00:00:00
I think you were taught to memorize
00:00:01
things wrong since we first start to
00:00:03
speak we begin to get tested on our
00:00:05
memory I've sat hundreds of exams
00:00:07
memorized tens of pages of scripts for
00:00:09
theater learned thousands of new
00:00:11
Concepts in four years of medical school
00:00:13
and while this all looked effortlessly
00:00:15
impressive the truth is beneath it all
00:00:19
this girl actually has a terrible memory
00:00:22
a friend of mine actually made me
00:00:24
summarize a full novel to them because
00:00:26
they could not believe I'd read it as I
00:00:28
could have tell them the name of a
00:00:29
single Char for a place I'd say the main
00:00:32
girl her dad the first guy she liked
00:00:34
even a medical report of mine from a few
00:00:37
years ago noticed and described my clear
00:00:40
problem with shortterm memory so
00:00:42
needless to say no natural talent in
00:00:45
this department but I've never accepted
00:00:48
this problem I've always tried to find
00:00:50
ways to perform and memorize the way I
00:00:53
was expected to in school or university
00:00:55
otherwise I wouldn't be able to become a
00:00:58
doctor in this process I've read
00:01:00
experimented and memorized so much when
00:01:02
it comes to the way that our brains
00:01:04
store recall and forget information
00:01:06
today I'm going to share all of that
00:01:08
with you let's get straight into it
00:01:09
firstly we cannot improve our memory
00:01:11
without first understanding how
00:01:13
forgetting works we like to focus on
00:01:15
ways to be able to remember and recall
00:01:17
things better while completely ignoring
00:01:20
the sorts of things that encourage us to
00:01:22
forget and therefore end up not really
00:01:24
improving overall and we can't be
00:01:26
excused for this for the longest time we
00:01:28
used to think that forgetting was this
00:01:31
passive process that we either were able
00:01:33
to memorize something fully and if this
00:01:35
memorization failed we were left with
00:01:37
the default which was forgetting this is
00:01:40
absolutely no longer the case in his
00:01:42
book forgetting the benefits of not
00:01:44
remembering Professor Scott at Colombia
00:01:46
discusses studies with zebra fish to
00:01:48
describe how forgetting is actually its
00:01:50
own very active process it has its own
00:01:53
neurotransmitters its whole own Pathways
00:01:55
and there are things that can actively
00:01:57
encourage it to become activated and to
00:02:00
work and this is amazing because it
00:02:01
means we can discover and try to avoid
00:02:04
those things memorization and forgetting
00:02:06
are two separate active processes let's
00:02:09
see what for guessing NS have you ever
00:02:10
been in an exam looked at supression and
00:02:12
gone oh yeah I know what this is about I
00:02:14
remember being taught this but you
00:02:16
cannot for the life of you remember the
00:02:18
actual answer so this highlights a very
00:02:21
important way about how we store
00:02:23
retrieve and delete information so the
00:02:26
way that memories work in our brain is
00:02:28
that they are just not stored in these
00:02:30
individual packets almost everything has
00:02:32
a cue or a tag attached to it
00:02:34
subconsciously or consciously when we're
00:02:36
looking for information in our brain we
00:02:38
actually go to the CU first and we look
00:02:41
at the tag and then we find the memory
00:02:43
that's connected to it in this case for
00:02:45
example we might go oh it was it was our
00:02:47
history teacher but then there's so many
00:02:49
things she taught us so we can't find it
00:02:51
there and then we go oh it was it was
00:02:53
the bottom right hand side of my
00:02:55
textbook but there's so many things that
00:02:57
are on those pages and then we're like
00:02:58
oh it was Christmas but we learned so
00:03:00
many things then so all of these cues do
00:03:03
not help for us to tag and find the
00:03:06
information that we need the answer to
00:03:07
this question what has happened here is
00:03:09
Q overload each of these cues has too
00:03:12
much memories attached to them and they
00:03:14
do not like this when it happens they
00:03:16
start to delete the information
00:03:17
connected to them and this leads to the
00:03:19
case that we just saw the technical term
00:03:21
for which is transient forgetting now
00:03:23
there is a very good solution for this
00:03:25
which also activates our attentional
00:03:26
control system which was described by
00:03:28
the daddy of memory Alan Brady which is
00:03:31
basically the thing that grabs things
00:03:33
from our short-term memory into our
00:03:35
long-term storage where we want to keep
00:03:37
them and therefore increases our
00:03:39
motivation to do this this is novelty
00:03:41
new unique strong cues means memories
00:03:44
you don't forget practically what does
00:03:46
this mean for your studying when I used
00:03:48
to be in school and I was struggling
00:03:50
with a topic that I found either too
00:03:52
difficult or too dense because it had
00:03:54
lots of things to memorize I would drop
00:03:56
my textbook which already has too many
00:03:59
oversaturated cues and I would go
00:04:01
straight to YouTube and watch MIT or
00:04:03
Yale open courses which God bless them
00:04:06
they've taken me through so much it's
00:04:07
amazing but because this is such a
00:04:10
different context I would be watching
00:04:11
University lectures on one small aspect
00:04:14
of that lesson that I found challenging
00:04:16
and therefore this is such a difficult
00:04:18
context to my normal classroom teacher
00:04:20
teaching that it would create a new cue
00:04:23
in my mind if it was a particularly
00:04:25
important subject to me I would also
00:04:26
read extra books or watch extra
00:04:28
documentaries so for this one
00:04:30
challenging memory I actually would have
00:04:32
so many unique new cues attached to it
00:04:35
that it became almost impossible for me
00:04:37
not to memorize that thing because I had
00:04:39
six uqs popped to mind every time I
00:04:42
thought of it in an exam I would
00:04:43
absolutely smash these topics I still
00:04:46
remember so much about the chemistry of
00:04:47
cloning because of these lectures I
00:04:49
would definitely recommend this next
00:04:51
very frustratingly a huge promoter of
00:04:54
forgetting is learning itself the
00:04:56
analogy here is that our brain is not
00:04:59
like a hardrive but like a cassette tape
00:05:01
when we are putting new information in
00:05:03
it we are very often overriding
00:05:06
information that was previously there I
00:05:08
was semi fluent in Turkish when I
00:05:09
stopped studying it and started French
00:05:11
and now I've almost completely lost my
00:05:13
Turkish whenever I think of a Turkish
00:05:15
word the French one comes to mind this
00:05:17
was also replicated much more reliably
00:05:19
in a study where mice were made to learn
00:05:21
new mazes and the mice that were the
00:05:23
quickest and the best at learning new
00:05:25
mazes were also the ones that were more
00:05:27
likely to forget the old ones the
00:05:29
technical term for this is proactive
00:05:31
inhibition where there's an interference
00:05:32
from previous learning that leads to
00:05:34
forgetting you might have experienced
00:05:36
this if you've crammed for an exam and
00:05:38
learned new material last minute and you
00:05:40
actually found on your exam day that
00:05:42
you've forgotten or messed up what you
00:05:44
previously knew actually quite well and
00:05:47
therefore you perform worse overall in
00:05:49
your exam now how we avoid this
00:05:50
proactive inhibition is not to avoid
00:05:52
learning new things all together but is
00:05:54
to be strategic about our cramming if we
00:05:57
are cramming last minute very last
00:05:59
minute for an exam I would recommend
00:06:02
that we never learn new things that we
00:06:04
have not learned before because this is
00:06:06
where we are overriding what we knew in
00:06:08
the past what we can do instead is cram
00:06:11
revise which is learn only the things
00:06:13
that you knew previously revise those as
00:06:16
fast as you want that's absolutely fine
00:06:18
and pray that they're the ones that
00:06:19
going to come in the exam and on the
00:06:20
other hand if we have a longer time to
00:06:22
cram or learn information or if we are
00:06:25
learning things that are in a similar
00:06:26
field it's really essential to do a mini
00:06:29
memorization and comparison with what we
00:06:31
knew before if when I learned French I
00:06:33
also revised the Turkish equivalent word
00:06:35
I'm giving a signal to my brain that I
00:06:37
actually need both of these and can you
00:06:39
store them separately and it's much more
00:06:41
likely that I remember both rather than
00:06:43
overriding and forgetting things from
00:06:45
the past before I progress onto the ways
00:06:46
to address memorizing specifically I
00:06:49
have to say that actually the thing that
00:06:51
has had the biggest impact on my memory
00:06:53
learning and performance is
00:06:55
unsurprisingly the state of my brain
00:06:57
itself as I mentioned earlier I should
00:06:59
have always known I didn't have an actal
00:07:01
talent for memorization because as a
00:07:03
girl in class I would refer to people as
00:07:06
the second row on the right and someone
00:07:08
would tell them their name and i' would
00:07:09
be like yeah that's the person because I
00:07:11
couldn't memorize names at all and yet
00:07:13
because I was compensating so much and
00:07:15
trying all of these strategies I don't
00:07:18
think I even realized how bad my memory
00:07:20
was and everyone saw my A+ and my
00:07:23
theater and all the things that I did
00:07:25
and assumed that I had an excellent
00:07:27
memory when it came to facts this
00:07:28
progressed all the way way into my
00:07:29
University years and it was only
00:07:31
recently when I was told by a medical
00:07:33
professional that I genuinely have a
00:07:35
poor memory that my memory became so
00:07:39
much worse now that I found out that I
00:07:40
was labeled this way there's a study
00:07:42
that shows that young girls that are
00:07:43
told that they're bad at spem subjects
00:07:45
perform a lot worse than those that are
00:07:46
told that they are good at them and I
00:07:48
truly believe this is what happened to
00:07:49
me and I'm still slowly rebuilding and
00:07:52
focusing on improving my memory and
00:07:54
overcoming this year or so of having
00:07:57
just really bad memory performance
00:07:59
General when you tell yourself that
00:08:00
you're stupid or you're less capable
00:08:02
than other people or that you're just
00:08:04
going to struggle with something you
00:08:05
genuinely do end up performing a lot
00:08:07
worse my confidence mood and happiness
00:08:09
determines so much more about my memory
00:08:11
and performance than any other specific
00:08:13
technique as much as I love everything
00:08:14
I'll be mentioning today I'll probably
00:08:16
refer a bit more to that doctor's Le and
00:08:17
diagnosis and effect in the end of this
00:08:19
video but for now I do want to say that
00:08:21
you do need Clarity and peace in order
00:08:23
to study things properly and the biggest
00:08:25
difference you can make your academic
00:08:27
performance is sorting out your mental
00:08:28
health almost half of the on this
00:08:29
channel are in some form related to
00:08:31
therapy I've been in therapy for years
00:08:33
now both both online and in person and I
00:08:36
truly believe it is the only reason I am
00:08:38
able to cope with making these videos
00:08:40
alongside studying a quite an intense
00:08:42
degree and dealing with all of the
00:08:44
problems both internal and external off
00:08:46
my brain this video is a paid
00:08:47
partnership with bre help and I'm so
00:08:49
excited to finally have links to give
00:08:51
that are related in some form to therapy
00:08:53
I'm sure everyone already knows that
00:08:54
better help is a platform that connects
00:08:56
us to credential therapists for online
00:08:59
promote therapy the beauty of it in
00:09:00
particular is that you are mat therapist
00:09:02
based on your preferences from the
00:09:04
get-go if you know what you like I'm a
00:09:06
particular fan of family systems and
00:09:07
Bower Theory so I can look for that but
00:09:09
if you don't know what you don't know
00:09:11
they will ask you questions that can get
00:09:12
you matched in the best way it's almost
00:09:14
expected that you shop around and you
00:09:16
find the best therapist for you and
00:09:17
because there are so many available it
00:09:19
makes switching the easiest that I've
00:09:20
seen anywhere before I could genuinely
00:09:22
go on for days about how much therapy
00:09:24
has changed my life and how much I
00:09:25
encourage it so because of that I've
00:09:27
made another separate video which is
00:09:30
unlisted on my channel and linked below
00:09:32
so if you want to see the reasons that I
00:09:34
think people should go to therapy that I
00:09:35
do not hear mentioned a lot elsewhere
00:09:38
and also my top tips for either starting
00:09:40
as a complete novice or if you've been
00:09:42
out of the game for a while kind of what
00:09:44
advice I would give myself if I was
00:09:45
starting again that's listed in that
00:09:47
video below there's also a notion
00:09:48
template for free which will have all of
00:09:50
the top tips summarized together so if
00:09:53
you're thinking about this that might
00:09:54
hopefully be slightly helpful I also
00:09:56
have a link in my description which is
00:09:57
betterhelp.com Philip that will give you
00:09:59
10% off your first month so if you're
00:10:02
interested in starting or thought about
00:10:03
this before the sooner honestly the
00:10:05
better because of the sure size and
00:10:06
reach of the platform better help can
00:10:08
remain one of the cheaper options of
00:10:09
therapy out there and I've had an
00:10:11
amazing personal experience trying them
00:10:12
out for a few months actually before
00:10:14
making this video so I want to thank
00:10:16
them so much for supporting this channel
00:10:18
but also for making therapy more
00:10:20
accessible which is something that I am
00:10:21
incredibly passionate about so back to
00:10:24
memorizing now an important reason
00:10:26
memorizing is hard is because our brains
00:10:28
were never meant to do it the way that
00:10:30
we are expected to JN at the University
00:10:32
of Toronto describes that our memories
00:10:34
are not there for us to go oh she
00:10:36
remember that time but they're there to
00:10:38
help us make decisions we're supposed to
00:10:41
store what we understand or what helps
00:10:43
us understand things to make better
00:10:45
decisions this is called conceptual
00:10:47
memory but it is not what we commonly
00:10:50
think it is conceptual memory can be so
00:10:52
powerful because when done properly it
00:10:54
also means that ideas connect so well to
00:10:56
one another that they end up kind of
00:10:58
collapsing and taking less space in our
00:11:00
brain therefore making it easier for us
00:11:02
to store larger amounts and volumes of
00:11:04
data so how do we actually do this I
00:11:06
always think of learning as either being
00:11:08
horizontal or vertical and the way that
00:11:11
we are often taught to learn or taught
00:11:13
things is in a vertical way what this
00:11:15
means is that we are given a topic and
00:11:17
then we are given details about this
00:11:19
topic that come underneath this is a
00:11:21
vertical form of things to learn and
00:11:24
this is terrible because it remains one
00:11:26
discret thing and we just have to learn
00:11:28
about it it might even be turned turned
00:11:29
into a mind map but still it will have
00:11:31
one main topic and everything underneath
00:11:33
it and this is just very hard to
00:11:35
memorize all of these details it's super
00:11:37
likely that I'll forget one or a lot
00:11:39
more of these points here and sometimes
00:11:40
I'll forget that the whole condition
00:11:42
exists and it will be gone in the sea of
00:11:44
endless vertical conditions I have to
00:11:46
learn inste I learned things in a
00:11:47
horizontal way so let's say I have to
00:11:49
learn about retinal artery occlusion I'm
00:11:51
not going to learn this topic I'm going
00:11:53
to go and look at one of the symptoms
00:11:55
that stands out to me which is painless
00:11:57
loss of vision because I know that
00:11:58
there's at least least one more type of
00:12:00
painless loss or Vision so what I'm
00:12:02
going to do is I'm going to take one of
00:12:03
the characteristics in this vertical
00:12:05
list and try to find all of the
00:12:07
conditions that have this characteristic
00:12:09
and this now creates a whole group of
00:12:11
eye conditions related to painless loss
00:12:13
of vision all of them connected by this
00:12:15
one fact already this is much more
00:12:17
logical I'm much more likely to remember
00:12:18
that these conditions exist and when I
00:12:20
see them I know at least one important
00:12:22
thing about them which is that they are
00:12:24
painless loss of vision next as I start
00:12:26
vertically slightly expanding with one
00:12:28
of them when I see things that they have
00:12:30
in common either tests that need to be
00:12:31
done either cures that need to be done I
00:12:33
create another horizontal layer that
00:12:35
connects them with one another and in
00:12:36
this way I haven't just studied retinal
00:12:38
artery occlusion I studied a whole bunch
00:12:40
of things which are all connected to
00:12:42
this very strong visual cue of this
00:12:45
whole group this is
00:12:46
360° memorizing because when we memorize
00:12:49
things in a book or when we take notes
00:12:52
usually it's very vertical it's top to
00:12:54
bottom it's never a bottom to top that
00:12:55
would be very confusing but all of these
00:12:58
conditions exist in this hor izontal
00:12:59
plane and there's no beginning or end up
00:13:01
or down left or right they're all there
00:13:04
together and therefore I can kind of
00:13:06
rotate it in my brain and connect it
00:13:08
with other medical conditions so it's
00:13:10
compressed it's flippable it's
00:13:11
expandable everything is really well
00:13:13
connected and I'm much more likely to
00:13:15
remember a lot more about these
00:13:17
conditions than if I was creating
00:13:19
separate mind maps for them or learning
00:13:21
them completely as vertical lists the
00:13:23
next rate to improve your memory has to
00:13:24
do with the immense power of intuition I
00:13:27
used to play piano when I was younger
00:13:28
and sometimes times I would take a piece
00:13:30
of new sheet music to my teacher and ask
00:13:32
them if they would let me learn it with
00:13:34
them and they might have never seen this
00:13:36
before and they just sit down and learn
00:13:38
to memorize the piece so easily even
00:13:40
though this was a song they'd never seen
00:13:42
it before so I think it's fa
00:13:44
non-controversial that experts in a
00:13:45
field are a lot B and a lot quicker at
00:13:48
memorizing information in that field
00:13:50
than someone who is a complete novice
00:13:52
now you don't need to spend 20 years to
00:13:53
become an expert in a subject to benefit
00:13:55
massively from this intuition because
00:13:57
this is what I realized
00:13:59
I used so much when I was younger in
00:14:01
school now there's something I have to
00:14:03
admit when I was in school and I was
00:14:05
younger I would really be a lot quicker
00:14:07
at learning and memorizing things than
00:14:08
other people and everyone would think oh
00:14:11
my gosh like she's so smart this is not
00:14:12
true it's not true this is not the
00:14:13
reason this is not the reason I was
00:14:15
memorizing things well the reason I was
00:14:16
memorizing things well was because I had
00:14:19
less to remember people who were seeing
00:14:22
things for the very first time had no
00:14:24
intuition no concept of what was
00:14:26
happening in their brain as I do for a
00:14:28
lot of things had to learn a whole bunch
00:14:30
of information me I'd done prep if I
00:14:33
have to learn something I need to learn
00:14:35
a tiny bit of it because I know what
00:14:36
became before what came after I say oh
00:14:38
yeah that's probably where it happened
00:14:40
so me learning it is a lot easier which
00:14:42
is why I can learn more memorize more
00:14:44
and do things in a way that appears to
00:14:46
be so smart to other people so let me
00:14:49
explain how to do this let's say you
00:14:51
have to learn the wars in France in the
00:14:52
1800s if I had to do this now do not
00:14:54
have a clue if I would see a year ad
00:14:56
plus- 60 70 years 200 100 years I don't
00:15:00
know when that happened so before even
00:15:03
approaching this if you want to memorize
00:15:05
it well in a logical way because you can
00:15:07
use visual neonics but that's a separate
00:15:09
topic if you want to learn it well what
00:15:10
you can do is you divide the whole 1800s
00:15:13
into like 10y year brackets and for
00:15:16
every 10 years you write the main thing
00:15:18
that happened the main person that was
00:15:20
in charge or the main political context
00:15:22
and you just learn this and so when
00:15:25
you're in an exam and you have a
00:15:26
multiple choice question for example you
00:15:28
don't have to approach every new date as
00:15:29
though it's just a bunch of scrambled
00:15:31
numbers and go like oh is it this one
00:15:33
and try to remember what the number
00:15:34
looked like in the textbook but you can
00:15:36
use this intuative logic when you
00:15:37
approach it where you go well it can't
00:15:39
be then because then that was resolved
00:15:41
and it can't be here because that was
00:15:42
way too soon they were fighting about
00:15:43
something else so that's the correct
00:15:45
date and this is helpful for exams this
00:15:47
is helpful for learning the information
00:15:49
because you already have this thing
00:15:50
built which does not take that long you
00:15:52
can then memorize things a lot earlier
00:15:55
because you have this Skeleton on which
00:15:56
to link things the same thing can be
00:15:58
said for languages before learning a
00:16:00
language it's great to just hear it a
00:16:02
whole lot because you build intuition
00:16:04
and when you're studying it or trying to
00:16:06
speak you can sense that you're saying
00:16:07
something wrong because your intuition
00:16:09
is like I've never heard that that that
00:16:10
that sounds wrong even though you don't
00:16:12
know the grammatical rules the way we
00:16:14
all speak our native languages fluently
00:16:16
even though we might not necessarily be
00:16:18
able to tell you why to use that tense
00:16:19
or form of a word these things could
00:16:21
also be stacked with one another to
00:16:23
create crazy efficient memorization and
00:16:25
learning when you're creating dates
00:16:27
that's a horizontal timeline and instead
00:16:29
of learning things about one War what
00:16:31
happened in one date vertically you now
00:16:33
put it in the space where it can be
00:16:34
really flexible and moved around because
00:16:37
you have a timeline this is a visual
00:16:38
representation it's a really strong cue
00:16:40
because you have to find this
00:16:41
information potentially outside of your
00:16:43
textbook to build the timeline this is
00:16:45
where you're researching and adding
00:16:47
external cues the uniqueness to your
00:16:48
methods of study the intuition you build
00:16:50
make it so much easier to memorize this
00:16:52
in a way that your potentially will not
00:16:54
forget for the next 30 Years very lastly
00:16:56
I eared and OD so much in this video
00:16:58
about adding that little doctor's note
00:17:00
and about talking about the negative
00:17:02
effects that some things that doctors
00:17:04
say have to us as someone who in a few
00:17:06
months hopefully will be a doctor
00:17:07
themselves I thought in the end it's
00:17:09
really important to mention just how
00:17:11
empowering or disempowering the story
00:17:12
that we tell ourselves can be and how
00:17:15
easy it can be to overcome challenges
00:17:17
when you don't think of them as
00:17:19
challenges and I was struggling with
00:17:21
this realistically I should have
00:17:22
realized a long time ago that I was
00:17:23
struggling with this I have a terrible
00:17:25
memory and I never knew it because of
00:17:27
the fact that I was compensating working
00:17:29
hard at it and believing that I could do
00:17:32
this and I wanted to do this and in this
00:17:34
last year it's just been really hard and
00:17:36
I I feel like I've forgotten more than
00:17:38
ever because I just accepted the fact
00:17:39
that I'm worse than other people at this
00:17:41
thing this is a huge topic I'd
00:17:43
potentially want to do a whole other
00:17:44
video on if but if you do want a bit
00:17:45
more information about how therapy
00:17:47
specifically has helped me with this
00:17:48
that extra video I've made below should
00:17:50
help and clarify things and also if
00:17:52
you're cautious about therapy I know
00:17:54
it's really scary it takes a while to
00:17:55
get into it especially when it's online
00:17:58
so if you made it so far thank you so
00:18:01
much for watching me and I here to the
00:18:03
end of this video I hope you have a
00:18:04
wonderful rest fore day be kind to
00:18:06
yourself and others and don't believe
00:18:08
everything you think thanks bye
