Memory isn't fixed — it's a skill you can train. Whether you're a student preparing for exams, a professional managing complex projects, or simply someone who keeps forgetting where they put their keys, the techniques below are proven by cognitive science to strengthen your memory at any age.
To improve your memory, test yourself instead of rereading, spread your reviews over several days, sleep at least 7 hours, and turn what you need to remember into pictures, places or chunks. In the largest review of study techniques, practice testing and spaced (distributed) practice were the only two rated high utility, while rereading and highlighting were rated low (Dunlosky et al., 2013). The CDC recommends 7 or more hours of sleep a night for adults aged 18 to 60 (CDC).
| Do this | How | Practise it here |
|---|---|---|
| Test yourself | Close the notes and recall before you check | Word Recall |
| Space your reviews | Review after a day, then a few days, then a week | Flash Cards |
| Sleep on it | 7+ hours, and study before sleep rather than instead of it | Sleep and memory |
| Chunk long items | Group digits and words into 3s and 4s | Digit Span |
| Use places and pictures | Put each item at a spot on a route you know (memory palace) | Number Memory |
| Move every day | Regular aerobic exercise such as brisk walking | Exercise and cognition |
Your brain processes memories in three stages: encoding (taking in new information), storage (keeping it), and retrieval (getting it back when needed). Most "bad memory" problems are actually encoding problems — you never properly stored the information in the first place. The techniques below target all three stages.
1. Spaced Repetition
Instead of cramming, review information at increasing intervals — after 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 14 days, 30 days. This technique, discovered by psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, exploits how your brain strengthens memories that it retrieves multiple times. Our Flash Cards game uses this principle.
2. The Memory Palace (Method of Loci)
Imagine walking through a familiar place (your home, school, or office) and placing each item you want to remember at a specific location. Ancient Greek orators used this technique to memorize hour-long speeches. It works because your brain excels at spatial memory — remembering where things are.
3. Active Recall
Don't just re-read notes — test yourself. Close the book and try to recall what you just learned. This feels harder than passive review, but that difficulty is what builds stronger memory traces. Games like Word Recall and Number Memory train this exact skill.
4. Visualization
Turn abstract information into vivid mental images. The more unusual, colorful, and emotionally engaging the image, the better you'll remember it. Need to remember the number 7492? Picture 7 cats riding 4 bicycles past 92 mailboxes.
5. Chunking
Break large pieces of information into smaller, meaningful chunks. You can only hold 4–7 items in working memory at once, but chunking lets you pack more into each slot. Phone numbers use this principle: 555-867-5309 is easier than 5558675309. Practice chunking with our Digit Span game.
6. Sleep
During sleep, your brain replays and consolidates memories from the day. Sleep after learning consistently improves retention compared with staying awake — one of the better-established findings in memory research. Even a 20-minute nap after studying improves recall. Never sacrifice sleep for extra study time.
7. Physical Exercise
Aerobic exercise increases blood flow to the hippocampus — the brain region responsible for forming new memories. Regular aerobic exercise, on the order of 30 minutes of brisk walking, can improve memory performance immediately afterward. Regular exercisers have measurably larger hippocampi.
8. Teach Someone Else
The "protégé effect" shows that explaining concepts to others forces you to organize and simplify information, revealing gaps in your understanding. If you can't teach it simply, you don't know it well enough. Find someone to explain new concepts to — even if it's an imaginary student.
9. Reduce Stress
Chronic stress floods your brain with cortisol, which literally shrinks the hippocampus over time. Meditation, deep breathing, and mindfulness practices reduce cortisol and improve memory function. Even 10 minutes of daily meditation shows measurable benefits within 2 weeks.
10. Eat Brain-Boosting Foods
The Mediterranean diet — rich in fish, nuts, berries, and olive oil — is consistently associated with better memory in research. Key nutrients include omega-3 fatty acids (salmon, walnuts, or a daily fish oil supplement), antioxidants (blueberries, dark chocolate), and B vitamins (leafy greens, eggs, or methylcobalamin B12 if you're over 50).
11. Stay Socially Active
Social interaction engages multiple cognitive systems simultaneously — language, memory, attention, empathy. People with strong social networks tend to have 70% less cognitive decline than those who are socially isolated. Even brief daily conversations count.
12. Play Memory Games
Targeted memory training directly strengthens the neural circuits responsible for encoding and retrieval. Games that train working memory (like Dual N-Back) have the strongest evidence for transfer to real-world memory improvements.
Several of the techniques above are among the best-supported findings in psychology. Retrieval practice, testing yourself instead of rereading, improved recall a week later in a classic experiment (Roediger and Karpicke, Psychological Science, 2006). Spacing study over days improves long-term retention (Cepeda et al., Psychological Bulletin, 2006). And the method of loci works for ordinary people: after 40 days of training, adults with no special talent roughly doubled the number of words they could remember (Dresler et al., Neuron, 2017).
Lifestyle matters too. In older adults, a year of regular walking increased the size of the hippocampus, a brain region central to memory, by about 2% (Erickson et al., PNAS, 2011). Read more in sleep and memory and exercise and cognition.
Test yourself. Recalling something from memory, rather than rereading it, is one of the two study techniques rated high utility in Dunlosky et al.'s 2013 review; the other is spacing your reviews over days. Both work from the first session.
Sleep at least 7 hours (the CDC's recommendation for adults 18 to 60), exercise regularly, test yourself instead of rereading, space your reviews, and link new facts to pictures or places you know. None of it needs pills or apps, though memory games make the practice easier to keep up.
Most people notice improvements within 2–4 weeks of daily practice. Significant gains typically appear after 6–8 weeks of consistent training.
Absolutely. Neuroplasticity — the brain's ability to form new connections — continues throughout life. Memory improvement has been reported in participants aged 60–90 with regular cognitive training.
If you had to pick one thing: get enough sleep. Sleep is when your brain consolidates memories. Everything else works better when you're well-rested.
We don't recommend any. Most memory supplements lack strong evidence, and the habits on this page (testing yourself, spacing reviews, sleep and exercise) are the ones research supports. If you think a deficiency is affecting your memory, ask a doctor.
Memory improves with active recall, spaced review, vivid associations and good sleep. Practise with games like Number Memory and Word Recall, and apply the same techniques to the things you actually need to remember. Want practical routines rather than games? Try these memory activities for adults.