Exercise is important for a variety of physical reasons -- but exercise also helps your memory. By engaging in regular exercise, the brain receives oxygen and functions better. Exercise also protects brain cells and reduces the risk of various disorders that can lead to memory loss. By staying physically fit, you are also improving your memory.
Get enough sleep. Sleep helps your memory because it consolidates information and aids memory processing and retrieval. In fact, you can follow the "bed-time recital" technique, where you write down items on a list, recite them before sleep and let your brain arrange the information in a systematic and effective way overnight. On the other hand, sleep deprivation seriously affects critical thinking skills and memory retrieval.
By learning new skills and activities, you are giving your brain a workout. Try something that is enjoyable and challenging such as learning to play a new instrument or a new language. When you are learning a new skill, your brain creates new neural pathways that help you process and remember information better. It will help you keep your mind sharp, give you new and fresh perspectives and increase your knowledge.
One of the best known techniques for improving memory is the use of mnemonics. With mnemonics you connect information in a personally meaningful way, helping you retrieve it more easily at a later date. One of the techniques is visual image, where you take a concept and visualize it as a vivid and meaningful picture in your mind. For example, to remember the word "pancreatic," you can picture a frying pan being creative. Another mnemonic technique is chunking, where you break down information into smaller units. This is used, for example, for remembering phone numbers, by memorizing them in chunks of three digits.