From the author: Books, newspapers, magazines, brochures - every day we load piles of printed information into our heads. How can we then remember everything we have read? Estimate how much you have read in your life? Are you no longer interested in what was written in all those books, newspapers, magazines, letters, advertisements, signs and packaging? Where did so much information go? Is it possible to remember a tenth, a hundredth, a thousandth of what you read? Isn’t it a pity that so much time and knowledge was wasted in vain? The older we are, the more afraid we are of forgetting what we read or simply know. We get upset if we can't remember a colleague's last name, a friend's phone number, the name of a movie, or a recipe. Even intellectuals, as they age, complain that they used to keep everything in their heads, but now they are forced to write down every little thing. The brain, like any organ, wears out with age, but this does not necessarily lead to the notorious “sclerosis.” For memory, the main thing is not the number of nerve cells, but the way they are used. Scientists have proven that old people are able to learn new things no worse than young people. And if you one day forget the first lines of “Eugene Onegin,” it will mean only one thing: lack of practice. Everyone learns so much in their life that most of the knowledge is either useless or unimportant. Our brain itself cuts off and throws away such information. But what about people who easily pull out the drawers of their memory and extract what was put there in childhood? They follow the golden rule of learning: what is understood is remembered. If you read without delving into the text, it flies out of your head. Memory retains only what is “captured” by consciousness. One of the most important aspects of assimilation is concentration of attention. This additional effort seems to hammer new data into our heads. IQ does not determine how smart a person will be. What is more important is the way he will assimilate information. It is “HOW” that assimilates information. After 8 hours, memory retains 20% of what is read. The rest is erased by the brain. Thus, the brain “clears” space for new information. This is not bad at all - life constantly throws up something interesting. Hence the conclusion - you need to “chew” important information several times in a row. It is best to ask questions to what you read: How are the different events that I learned about interconnected? Is this information useful to me? When and for what can this knowledge be applied? Why was the book written? , article, material, etc.? What is the main idea? Did the author manage to convey it well? Does the author express new ideas that I did not know before? To answer such questions, you will have to creatively process the text - “sort out” what you read, classify topics by importance, connect them into a new structure that is personally meaningful to you. By looking for answers to questions, you automatically focus. And this is the main thing for memory training. Read slowly - the calmer you are, the more accurately you remember the content. You can take notes in the form of abstracts, after reading which you will remember the content of the original source. The better you remember different texts, the easier it will be to assimilate other things. The brain connects and compares the data it receives with what is already known. New knowledge does not take root well from scratch, but it easily grows onto old ones, like young shoots grafted onto a spreading tree. Scientists have proven that verbal memory does not change with age, while visual memory weakens. However, one of the best ways to improve it is through visualization. The ancient proverb is true: “It’s better to see once than to hear a hundred times.” Professional advertisers and PR people know this very well and combine their catchy slogans with large, unusual, easy-to-remember pictures or photographs. Information is better retained in the mind if accompanied by visual illustrations. Next time you read a book, try to “visually” imagine the events described. And then mentally depict - in pictures - the entire content of the book and put it in your memory album forever. So, images are a good tool.