You're Not Forgetful: My System for Memorising Everything

From childhood, we are tested on memory skills, but the speaker reveals her struggle with a terrible memory despite academic achievements. She emphasizes the effort to perform and memorize as expected in school and university.

Forgetting is an active process, not a passive one. It has its own neurotransmitters and pathways that can be actively encouraged or discouraged. Memories are connected to cues, and when there's cue overload, memories get deleted. Novelty and unique strong cues help transfer information from short-term memory to long-term storage.

Learning new information can lead to the forgetting of previously learned material, a phenomenon known as proactive inhibition. Our brain is not like a hard drive but more like a cassette tape, where new information overrides old memories. This effect was observed in mice learning new mazes and also applies to human learning experiences such as language acquisition.

The Impact of Brain State on Memory The speaker shares her personal experience of struggling with memory and learning, attributing it to the state of her brain. She discusses how being labeled as having a poor memory affected her confidence and performance in academic subjects.

Therapy's Role in Mental Health and Academic Performance The speaker emphasizes the importance of mental health for academic performance, highlighting the impact therapy has had on coping with intense studies. She promotes BetterHelp as a platform for connecting individuals to therapists based on their preferences.

Our memories are meant to help us make decisions by storing what we understand or what helps us understand things. Conceptual memory allows ideas to connect well, collapse, and take less space in our brain, making it easier for us to store larger amounts of data.

The Power of Intuition Intuition plays a crucial role in memory and learning, allowing experts to memorize information more easily than novices. By building intuition through exposure and understanding the context, one can significantly improve their ability to learn and remember complex subjects such as history or languages.

Visual Representation for Efficient Memorization Creating visual representations like timelines helps build intuitive logic for memorizing historical events or language structures. This method allows for flexible organization of information, making it easier to recall details during exams or when speaking fluently in a foreign language.

The speaker shares their personal struggle with memory issues, realizing the impact of negative self-talk on their abilities. They emphasize the importance of empowering stories and reframing challenges as opportunities for growth. Additionally, they mention therapy as a helpful tool in overcoming such struggles.