Before getting started, you should evaluate your environment and yourself to ensure that your studying is being optimized. This includes but is not limited to a good night’s rest and maintaining energy levels throughout the day. With this in mind, it is imperative that you set yourself up for success before jumping into new methods of studying to avoid being discouraged when you approach a new way of learning.

Retrieval practice is one of the most if not best practice methods for  learning information over a long period of time. You can do this in many ways, but for convenience, it is best to ask yourself questions in real-time and answer them by focusing on one aspect of the topic at a time.

In Greek mythology, Mnemosyne was known as the personification of memory. Before being written down, stories were recounted orally and almost daily. Due to that, memory played an important role in the lives of ancient Greek storytellers. Therefore, it isn’t that shocking to find that the concept of memory was given the form of the goddess Mnemosyne.

In ancient civilizations, however, people would manifest mental maps by utilizing the technique of a memory palace. As their minds envisioned walking from one room to the next, scholars and philosophers alike were able to recall facts and data they had attached to certain features. If you plan on memorizing a sequence of events or subjects, you can walk through your memory palace in a certain order to gather all the information. Though this may require more mental effort than other systems of memorization, it is a tried and true method of learning that challenges oneself to push beyond their limits.

As for smaller steps to add to your already-existing study techniques, use a blue and red pen whenever possible. In fact, a study in 2009 from the University of British Columbia proved that the color red boosted performance as well as more detail-oriented tasks of memory retrieval, essential to boosting test performance.

Whether or not your learning styles have been working for you so far, it’s always possible to learn more effectively with memorization techniques from the past. It is important to always ensure that you’re challenging yourself to understand where you need to improve.  Moreover, you can always adjust these learning styles to better suit your learning needs.