Better Information Retention

 

 Visualize to Succeed

Many of us find it easier to remember and learn when we can see things happening. When it comes to understanding abstract concepts, a visual depiction is often the best way to provide "real-world" context.

In this post, we'll cover a few different ways you can use visuals in your own work and life, such as using diagrams and graphs for class lectures or creating illustrations for an ebook to help illustrate difficult concepts.

But first, let's start by discussing the main points of this post:

Visualizing concepts is easier than you think. Use color contrast, speed and location to memorize core concepts.

Even if you're not an artist , creating visualizations can be just as effective as traditional art forms. This video shows how Pixar uses simplified storyboards to help tell complex stories.

Creating a visual representation of an abstract concept helps conceptualize what you need to learn before digging into the details of how something works -- especially if your goal is to retain information long-term.

Tip #1: Use Color Contrast to Memorize the Concepts

Here's an example of how you can use color contrast to help memorize complex topics. This is an illustration of how various points differ in terms of distance from the vertex (in this case, a point that has all four edges touching it). To recreate this image, you'd need to fill one circle with all blue shapes, and another with all red shapes. Simple enough! But why does this work? It's because our eyes are hardwired to recognize the difference between two colors at a glance, and that explains why we're so good at remembering complex illustrations like this one...

Tip #2: Use Speed and Location to Memorize

Another clever trick you can use to remember complex ideas is to associate the visual with the thing you're trying to memorize. This way, when you see the visual, your brain instinctively recalls what it is associated with. Here's an example using dots and lines to represent a graph of how percentages are distributed over time:

As you can see, by associating each dot or line with its corresponding idea (i.e "The black line represents... something"), you can effortlessly and quickly remember how percentages change over time.

Tip #3: Even if You're Not an Artist, You Can Create Visuals

One of the biggest misconceptions about visualizations is that you need to be a talented artist to create them. The truth is, if you just stick to the basics and use the right tools, there's no reason your illustrations have to look like amateur art (it could even be better if they're as simple as possible). In fact, in my own experience with visualization, I've found that many times it's more important to choose an image that communicates simple ideas quickly than it is to "artistically" depict a complex idea.

There are also many free tools and programs out there (like PowerPoint and Illustrator) that can help you create great-looking visuals without needing to learn how to draw.

Tip #4: Visualize Before Learning the Details

Let's face it, sometimes it's hard to fully understand the details of a complex concept until you take some time to read about it and then try doing it yourself. This is where visualizing comes into play. By first visualizing what something looks like, you can often understand what something is intended to do before learning how it actually works. In the video below, Pixar shows how they use this technique when creating storyboards for their movies.

Tip #5: Visual Memory Is Like a Muscle

The power of visualization is often overlooked, but it can be a very useful tool for remembering new information. The more you use visualization, the more your brain will build connections between the visual and what it represents in real life -- and when those connections are formed, you'll find it much easier to remember abstract concepts.

So, have you ever tried visualizing something before learning? What was your experience? Share with us in the comments! And if you liked this post, please consider sharing it on Facebook or Twitter using the buttons below! [END ARTICLE] So that was my article on how we can improve our memory using visual memory techniques. I hope that it was helpful for you and that you learned something new. If you did, then help spread the word by sharing this post with your friends. Tweet about it, like it on Facebook or just tell someone about this resource by email. Thanks for reading this post!

-Preston Lee Want to learn more? Follow me on Twitter: @naval_academy LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/prestonleecom Website: www.prestonleegov.com

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References: 1. “The Brain’s Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits On Our Capacity For Processing Information” - Researchers found that Mentally Processing Information is a context-dependent operation and that individual information is processed in separate cognitive subsystems (literally “chunks”).