Mens Health

 

How can I sharpen my memory?

Think of your memory as a flabby Labrador retriever that you’re going to whip into shape with games of fetch. As assistant professor of psychology Dr Jason Chein explains, the best memory boosters are retrieval drills, which require you to remember a multilayered sequence of information after a distraction. In his 2010 study, people used software to test their recall of a gradually increasing series of letters after a distraction. After four weeks of training, their verbal working memory performance increased by about 20%. Using the same principles, Chein created this drill for MH: once a day, watch as five cars go by, noting the colours. After five have passed, do something else engaging for 30 seconds. Then try to remember the sequence and colour of the last car. (Also try it with parked cars, scanning them for five seconds.) Once you can nail it, try six, seven or eight cars. Then you can start including the type (for example, off-road, bakkie, sports car).