.” This also uses
self-reference, which—you guessed it—increases recall.20
5. Act it out. For example, put on a play about cellular mitosis using tube
socks in the starring roles. I suggest you shut and lock your door before
doing this since it tends to cause roommates to give you funny looks and
hide their socks.
6. Set it to music. My daughter’s kindergarten teacher used this to great

effect, teaching her students a song to help them recall the spelling of
every color they learned. The downside is that my daughter now hums
under her breath when asked to spell yellow. I’ve had adult friends who
used this method to memorize extremely complex processes though, so
don’t discount it.
Here’s how I use elaboration to learn complex texts. First, I pause

frequently to review what I’ve just read. I rarely read even a single paragraph
without stopping to ask myself questions such as, “Why did the author say this?
What’s her point? Is this true? Did she support her claim thoroughly? Is talking
to myself a sign of incipient mental breakdown?” This also functions as a review,
Simple Trick number two in our list.
Second, I write key points in my notes, making sure to illustrate,

summarize, emphasize, connect with other concepts, and so on. I also make sure
to write my reactions and questions.
Third, I stop every few paragraphs to mentally review everything I’ve read
so far. For example, after the third paragraph in my text book, I’ll stop and try to

recall my notes for the reading from start to finish. I’ll do that again after the
sixth paragraph, after the ninth paragraph, and so on. By the end of the chapter, I
should be able to mentally reconstruct the entire reading, complete with my
diagrams, questions, and reactions. If I can’t, I go back right then and review—
again, Simple Trick number two in our list.
This obviously is not a fast process, however, I’ve found that I recall it so
much better this way that it requires much less review later on. That ultimately
saves me time. Mnemonics, or memory tricks, make this process much faster. I
talk a lot about mnemonics in my blog posts.
A couple of things to keep in mind; don’t use the process just described on
your readings unless you really need to. If the text isn’t going to be tested—and
you’re absolutely certain of that—consider not reading it at all. If there will only
be a few general questions on the test over the reading, consider skimming the
passage, perhaps reading the intro paragraph and the conclusion, looking at topic
headings, and looking at any illustrations or charts.
Active Learning
As mentioned previously, passive learning is turnip-style learning. You sit

around and wait for someone to feed you. Active learning is bird-of-prey style
learning. You go looking for the information and take steps to capture it.
To engage in active learning, pay rapt attention to what you’re studying.

The value of focus cannot be overstated—well. . . it can I guess, but it’s tough.
Really tough.
Birds of prey are properly known as raptors, from the Latin word meaning
“one who seizes by force.” Actively look for key concepts as you sit in that lecture
hall or hunker down to study. Seize them by force!

Some textbooks and professors will make it easy for you. They’ll put main
points in bold letters, or point to a concept and say, “this will be on the test.” This
makes your job easy; pounce on the point.
Other lecturers and books will camouflage important points in a dense

thicket of words, unimportant drivel, and poorly-told anecdotes. Only the most
attentive raptors will spy their prey and swoop down for the kill.
Again, pounce on the point. That means go grab it and make it yours by
putting it in your notes using some of the note-taking methods I’ve mentioned.
Notes are the equivalent of talons for the raptor. The prey is not yours until
you’ve got a death grip on it. If it’s in your notes, then it’s yours. You can eat it
later at your leisure.
Finally, rip it apart and consume it. Don’t be content to simply get the
concept into your notes. You must really understand it. One powerful way to do
that is by asking and answering great questions as covered before in the section
on elaboration.
Most students ask simple questions like “What does EEG stand for?” or
“Who signed the Treaty of Versailles?” Such simple questions might be useful for
quizzing yourself on basic facts, but there are better questions that will promote
recall and understanding.
Better questions force you to evaluate, predict, judge, compare and

contrast, or synthesize, etc. For example: Instead of asking the low-level question,
“What were the causes of the European conquest of the Americas?” ask the
higher-level question, “What strategies could indigenous Americans have used to
more effectively resist the European conquest?” Another example: Instead of
asking, “What are the stages in cellular mitosis?” ask, “What stage of mitosis is
most dangerous and risky for the organism? Why?”

You can use these same questioning strategies to help learn vocabulary for
tests like the SAT and GRE. Low-level questions such as, “What does prolix
mean?” aren’t nearly as helpful as higher-level questions such as, “In what
situations would the word prolix be a better word choice than the word verbose?”
Good questions force you to work at a whole new level, and that will show
on your test performance. Notice, in each of the examples above, the higher level
questions can’t be answered unless you know the answers to the lower level
questions. You can’t tell me when prolix is a better word choice than verbose
unless you know the meaning of each.
Higher level questions are also great to ask in class. Most profs like well
thought out questions. BONUS: If the prof is going too fast, a good question will
slow them down so you can catch up.
Actively go and pursue knowledge by paying careful attention, capturing

concepts in your notes, and then processing the knowledge with good questions.
Don’t settle for being a vegetable waiting for the next load of manure. Be a hawk!
Go own that knowledge!
BONUS
You’ve heard me mention great notes over and over in this chapter. Taking
powerful, effective notes is where it’s at! The best notes make you active rather
than passive, encourage elaboration, and function as a ready-made study guide.
Powerful note-taking is not just about capturing information; it’s about sifting
out the tested material and then recalling and understanding it. Take a look at
these helpful posts on better note-taking.

Recommended

Book — Make It Stick
Make it Stick; The Science of Successful Learning, is a thought-provoking

layman’s guide to making your brain work better. Brown, Roediger, and
McDaniel, identify and engagingly illustrate the high-payoff strategies that can
push your learning to the next level. This book is loaded to the top with powerful
strategies you can began implementing immediately.
Brown, Peter C, Henry L Roediger, and Mark A McDaniel. Make It Stick. 1st ed.
Print.

5. Organize
Two of my daughters really love jigsaw puzzles. Like most puzzlers, they
have some strategies that make working any jigsaw faster and more efficient.
One huge help is to know what the final picture is supposed to be. Further
organizing the pieces can help as well. For example, they might take all the puzzle
pieces with a flat side and arrange them around the outer edges of their puzzle,
since those pieces are edge pieces. They also group together pieces that
predominate in one color; all the mostly yellow pieces over here, the mostly red
here, the mostly purple here, and so on.
Within these smaller groupings they try to put the pieces in some sort of
general order based on what is on them. For example, the piece with the man’s
eyes would go under the piece with his hat and above the piece with his mouth
and beard.
Finally, they begin linking pieces together; three pieces connected here,
another five pieces matched up over there. They are taking individual puzzle
pieces all over the puzzle and trying to organize them into connected chunks.
Each chunk then functions as one much larger puzzle piece. Eventually the
chunks all connect.
These same techniques can help you recall class material. Organizing
information and relating it to other information is Simple Trick number five in
our list.

My daughters’ first step is to group puzzle pieces that look similar. They
put the edge pieces around the edge of the puzzle and they sort pieces by color or
patterns. This same process can beef up recall of the information you’re trying to
learn.
Endel Tulving, a reasearcher at the University of Toronto, devised a clever

experiment in which he created 16 versions of a list of the same 16 words. In each
list, the words’ positions were changed so that they occurred in a position on the
list only once and were preceded and followed by each other word only once.
His test subjects were read the first list and then immediately asked to
recall as many of the words on the list as they could. This process was repeated
with each of the lists.
Tulving found that, as subjects proceeded through the lists, they began to
spontaneously organize the material. The test subject would tend to recall some
sets of words in the same order each time, even though each list was in a different
order. They were ordering the words, even though the words were always
presented in a different order.
More importantly, the test subjects who did this to the greatest extent also
showed the greatest overall recall of the words. 21 This process is similar to the way
in which a puzzler might group similar pieces into piles to help in putting
together the puzzle or in finding a particular piece more quickly.
Puzzle workers will also arrange pieces in a logical order; the piece with
the hat above the piece with the face above the piece with the necktie. Putting
things in order gives them meaning.
One group of researchers found that subjects remembered lists of words

better when the lists were organized into meaningful categories as opposed to
being given the same lists of words in random order. 22 Endel Tulving found that if
he gave subjects a list of words and told them to think of the words by where they
occurred alphabetically—as opposed to not giving them any instructions about
how to mentally organize the words—people could recall many more words from
the list.23

Puzzlers also benefit from having an idea of what the completed puzzle
should look like. The final picture provides an organizational framework giving
you a better idea of what kind of piece you are looking for in each part of the
puzzle.
Recall works this way as well. If you can find larger patterns of meaning,
it’s easier to place each thing to recall in context. That makes it easier to find
later. For example, it’s tougher to memorize these digits in order. . .
1492314159118675309
than it is to recall the same sequence split into meaningful chunks…
1492 – the year Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue
3.1415 — Pi to the fourth decimal place
911 — the phone number for emergency services in the US
867-5309 — from the 1981 hit song “Jenny,” by Tommy Tutone
George Katona, in his book, Organizing and Memorizing, relates an

experiment in which researchers asked one group of subjects to memorize a list of
numbers in order.
2 3 5 9 17 33
Another group was given the same list of numbers and asked to find the
principal by which the numbers were organized. This list, for example, follows
the principal multiply by two and subtract one. Two doubled is four, minus one,
is three. Three doubled is six, minus one, is five. Five doubled is 10, minus one, is
nine, and so on.
Each group had three minutes to work on the task. Recall success
immediately following the task was almost the same for both groups; 38% of the
principal-seekers correctly recalled the list of numbers, while 33% of the

memorizers could recall the list without error. But two weeks later the results
were much different. None of the memorizers could recall the list perfectly, but
23% of the principal-finders could still remember the list without error! 24
How to Do It
Get the Big Picture First
Working a jigsaw puzzle is much easier if you know what the completed
puzzle is supposed to look like. This works for effective recall as well. There are
several ways to take advantage of this.
First, the class syllabus is your friend! It gives you a grand overview of
what you’re covering in the course and in any given class session. Looking at that
syllabus on a regular basis not only helps you stay on top of class projects and
homework, it helps you organize the knowledge you are getting from the class
into a more meaningful whole.
Your professor may have done an excellent job giving you a grand
overview of the subject at the start of the course or in the syllabus. Then again,
you may be better off finding a well-organized summary of the subject
somewhere else. Look up your subject online and search for a broad overview of
the topic. Wikipedia can be a great resource for this type of thing.
When searching, you aren’t looking for details, rather, you’re seeking a
framework or skeleton to hang everything on as you learn it. For example, the
entry for chemistry on Wikipedia divides the subject up into things like; types of
matter, phase, bonding, energy, reactions, ions and salts, etc.
Another resource that can be really helpful for organizing things is a good
text on the subject. If there is a textbook for your class, take a look at how the
chapters organize the topic.

Chances are, your textbook is better organized than your prof. That’s one
fantastic reason to read the assigned texts before the class. The book will carefully
organize the topic, guiding your study in meaningful chunks. Then you will be
able to slot the prof’s meanderings into a strong framework and make sense of his
wandering lectures.
You can also come up with your own organizational framework on the fly.
One way to do that is to. . .
Create Organized Lists
I don’t recall when or where I figured out that it helped my memory if I

made numbered lists when I was taking notes. But it really helps.
For example, instead of writing, “Great Lakes – Michigan, Erie, Huron,

Ontario, Superior,” I would write, “Great Lakes – 1) Michigan, 2) Erie, 3) Huron,
4) Ontario, 5) Superior.” Now I know there are five Great Lakes, and I’m more
likely to know if I’m missing one—or if I have one too many—on a test question.
Even better would be to list them in order by size or geographical location.

Another way would be to put them in some sort of arbitrary but memorable
order. For example, if I write them as “Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior”
the first letter of each lake forms the acronym HOMES.
This simple process of numbering listed items helped me so much I began

to add numbers to lists in my readings. If the author gave me a list of things in a
sentence, I numbered each item. For example, again from the Wikipedia entry for
chemistry, “The word chemistry comes from alchemy, which referred to an
earlier set of practices that encompassed elements of (1)chemistry, (2)metallurgy,
(3)
philosophy, (4)astrology, (5)astronomy, (6)mysticism and (7)medicine.” I would go
through my texts and lightly write in pencil those little numbers before each item.

Chunk Information
Chunking is grouping information to aid in memory. You do this all the

time, though you might not realize it. Your credit or debit card number, for
instance, is chunked into units of four numbers each. Phone numbers—in the US
at least—are arranged in chunks as well; (979) 555 – 1212. Not only does this
make it easier to see all the numbers and to communicate them to others, it
makes them easier to recall. Our calendar is chunked as well, dividing up the 365
days into monthly units and the month into weekly units.
Often, professors fail to chunk things up as well as they could. You can
chunk things yourself to help your recall. For example, if you were required to
learn the Ten Commandments for your course on Biblical Literature, you might
be presented with Biblical text.
Deuteronomy 5:7 “‘You shall have no other gods before me.
8 “‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image [an idol] . . . .
11 “‘You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain . . . .
12 “‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy . . . .
16 “‘Honor your father and your mother . . . .
17 “‘You shall not murder . . . .
18 “‘And you shall not commit adultery.
19 “‘And you shall not steal.
20 “‘And you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
21 “‘And you shall not covet . . . anything that is your neighbor’s.’
I could chunk this in several different ways to make it easier to recall. To

start with, I might chunk each individual commandment. As long as you’re not
required to memorize a commandment word for word you can probably just use
one or two key words to remind you of what each commandment concerns.
1. God Only
2. Idols

3. Name in vain
4. Sabbath
5. Parents
6. Murder
7. Adultery
8. Stealing
9. False witness
10. Coveting
That list will be much easier to recall, and each word is enough of a hint that I can
probably reconstruct the full meaning of each commandment.
I can further chunk it by dividing the list into two groups of five, but five
groups of two might be even more effective.
God Only — Idols
Name in Vain — Sabbath
Parents — Murder
Adultery — Stealing
False Witness — Coveting
We can still chunk it even further. More structure will pretty much always
give you a better grasp of the material. Another way I can add structure is by
further grouping this list.

For example. . .
God Only — Idols
Name in Vain — Sabbath
————
Parents — Murder
————
Adultery — Stealing
False Witness — Coveting
Now I have the top set, the middle set, and the bottom set. You might not
immediately see how such chunking makes things easier to memorize, but try it
out a few times. You will quickly find out that chunking in this manner
significantly speeds up memorization.
It’s an easy thing to try. What do you have to lose?
Bonus: you can start chunking as you take notes. You don’t have to wait
until you actually start studying to begin making information easier for you brain
to hold onto.
Use Frameworks and Principals
Just as someone working a jigsaw puzzle benefits from knowing what the
final image should look like, students benefit from knowing where all the little
puzzle-pieces of knowledge they are gathering will fit into the overall topic. Many
topics are already organized in this way. In skeletal anatomy, for instance, it’s
common to learn all the bones of the cranium together. In botany you would
probably learn about the parts of a flower as a unit and the parts of a leaf as a
unit.

In other subject areas, especially with certain professors, things are not
carefully organized for you, so you’ll need to find a framework yourself; the
Wikipedia entry, your textbook’s organization, the organization of some other
book or website, etc. would all work for this purpose.
Wikipedia usually has a good general outline of whatever topic you’re

looking at. For example, under the entry for “mnemonics,” the outline looks like
this. . .
While this may work well for some subjects, you may need a more detailed
outline for class purposes. In addition, Wikipedia just may not have an entry for
what you’re studying. Mesoamerican Funerary Art, anyone?
In that case, you’ll want to look through your textbook. Many textbooks
have a very detailed table of contents that will break everything down for you, at
least to the chapter level, but some will even break it down to subsections. Even if
it only goes to the chapter level, you can still turn to the chapter and look at
section and subsection headings for a more fine-grained organizational
framework.
While a textbook is often a good choice for this sort of thing, there may be
something even better out there. Your syllabus will usually provide you with a list

of readings or even a bibliography on the topic. If you can find the one that is the
most general resource on the topic, take a look at the chapters and sections in
that work for your organizing framework. And if your prof happened to write one
of the books, you’re golden!
Bonus: If your prof wrote one of the books, read the appropriate chapter
before each lecture. When an opportunity for asking questions in the lecture
comes up, ask something that shows you read her book. For example, “I think in
chapter 8 of your book, you noted that current theories say blah, blah, blah. Has
that changed any since your book was published?” Not only are you showing that
you read their book, this question shows that you are interested in the latest
information on the topic. Most professors love this!
As a graduate student one of my favorite profs was a really brilliant guy

and a kind man. But; he was the most frustrating lecturer in the world because
he had no apparent structure to his lectures. It seemed like stream of
consciousness, and I usually walked out of his class with a page full of
disconnected words and phrases.
Back then I didn’t know what to do about his style of lecturing. Now I do.
Look at the syllabus and do all the readings before class. Take careful notes
on these, especially the overall structure of the information. Use the prof’s lecture
as a guide to what he’s interested in or excited about. Give special attention in the
other resources to the concepts he touches on in class. If he mentions it in class,
but it’s not in the other class materials, ask him about it further to find out if you
need to know it for an exam.

BONUS
These days, it’s pretty easy to find someone else’s class notes on any topic
out there. You can also find other professors’ notes, syllabi, presentations, and so
on.
A simple google search can turn these up and save you hours of
frustration! You can sometimes drill right down to what you want by trying out a
few extra search terms; for example, searching for the string “mesoamerica
funerary art .ppt” would bring up PowerPoint presentations with your key words.
“Mesomerica funerary art class notes,” in contrast, might pull up another
student’s notes on the topic.
Perhaps his prof was better organized than yours.

Recommended
Book — Mind Performance Hacks
Mind Performance Hacks; Tips and Tools for Overclocking Your Brain, by
Ron Hale-Evans, is loaded with helpful mental tricks and tools for student and
non-student alike. He not only has a sections on chunking and other forms of
organization, there are sections on creativity, mnemonics, math decision-making,
and more.

Hale-Evans, Ron. Mind Performance Hacks. 1st ed. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly,
2006. Print.

6. Imagine
Remember great-great-great granny and the rattlesnake we discussed at
the start of this book? Because memory is about survival, we know that memories
are strongest when they are. . .
emotional
unusual
multi-sensory
We can add concrete to that list. Our brains are better at remembering
concrete things as opposed to abstract things.
For most of human history, the important things people had to remember
were things such as; “Where did I almost step on that rattlesnake the last time I
walked through this area?” “Where was that good-looking girl I saw last week?”
and “Where were those tasty apples that we found?” The important things to
recall were concrete; things such as locations, sights, sounds, smells, and the like.
As a result, humans are really good at remembering concrete things.

Unfortunately, much of what we have to recall as students is not concrete.
Abstract things—the definition of the word demagogue or the probable causes of
the Gulf War, for example—are much harder to memorize.

This leads us to one of the most powerful tricks in the book! Using our
power to imagine can help us turn abstract knowledge into concrete knowledge.
When you do this, the abstract information becomes as easy to recall as the layout
of your living room or the location of the local pizza place.
As an undergrad in anthropology, I really suffered because of my terrible

memory. I got good grades, but I really had to work for them. Remember, I’m the
guy who forget his dates’ names on two different occasions. When I told my
friends—who knew of my horrible memory—that I was going to grad school in
archaeology, they said, “Oh man! You’re going to get killed.”
Not encouraging. It really scared me, so I began researching how to

improve my memory. That’s what put me on the path to this book in the first
place. I learned this next Simple Trick just before I began my graduate studies in
archaeology, and I began using it heavily during my first semester of grad school.
One of my first grad school classes was Human Osteology—bones—and

our first exam was over the bones of the skull. There are twenty-three different
bones that make up the skull; bones such as the ethmoid, sphenoid, vomer,
zygomatic, occipital, parietal, and others.
We had to know all those weird names; we had to know the names of the
smaller structures on each bone; we had to know what other bones each bone
connected to. That was quite a challenge considering that some bones connect to
as many as 12 others! It was hundreds of pieces of information involving a lot of
strange words I’d never heard before.
Using the trick I’m about to show you, I was able to memorize all the
information in less than 30 minutes! Over the next three days, I did not open my
book or notes. I did review mentally a few times as I walked across campus. On
the fourth day, I went and took my test.

People had studied for eight to 12 hours for that exam and got 70s and
80s. The class average was 72. I got the only 100 in the class with only 30 minutes
of studying! Needless to say, I was hooked.
Here’s the trick. I took all the abstract, hard to memorize stuff, and turned
it into concrete, easy to recall stuff. Then I made up elaborate false memories
using all the things that make something memorable; I made my false memory
multi-sensory, I made it interesting and unusual, and I made it emotional.
How To Do It
So how do we take something abstract—like “the occipital bone connects to

the parietal bone”—and make it multi-sensory, unusual, emotional, and concrete?
How do you create a false memory?
The steps are not too hard. Take the fact to be memorized, symbolize it
with objects or actions you can imagine, and then connect the objects and actions
together in a mental movie.
You can do this on the fly even while the prof is lecturing! Let me start
with some simple examples.
Perhaps your prof is explaining the structure of the benzene molecule. She
notes that benzene has the formula C6H6, meaning it is made up of six carbon
atoms and six hydrogen atoms. What we are trying to memorize is this. . .
benzene — C6H6
I quickly get my imagination working to encode that into something more

concrete. I might imagine myself driving a Mercedes Benz (that will be my

symbol for ‘benz’ene). I will use ‘caesar’—C-sar—as my symbol for the ‘C’, but I
could also use lumps of carbon (diamonds? chunks of coal?).
So, I imagine I am chauffeuring Julius Caesar around in my Benz. He’s

banging on the back of my seat and demanding I stop because he’s sick (‘sick’ will
be my symbol for ‘6’). I look in the rear view mirror, and—Wow! Caesar (C) looks
terrible! Looks like he has chicken pox. I immediately pull over, and he dials IX-I-
I on his cell phone. An ambulance shows up, only it’s not a normal ambulance,
it’s a hydrogen (H) balloon. I’m picturing the Hindenburg. Bummer—it’s sick (6)
too. The balloon is covered in chicken pox as well.
My false memory will look like this…
1. Driving my Mercedes BENZ (benzene)
2. My passenger, Julius Caesar (C) is SICK (6)
3. The hydrogen balloon (H) that comes to get him is also SICK
(6)
It seems like a lengthy, involved process when you are reading it, but in
actual practice, it’s very fast. After a few weeks of practice doing this, I could
actually take mental notes almost as fast as taking the physical notes.
In fact, just to see if I could, I went to several classes and only took mental
notes. I never picked up a pencil. I would encode each new point the professor
covered and link it to the point before.
I could memorize a point-by-point outline of the lecture as she talked. I

was amazed by how powerful it was. So were my classmates and the prof! At the
end of the lecture when she said, “Does anyone have any questions?” I would bust
out with very specific questions about points she had made earlier, although I
clearly had not been taking notes. Eyes widened. Jaws dropped. Score one for the
guy who couldn’t recall his date’s name.

Creating a mental movie works much like training wheels. At first, you
have to think through the mental imagery, but after a short time, the imagery
falls away and you’re just left with the fact. The imagery falls away like training
wheels when you no longer need it.
Here’s another example to help you get the idea. In your physics class you
are discussing gravity. Gravitational acceleration at Earth’s surface is 9.8 m/s 2.
That’s what you’ll need to memorize.
Gravity I can symbolize gravity with an apple falling to earth a la Isaac

Newton.
9 The number ‘9’ looks sort of like a balloon on a string, so I

imagine a balloon tied to the stem of the apple.
Point The balloon has a black thumbtack stuck in the side of it. This
will be my decimal ‘point,’ as in ‘nine point eight.’
8 There is an eight ball—symbolizing ‘8’—tied to the thumbtack.
m/s2 Since I’m already used to using m/s2 for velocity, I don’t need
to memorize that, but if I did, I would probably encode that as
well.
Remember, in order to make these mnemonics as memorable as possible,

we need to do more than make them concrete. We also need to make them
unusual, detailed, and emotional.
To add those things into my gravity example above, I might imagine the
apple floating gently down to me, tethered to the balloon, which—very unusually
—does not pop, even though it has a thumbtack stuck in it. I take a bite of the big,
juice, red apple. I taste the apple and feel the texture as I bite. It is absolutely the
most delicious apple I’ve ever eaten. I feel like I’ve won the apple lottery! I hear a
loud pop! The balloon bursts and the eight ball falls, clonking me painfully in the
head. Annoyed, I rub at the knot on my head.

Take a minute to imagine the whole mental movie as if you were there.
Taste the apple. Feel that eight ball bonk you on the head. What does the apple
represent? The balloon? The tack? The eight ball?
Here’s an example of how I might go through this process with a

vocabulary word. According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language, 4th Edition, the word turbid is an adjective that means. . .
(1) Having sediment or foreign particles stirred up or suspended; muddy:

turbid water.
(2) Heavy, dark, or dense, as smoke or fog.
(3) In a state of turmoil; muddled: turbid feelings.
So turbid means cloudy, more or less—cloudy water, cloudy air, cloudy

emotions or thinking. We can dispense with the full definition and chunk it in to
the one word; cloudy will be the mental handle that helps us retrieve the full
meaning.
If you look at the definition above carefully, you can see that turbid does
indeed mean cloudy, but not cloudy as in, “It’s cloudy outside. Guess we can’t go
work on our tans.”
Turbid means muddied up or clouded up emotionally, mentally, or

physically, as in “I’m sorry I drove my muddy jeep into your clean swimming
pool, Mrs. McKenzie. I guess I made your pool a bit turbid. I feel so bad about it it
has made my thinking turbid as well.”
Next, break the word into pieces and turn the pieces into objects or actions
you can imagine. So the first part of turbid is “tur” or “turb.” Does that remind
you of anything? What words start with that sound? What do those sounds
remind you of? How about turban or turkey? Maybe tore or tear or turnip? Any

of those will work. Let’s use tore, as in “When I reached down to pick up the
donut, my leotards tore.”
Second part; “bid.” What does bid remind you of? How about bed or bite
or bit? We’ll use bed, as in “Early to bed, early to rise, means you’re getting old.”
And finally, “cloudy.” I can picture cloudy without having to turn it into
something else. So we’re good; tore, bed, cloudy.
Now we are going to use our imagination to make a false memory that uses
these three things in order. For example, “I tore my bed, and it became
cloudy.”
Hmmm. Not too memorable. Certainly not. . .
emotional
unusual
multi-sensory
concrete
We want to imagine this in so much detail it will seem like we actually

lived through this event.
Let’s try again. “In a fit of anger, I tore the fabric of my mattress (bed), and
the white stuffing came out. The ceiling fan was on high, and the fluff began to
cloud up the room. It got in my eyes and throat, and I began to cough
uncontrollably.” Better!
Now make the memory yours. Close your eyes and put yourself in the
situation.
• You stalk in to your room, absolutely fuming about . . . something.

◦ What made you so angry?
◦ Fill in the details to make it real.
◦ Feel the anger!
◦ Clearly picture your room. Think about what it sounds like and smells
like in your room.
• The bed sheets are in the washer right now, so you throw yourself down on
the bare mattress to kick and scream.
◦ What does the mattress feel like?
◦ Is the light in your room on or off?
◦ What time of day is it?
◦ What are you wearing?
◦ Add details and make it as real as possible. Imagine it in so much detail

that in a year or two you’ll wonder whether or not this really happened.
• You grab the fabric of the mattress in your hands and tear it.
◦ What does it sound like?
◦ How does it feel?
• The mattress is filled with fluffy white stuffing. As you tear it, the fluff goes
everywhere, clouding up the room.
◦ What does the fluff look and feel like?
◦ Can you smell it?

◦ Can you feel the air from the fan?
◦ Can you feel the fluff sticking to your sweaty forehead?
◦ What does it feel like to get the fluff in your eyes and throat?
◦ Can you see it swirling around you?
Now try to recall the meaning of the word turbid. Close your eyes and
relive the experience. Tore—bed—cloudy.
Let’s try another example. How about turgid? Should be a good test,
because it’s so similar to turbid.
Turgid means swollen and stiff; distended, congested. For example, “I

accidentally walked into a deep part of the river, and when I came out my rubber
waders were turgid, because they had filled with river water, three trout, and a
rusty beer can.” So turgid means swollen. Again, we can dispense with the full
definition. Swollen will remind us of the rest of it.
Break it down. “Tur” could be tore again, but let’s use something else this
time. How about turkey or turtle? That’s easy.
“Gid” is a little tougher. Sounds like jade or jet or Jed or Jedi. You can use
whichever word you prefer. Just make sure you can picture clearly in your mind’s
eye whatever you use. Let’s use the word jet.
I can clearly picture a jet plane. In fact, I want to get very specific with it.
It’s not just any jet; it’s an F16 Fighting Falcon with a gray body and the nose
painted black. I can see the Sidewinder missiles on the tip of each wing.
Maybe you can’t picture it in that much detail. That’s okay. You can pick
something that works better for you. The F16 works great for me, but you’re

unique, so think of what comes most easily to you. Your mnemonics work better
when they are personalized!
Remember; we want a mnemonic that is. . .
emotional
unusual
multi-sensory
concrete
so let’s think of a situation that will have all those qualities and uses turtle, jet,
and swollen. How about “A turtle climbed into a jet and the turtle became
swollen.” That’s not a bad start. Now let’s flesh it out.
Imagine a big cartoonish turtle walking across an airport runway towards

a fighter jet. He’s dressed in a flight suit and aviator sunglasses. As he walks in
slow motion across the tarmac, heatwaves shimmering, music suitable to such a
heroic entrance plays in the background. He climbs into the jet, his shiny shell
clunking and bumping against the canopy. The smell of jet fuel wafts through the
cockpit, but—uh-oh!—the turtle is allergic to jet fuel. His face and hands swell to
twice their normal size. TURtle — JET — swollen.
Again, adding details of your own will make this unforgettable. Ask
yourself questions to help flesh this out into a full-fledged memory. Where is this
taking place? What sounds do you hear? What do you feel?
Most people have a preferred way of imagining things. Some people think
in sounds. Some think in terms of physical feelings.
For me, visual images seem to come most easily. Those seem to spring to
mind without much effort, but I find if I imagine things that don’t come easily for

me—things like smells, tastes, feelings, etc.—it really turns into a false-memory
for me. I can’t forget it now even if I wanted to!
Now it’s time to test out our mnemonics. If you’ve fully participated in
these false memories as I’ve talked about them, you too will find these things very
hard to forget.
Take a look at each of the items on the list. See if you can recall the
mnemonic.
• Turbid definition
• Turgid definition
• The formula for benzene
• The rate of gravitational acceleration on the surface of the

earth
Each of these should start your little mental movies rolling. If you can’t
recall one or more of these, chances are you were reading but not clearly
imagining. It is not nearly as effective for you to read about my memory as it is
for you to fully imagine it and make it into your memory.
A word of caution; using this technique is almost faster than writing once
you’ve had some practice at it, but it does take practice! Coming up with
mnemonics on the fly is like learning to drive or type. It takes practice to get good
at it, but the payoff is huge! Master this technique and you will be able to
memorize almost anything with much less effort.
So try it. Commit to using this method with at least the first thirty items
you have to memorize. You may feel like a pig on roller skates at first, but you
will get better. After thirty items you’ll be hooked. This is the most effective way
to memorize I have ever found!

BONUS
You can use variations on this method to memorize numbers and

formulas, anatomy, languages, chemistry, history, just about anything! Find out a
lot more by looking for memory-related posts on my blog.

Recommended
Book — The Brain Book
The Brain Book, by Peter Russell, is still the best book I’ve found for
explaining the in’s and out’s of mnemonics. He also covers many of the other
things I’ve discussed including spaced repetition and the importance of breaks. If
I had to recommend only one book on memory, it would be this one!
Russell, Peter. The Brain Book. 1st ed. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1979. Print.

7. Routinize
I was a sophomore in college when I rode in a small single-engine plane
for the first time. To help with college expenses, I worked part-time during the
summer for the US Department of Agriculture.
The brains at the Crop Pest Management lab where I worked had devised
an experiment that involved flying back and forth at different altitudes while, out
the side door of the plane, I trailed a large conical net tethered to a rope. We used
the net to sample what sorts of insects were flying about at different altitudes at
different times of day.
I basically played high altitude fisherman while the pilot ferried me back
and forth across the sky. Despite the fairly simple nature of our flight, the pilot
really knew his stuff. He had been flying for over thirty years and had been an air
force pilot during the Vietnam conflict. He had thousands and thousands of hours
of flight experience in that particular airplane.
I still recall sitting there on the runway before my very first flight in the
little four-seater plane. My heart hammered with excitement as the engine noise
filtered through my headphones. When would we finally take off?
I waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. It took forever for the pilot to get
ready. Why?
This experienced veteran pilot with thousands of hours of experience in

this particular plane was going through an exhaustive pre-flight checklist just as
he did every single time he readied himself for a new flight. Every single time.

Think about that. Every day, day-after-day, often more than once in a
single day, he went through the same checklist. Why would he do that?
He did it because it was necessary. When you are 6,000 feet above the
ground, a single missed item on that checklist could literally be the difference
between life and death. That pilot was making sure that he had done everything
possible on the ground to make sure we had no issues in the air. Even with all his
experience, a checklist was what he used to make sure he had done everything.
So far we’ve discussed six of our seven Simple Tricks for memory mastery.
1. Break – Take regular breaks while learning to increase recall.
2. Review — Review on an optimal schedule to maximize recall.
3. Sleep — Sufficient sleep is what your brain needs to properly encode

information.
4. Engage — Being an active learner who elaborates increases recall.
5. Organize — Organizing information via lists and chunking makes

memory more effective.
6. Imagine — Use your imagination to create powerful visual

mnemonics.
The final Simple Trick is to make each of these part of a routine, a regular
and habitual set of practices that you engage in automatically every time you
learn. Developing routines, in general, is a Simple Trick that far too many of us
use far too little.
Atul Gawande, an American medical doctor, wrote a bestselling book

called, The Checklist Manifesto. The book was way more exciting than it had any
right to be which is a tribute to Doctor Gawande’s skills as an author.
The take-away from the book is deceptively simple; checklists are

powerful. In his bailiwick, the operating room, checklists quite literally save lives.
That’s what my pilot’s checklist was designed to do as well.

For school, routines aren’t usually life or death matters, but they can really
boost your grades and prevent an academic crash and burn. Your biggest
difficulty going forward, now that you know these Simple Tricks, is making sure
to use them. That’s where a checklist can save you.
How to Do It
Go through the seven Simple Tricks we’ve looked at in this book and create
a checklist to see if you remembered to apply each of them each day. Your
checklist can be very general or very detailed. It’s up to you.
As an example, my checklist might have entries such as…
Got up before 9 this morning
Studied in chunks of less than 60 minutes each
Reviewed my flashcards
I like to make my checklist no more than one page long. I want it to be

something I can easily complete in a minute or less.
At the end of each day, just before I go to bed, I go through my checklist

and check off as many items as I can. Each day, go through your checklist and try
to check off more than you did the day before.
That’s it. That’s really all you have to do.
The checklist does two things for you. It reminds you every day of what
you are trying to do, and it sets clear criteria for whether or not you did it. This is
very, very powerful.
Look at how modifying the items on my list will affect my daily

performance. Compare this to the previous list.

Got up before 7:30 this morning
Studied in chunks of less than 45 minutes each
Reviewed my flashcards for at least 45 minutes
As human beings, we want to be able to check things off on our list. It may
be an arbitrary list, but we still want to get that little rush of happy chemicals we
get from being able to check something off.
Here are the seven Simple Tricks I’ve covered in this book . . .
1. Break – Take regular breaks while learning to increase recall.
2. Review — Review on an optimal schedule to maximize recall.
3. Sleep — Sufficient sleep is what your brain needs to properly encode

information.
4. Engage — Being an active learner who elaborates increases recall.
5. Organize — Organizing information via lists and chunking makes

memory more effective.
6. Imagine — Use your imagination to create powerful visual mnemonics.
7. Routinize — Create routines to remind you of important things and

increase performance.
Take a sheet of notebook paper, a spreadsheet, or a program such as

Wunderlist or Todoist, and make a checklist you will go through at the end of
every day. For each of the Seven Tricks above, create from one to three checklist
items to help you use each trick each day.
Here are some best practices…
• Put the checklist somewhere you will see it each day. Make it part of your
daily routine. I tape my checklist to the bathroom mirror and fill it out as
I’m brushing my teeth each night before bed. That means I will also see it
the next morning as I’m brushing my teeth, so I am reminded first thing in

the morning of which items I didn’t get to check off the day before.
Challenge accepted!
• Instead of having a single check box for each item, make a weekly or
monthly grid for each item. That way you don’t have to redo the checklist
each day, and you can easily see your ongoing progress. I like the one-week
style list like the one below.
• At the end of each week, I make changes to any items that I need to, for
example, I might change my wake-up time from 7:30 to 8. Then I print out
the next week’s checklist.
• Share your list with others. Roommates. Friends. Relatives. The more you
can get others involved, the more you’ll try to check off your items each
day. Challenge your roommate. Who checked off the most items today?
This week?
• This is a very straightforward and easy way to do checklists, but there are
more high-tech methods as well. Use a website or app like Habitica. They
are a little more involved to set up and learn initially, but they can make
daily goals much more fun and socially interactive.

BONUS
Add an item at the end of the list that will keep you improving your list. An
item at the bottom of your checklist such as, “Made a note or two about what to
change the next time I make this list.” will enable you to keep improving your list.
These sorts of feedback loops are really powerful. Another great feedback
loop you should add to your repertoire is Post-Exam and Post-Semester debriefs.
After each exam or semester ask yourself. . .
1. What went well?
2. What went poorly?
3. How can I improve my performance next time?
Checklists, obviously, are another tool for habit change. It’s a different way
to set and manage goals. For more insights on things like goals and habits, take a
look here and here.

Recommended
Book — The Checklist Manifesto
The Checklist Manifesto, strange as it may seem, is really fantastically

engaging and fun to read. Surgeon Atul Gawande pulls together gripping stories
from many different arenas to show just how powerful and non-obvious a
carefully constructed checklist can be. This book will change the way you do life!
Gawande, Atul. The Checklist Manifesto. 1st ed. New York: Metropolitan Books,
2010. Print.

Website, Android and iPhone App — Habitica.com
Habitica is an online RPG to help with goals and habits. From the site,
“Habitica is a video game to help you improve real life habits. It "gamifies" your
life by turning all your tasks (habits, dailies, and to-dos) into little monsters you
have to conquer. The better you are at this, the more you progress in the game. If
you slip up in life, your character starts backsliding in the game.” It also has a
social component so you can team up with others and increase your motivation.
Website, Android and iPhone App — Wunderlist

Wunderlist is highly configurable app for tracking all your to-dos, but you
could totally use it for a daily checklist. My family uses it for all sorts of things on
a daily basis. It has a wide variety of applications limited only by your
imagination.

What Now?
Now you know how to use the Seven Simple Tricks to Memory Mastery to
get the Best Grades Ever! I recommend that right now, while it’s fresh in your
mind, put a reminder on your calendar of choice to reread one of the Simple
Tricks on Sunday night for the next several weeks. When you read each trick
again, think about how you will apply it in the coming week.
I’ve also collected some of my recommended resources at the end of each

chapter. Help me out by clicking on the links and getting the books and apps I’ve
recommended. They will enlighten and inspire while enabling you to be the best
you you can be.
I do want to be completely transparent. I make a small profit each time

somebody purchases one of the books I’ve recommended, however, I don’t just
recommend them to make a profit. I recommend these books and apps because
I’ve used them and found them helpful and insightful.
I also really covet your feedback. Please take a minute right now to give me
your input about this book and share your own successes by clicking here.

Suggested Books
Brown, Peter C, Henry L Roediger, and Mark A McDaniel. Make It Stick. 1st ed.
Print.
Gawande, Atul. The Checklist Manifesto. 1st ed. New York: Metropolitan Books,
2010. Print.
Hale-Evans, Ron. Mind Performance Hacks. 1st ed. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly,
2006. Print.
Jensen, Eric. Teaching With The Brain In Mind. 1st ed. Alexandria, Va.:
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005. Print.
Newport, Cal. How To Become A Straight-A Student. 1st ed. New York:
Broadway Books, 2007. Print.
Russell, Peter. The Brain Book. 1st ed. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1979. Print.
Sousa, David A. How The Brain Learns. 1st ed. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin
Press, 2001. Print.

About the Author
Since 1999, Cody Blair has been researching how students learn and
remember most effectively. He helps students apply that knowledge in and out of
the classroom. He is the author, instructor, and owner of StudyProf GRE Prep,
based in College Station, Texas, and has been teaching GRE prep since 2000.
Mr. Blair is a National Merit Scholar, an educational and technology

consultant who has worked with school systems and universities throughout
Texas, and a graduate of Texas A & M University. He was the Test Preparation
Coordinator for the Continuing And Professional Studies Office (CAPSO) in the
Texas A & M Division of Research and Graduate Studies.

He taught math, science, and communication in the Texas public school
system, and the Texas A & M University chapter of Sigma Xi, the international
honor society of science and engineering, named him the outstanding middle
school science teacher of the year. He created the award-winning Wired Study
Tips podcast, formerly on iTunesU, which was consistently the most downloaded
podcast from Texas A & M University’s iTunesU site. Currently, he teaches GRE
prep privately and under contract with Texas A&M University.
What I Believe.

1 Ebbinghaus, Hermann. Memory. 1st ed. New York: Dover Publications, 1964. Print.
2 Murdock, Bennet B., Jr. "The Serial Position Effect Of Free Recall.". Journal of Experimental Psychology 64.5
(1962): 482-488. Web.
3 Russell, Peter. The Brain Book. 1st ed. New York: Plume Book, Penguin, 1984: 95-96. Print.
4 Just a heads up, often times when I link to things like books or apps, I will get a little income from you
clicking on it. This is how I support my family, so if you find the info I’m giving you valuable, you can help me
—and yourself—by taking a look at the resources I suggest. I don’t recommend anything I haven’t tried and
found helpful. The only exceptions would be iPhone apps, since I don’t have an iPhone but still want to be
able to suggest something to those of you who do use iPhones. I very much appreciate it when you click! If
you ever try out a book or app I recommend and find it lacking—or if you come across a book or app you find
helpful—let me know. I will definitely take your comments to heart.
5 Schacter, Daniel L, Daniel Todd Gilbert, and Daniel M Wegner. Psychology. 1st ed. New York, NY: Worth
Publishers, 2011: 243. Print.
6 Hublin, Christer, et al. "Sleep and mortality: a population-based 22-year follow-up study."SLEEP-NEW
YORK THEN WESTCHESTER- 30.10 (2007): 1245.
7 Sivak, M. "Sleeping More As A Way To Lose Weight". Obesity Reviews 7.3 (2006): 295-296. Web.
8 Alvarez, Gonzalo G. and Najib T. Ayas. "The Impact Of Daily Sleep Duration On Health: A Review Of The
Literature". Progress in Cardiovascular Nursing 19.2 (2004): 56-59. Web.
9 Goel, Namni et al. "Neurocognitive Consequences Of Sleep Deprivation". Seminars in Neurology 29.04
(2009): 320-339. Web.
10 Stickgold, R. "Sleep, Learning, And Dreams: Off-Line Memory Reprocessing". Science 294.5544 (2001):
1052-1057. Web.
11 Miller, Nita Lewis et al. "Sleep And Academic Performance In U.S. Military Training And Education
Programs". Mind, Brain, and Education 2.1 (2008): 29-33. Web.
12 Smith, Hallie. "The Benefits Of Downtime: Why Learners’ Brains Need A Break". Scientific Learning. N.p.,
2016. Web. 27 Dec. 2016.
13 "CDC Press Releases". CDC. N. p., 2016. Web. 28 Dec. 2016.
14 "Natural Patterns Of Sleep | Healthy Sleep". Healthysleep.med.harvard.edu. N. p., 2017. Web. 7 Jan. 2017.
15 Schmerler, Jessica. "Q&A: Why Is Blue Light Before Bedtime Bad For Sleep?". Scientific American. N. p.,
2017. Web. 7 Jan. 2017.
16 Beaudoin, Luc. "The Possibility Of Super-Somnolent Mentation: A New Information-Processing Approach To

Sleep-Onset Acceleration And Insomnia Exemplified By Serial Diverse Imagining". Summit.sfu.ca. N. p.,
2013. Web. 7 Jan. 2017.
17 "The Effects Of Elaboration And Rehearsal On Long-Term Retention Of Shape Names By Kindergarteners -
Nov 23, 2016". American Educational Research Journal (2017):. Web. 12 Jan. 2017.
18 Weinstein, Claire E. "Cognitive Elaboration Learning Strategies.". Eric.ed.gov. N. p., 1977. Web. 12 Jan. 2017.
19 "Dual-Coding Theory". En.wikipedia.org. N. p., 2017. Web. 12 Jan. 2017.
20 Klein, Stanley B. and John F. Kihlstrom. "Elaboration, Organization, And The Self-Reference Effect In
Memory.". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 115.1 (1986): 26-38. Web. Technically, Klein and
Kihlstrom relate the increased recall due to self-reference as being a factor of organization rather than
elaboration. Either way, you’ll recall it better.
21 Tulving, Endel. "Subjective Organization In Free Recall Of "Unrelated" Words.". Psychological Review 69.4
(1962): 344-354. Web.
22 Bower, Gordon H. et al. "Hierarchical Retrieval Schemes In Recall Of Categorized Word Lists". Journal of
Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 8.3 (1969): 323-343. Web.
23 Tulving, Endel. "Organized Retention And Cued Recall". The Journal of Experimental Education 37.1 (1968):
3-13. Web.
24 Katona, George. Organizing And Memorizing. 1st ed. New York: Hafner Pub. Co., 1967. Print.

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Best Grades Ever!

© 2017, Hudson Blair

Simple Tricks To Fix Your Memory..........................................................................6

You’ve Been Doing It Wrong.....................................................................................8

Memory is About Survival.......................................................................................10

Why Is Memorizing In School Not Simple?............................................................12

Making Memory More Memorable..........................................................................14

About the Author......................................................................................................81

© 2017, Hudson Blair

Picture it; the year is 1988. I am a sophomore at Texas A & M University,

They both looked expectantly at my date. I said, “This is my date. . .”

I tried again. “This is. . .” My face reddened. My date looked at me with a

© 2017, Hudson Blair

Perhaps worse; I once forgot my college roommate’s name. Really. As I

Still, dates and roommates notwithstanding, my sub-par brain remembers

My noggin sometimes leaves me in the lurch on names, but my brain still

My brain is a memory machine that’s truly amazing to behold, yet, as I

So the question is, if your brain is so freaking awesome at recalling weird,

© 2017, Hudson Blair

© 2017, Hudson Blair

Don’t be fooled though. Because a trick is simple doesn’t mean it isn’t

© 2017, Hudson Blair

© 2017, Hudson Blair

“This smell should make me remember my grandmother’s kitchen. This

© 2017, Hudson Blair

Not a clue? Welcome to my world.

You remember the accident because it involved your emotions. It was

We recall those things because the brain doesn’t discriminate between

© 2017, Hudson Blair

Your great-great-great-great x10 grandmother, for instance, learned the

Her brain didn’t know which details might be important, so it remembered

© 2017, Hudson Blair

This is also for survival. Great-great-etc. granddad had to remember where

© 2017, Hudson Blair

“Learn these three formulas.”

“Know the names of each of the cranial nerves.”

If the prof is of the higher caliber, it might be something more like. . .

“Evaluate the geographic situation of Central American Mesolithic

To answer that question on an essay exam, you still need to have

© 2017, Hudson Blair

When we do this we are engaging in rote memorization—what

But, recall great-great-etc. grandmom and her rattlesnake run-in.

Is it emotional to repeat, “The study of bees is apiology,” over and over

Rote memorization does work. . . eventually. But compared to the other

© 2017, Hudson Blair

1. They give instant results

2. They are easy to implement

3. Most students don’t know about them or don’t use them

4. Exceptional students do know about and use them.

© 2017, Hudson Blair

According to David A. Sousa, author of, How the Brain Learns . . .

[Transfer] encompasses the ability to learn in one situation and then

© 2017, Hudson Blair

© 2017, Hudson Blair

Less Can Be More

Jacques worked steadily and without pause—a manly, tree-chopping

© 2017, Hudson Blair

Psychology studies show that this principal applies as much to learning as

Ebbinghaus discovered that, during lectures, students tended to remember

Unfortunately, our memory of those things we learned in the middle of the

Ebbinghaus uncovered a Simple Trick that increased his students’ recall.

© 2017, Hudson Blair