The flash analysis project was a lot of fun and hopefully you had a chance to join me on it. As a refresher, the project lasted for about a week, and required me to memorize 7 random items in 4 seconds. This is a project you can do with your family or friends to test your mental acuity.
THE CHALLENGE
When I started the project, the challenge I initially had was concentrating under pressure. Historically, I haven't been the best at memorizing anything under duress or pressure. During the challenge, when I saw the items sprawled out before me, I started freaking out a little. If you watch any of the videos on YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook you may see me fumbling with my memory.
So I am here to give you any takeaways and tips that I gathered while trying this project. One of the main questions I would like to answer is this, "what can you do when you need to concentrate while under stress?"
TIP - TAKE DEEP BREATHS
When you are stressed out, there are a various number of things that happen in your body. Read through this article to find out a little more. (Read Here) When you know that you will have a stressful moment, take some deep breaths and focus on trying to control the breathing.
This might sound simplistic, but by getting deeper breaths you relax and you get more oxygen into your brain. This will help you to get into a more conducive frame of mind to learn and memorize.
TIP - SAY WHAT YOU WANT TO MEMORIZE OUT LOUD
Every piece of information that we take in and want to really memorize, requires different strategies to store into our long and short term memory. The way that I was able to finally memorize 7 items in 4 seconds was to verbalize the things I saw. I simply said the items out loud and they seemed to stick. Verbalizing information can be a great way to solidify and encode simple lists. So this is just a suggestion, but, if you have a list of things to memorize, try verbalizing the list.
Of course there are other strategies to employ, but the one that I found useful to use in 7 seconds was verbalization.
TIP - MAKE ASSOCIATIONS
When you can associate items with other things, your initial impressions will be stronger and last longer. I know this is really hard to do in 7 seconds but practicing this on a regular basis can go a long way towards more vibrant memories. Try this the next time you meet someone; find an item, event, or person that they remind you of. The association with the thing you know will help you solidify your memory. For example, if their name is something like Charles, think of the old King of England, or the famous American writer. Make as many associations as you can.
WRAP UP
Now that the project is completed, it's onto the next one. I have learned a lot in the span of a week and I will definitely be revisiting this project at a later date with some more twists. Hopefully you had a chance to try the project. I know it's not always easy to carve out time to do things like this so I will try my best to make the projects as easy to do and follow in the future.