How To:The fading memory, How to remember

Despite the changes in recent years, UPSC remains a content heavy examination. Though it focuses more on conceptual understanding and critical thinking and less on trivia but all the concepts and thinking boils down to content at the end. Without content, there is no analysis. Therefore, memory skills of a person play very strong role in selection and non-selection.

Some people have very sharp photographic memory. They have the inherent advantage in the exam but generally very few such individuals appear in the race. Therefore, for most of us, it is about the manner and frequency of reading and revision which creates all the difference.

The problem is mere reading is not sufficient for the purpose of examination. Most of the aspirants belong to young age group where mind tend to waver heavily at the slightest sight of any beautiful girl. Thus, attention span is limited. Moreover, WhatsAppp and Facebook do the remaining damage. Thus, a person requires multiple reading of the same content to master it fully. From my own efforts, I devised a simple seven step rule of commanding content. According to this,
First reading = no reading
Second reading = one reading
Third reading = two reading
Fourth reading = prelims
Fifth reading = Prelims+
Sixth reading = Mains
Seventh reading = Interview

It means a person should read a content four times so that he can cover any question which can arise in this from prelims perspective. Similarly, for mains, a person should read the content at least 6 times so that he would be able to reproduce and write the content at sufficient speed. Finally, the last reading for mastering the content to the extent where he can speak impromptu on the subject.

Apart from this, a person should develop deep enough understanding of her memory skills to consolidate the content. For this purpose, research of psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus may prove very handy. According to his findings, a person has the steepest curve of forgetting in first 20 minutes. Most of the forgetting occurs in the first hour of reading the content. near 70% of the content is lost within the first hour itself. In a way, if you had mugged 10 points then after an hour you will remember only 3 points. And don't get surprised, if you have revised in last 24 hours of a fresh reading then you may not be able to recall more than 3% of the content i.e. nearly half a point from the list of 10 points.

Therefore, one should train his mind to constantly revise and consolidate important points during initial few hours of reading the subject. This way consolidation would be maximum and hence, the reproduction would also be maximum.

There are few other techniques of mnemonics which I will list in some other detailed post. For now, absorb this thought.