Improve Your Memory, 6th Edition

Book Preface

If it weren’t for the fact that reading is the absolute underpinning of every other study skill, I could make a pretty strong case that spending time improving your memory would deliver the most “study bang” for the buck. It doesn’t matter how rapidly you whiz through your textbooks if you can’t even remember the subject you just studied five minutes later. Getting organized is essential, but not too effective if you always forget to carry your calendar and regularly turn in homework assignments late. And, of course, spending hours searching high and low for keys, glasses, and other essentials isn’t exactly the most efficient way to start your study day.

As important as they are, basic memory techniques are the study ingredients least likely to be taught in schools, even in a study skills course. So while the better schools and teachers might help you with reading, writing, organizing, and test strategies, far too many of them will “forget” to help you with your memory…or to find your glasses, keys, etc.

This small book will give you so many easy ways to remember more, you’ll wonder why you didn’t become a “memorist” years ago.

I am proud that I have been helping students of all ages improve their study skills ever since the day I walked into a bookstore and realized there was no single book then available that simply taught someone how to study! This year marks another major milestone in the more than 20-year-long evolution of my How to Study Program—the reissuance of new editions of all the volumes in the series: How to Study, Improve Your Memory, Improve Your Reading, Improve Your Writing, Ace Any Test, and Get Organized.

My readers are far more varied than I ever expected. A number of you are students, not just the high school students I always thought were my readers, but also college students, who are making up for study skills you missed in high school, and junior high school students, who are trying to master these study skills early in your school career to maximize your opportunities for success.

Some readers are adults returning to school who have figured out that if you can learn now what your teachers never taught you the first time around, you will do better in your careers. Wouldn’t it be great to recall without notes the key points you want to make in your presentation, or remember the names of all the potential new clients you just met at a cocktail party?

All too many of you are parents with the same lament: “How do I get Jill to do better in school? She can’t remember my birthday, let alone when her next trigonometry test is.”

If you are still in high school, you will have no problem with the language and format of this book—its relatively short sentences and paragraphs, humorous (hopefully) headings and subheadings, and reasonable but certainly not outrageous vocabulary. I wrote it with you in mind!