Tools and Techniques for Improving your Memory?

An Anonymous Coward asks: "Like many of you, I'm a IT drone trying to complete various tech certifications. My question is simple: how do you manage to remember all this junk? A lot of it comes naturally to me, but remembering which commandline switch does what or remembering some obscure reference to a tool sometimes causes me to blank on a test. Instructor-led courses seem to be a very expensive, very general overview of material, which almost require you to buy your own study guides to get more complete details. After you leave said classroom, you don't remember most of the topic anyway (Dilbert's 'I summon the vast power of Certification!' come to mind). So I ask the Slashdot crowd: what tools or memory techniques do you use to retain and remember the information you learn?"

Comments

A few things

[rw2]

I've never seen anything in the strong science category, but here are some (perhaps placeboes) that have helped me from time to time.

1) Phosphatidyl Choline is a precursor to acetyl choline a neurotransmitter associated with memory

2) I've used machines and programs (sadly none of which I can reference right now) that produce sound in stereo such that the left and right ears recieve offset signals and this is supposed to help the different sides of the brain communicate. I don't know what, if any, brain effect this has beyond a white noise that helps me concentrate with fewer distractions, but I find this technique to be so successful that the reason I can't reference a program right now is that I burned some of this noise onto a CD years ago and have been using it as needed ever since. The literature on the subject claims that different frequencies do different things and I find this to be true in my case, suggesting that there is more going on than simply white noise blocking out background. For example, one of the tracks on my CD is supposed to bring you down to a sleep like state. If I use this while trying to work I get very strong headaches. Not something I want to repeat over and over, but I've done it a few times to see if it was reproducable. It was.

3) Pressure. Most people don't think well under pressure. Don't fall into the downward spiral of getting pissed that you can't remember something. It will only make it harder to remember more stuff.

4) Concentration. 2 touches on this, but it's a fact that people who concentrate on one task (instead of reading /. during compiles for example :-)) are better able to remember the details of what they are doing. The brain is pretty crummy at task switching.