Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you could instantly remember everything you read and learn?

How would your career opportunities improve, or how would your school life be different? How would you feel? Would you be able to nix any anxiety you might have about new learning?

Imagine yourself finally relaxing about new learning because you’d know, in advance, that you have a total recall formula for success.

With the right tips and strategies, you can have total recall learning now!

Everyone has the potential to learn and recall anything faster and the only missing ingredient in the recipe for you is not knowing how you learn best.

And that’s what is included here to make your learning easy, certain and much, much faster.

Table of Contents

1. Determine How You Learn Best Using the Learning Styles Quiz

2. Take Your Notes in Mind Maps Instead of Using a Yellow Highlighter

3. Learn How to Access Memory On-Demand

4. Learn How to Create Brain-Friendly Associations

5. Unlock Your Total Recall Speed Reading Ability

5 Ways You Can Have Total Recall Learning

1. Determine How You Learn Best Using the Learning Styles Quiz

Have you ever wondered why people who sit in the same classes, study from the same textbooks, have the same teachers and do the same homework, don’t get the same exam scores?

This isn’t because some students are smarter than others.

It’s simply because the students who are scoring better have learning strategies that the rest don’t know about.

This is the same reason you might find yourself performing better in certain subjects or fields than others.

And inconsistent results in different subjects are not your fault at all.

What is happening is that there is a mismatch between how you learn and how you are tested.

If you’re tested in writing and you prefer the kinesthetic learning style, storing learned information more in your feelings or body, it makes it harder and more complex to do well on written tests because they are given in a “visual” mode.

So what you will want to do is use the cross-modal learning strategies inside the Total Recall Learning course and it will show you how to adopt some more visual or image strategies to make it easier and faster to do well on written exams.

Put another way, everyone has a preferred style of learning. You are going to prefer some combination of visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning modalities, usually with one style in a higher percentage than the other two.

(Please make sure you have taken the Learning Styles Quiz to find out how you prefer to learn best on the home page at the top of HowtoLearn.com).

If your preference is more visual, you will learn best through information presented in images, text, charts, diagrams, graphs, and so on. This is because in your mind, without even realizing it, you transform what you’re reading into images.

Then voila – when you take a written exam, you already have those images in your mind and they will translate into the words you need on the exam. Plus, your memory is 60,000 times faster than if you were trying to remember words you heard in a lecture or words on a page.

Remember the old saying, 1 picture is worth a thousand words?

It’s not only true, but it impacts your learning and recall.

Remember, your brain processes images up to 60,000 times faster than words or text.

The underlying reason this is scientifically accurate is because images affect you cognitively and emotionally and those two input channels make memories stick!

Can you recall images from the past that are meaningful to you? They could be what you saw in pictures over the years in media – movies, and emotionally moving pictures in magazines or newspapers too.

The other thing that happens with images is that they process directly into your long-term memory – not your short-term or working memory.

Your short-term memory can only hold about 7 bits of information and images bypass the short-term memory and go directly into your long-term memory.

The bottom line: Visual learners have a strong advantage in school, since they’re able to recall information more quickly and accurately, whenever they need to. Written exams naturally cater to the visual learning style.

However, this doesn’t mean auditory learners, who learn best through listening, and kinesthetic learners, who learn best through physically engaging with their environment, can’t perform just as well and have total recall learning.

Imagine asking a professional basketball player to join pro wrestling.

This player has a specific skillset for basketball, a completely different sport compared to wrestling. They might not, initially, be able to perform as well in wrestling by using what they are certain of in basketball.

But this doesn’t mean this player can’t become a great wrestler.

All they need to do is learn what the underlying strategies and moves are in wrestling, from a champion wrestler, and then they can practice wrestling using those techniques.

This is what understanding learning styles help you to do – they help you discover how you learn best, and then you can match your learning strategies to how you will be assessed. It’s called matching input, storage and output!

2. Take Your Notes in Mind Maps Instead of Using a Yellow Highlighter

You’ve just read about how visual learning strategies give you an advantage in school, because turning what you read into mental movies and images makes it stick in your memory.

Mind maps are a tool specifically developed to help you take advantage of this brain preference in learning!

Tony Buzan, a psychologist, educational consultant, and author, developed mind maps when he realized that linear note taking did not in fact help recall.

Mind maps use your brain’s ability to process and respond cognitively and emotionally to images much faster than text to help you overview everything you learned at a glance!

A basic mind map starts with the main chapter heading or topic in the center, with a circle around it.

Sub-topics and points go at the end of spokes drawn away from this main circle in a clockwise direction, starting from the top right, in smaller circles.

You can create more sub-topics branching away from these smaller circles as you need them.

I encourage using different colors and doodling in images relevant to the topics, which can boost your understanding and add meaning to your mind map.

They don’t have to be artistic masterpieces – as long as it communicates meaning and summarizes effectively in a way you can easily visualize, your mind map is doing its job!

The process of creating a mind map engages your brain much more meaningfully than taking linear notes or highlighting the text in your books.

Instead of copying down what you’re reading or trying to pinpoint the most important points in your textbook only to color huge parts of it yellow, a mind map pushes your brain to condense the most important and relevant points on to a single page.

Your brain doesn’t work in a linear manner. If you try to memorize text, you’re making your brain decode letters, figure out their meaning, commit them in a linear manner to memory, and then work to recall them in that specific sequence when you need to.

On the other hand, a mind map presents salient information and how they connect to each other in a visual form which is thousands of times easier and more intuitive for your brain to recall.

And because your brain is engaging in a sense-making process as it takes all your notes and turns them into a mind map, it boosts your comprehension as well!

Instead of trying to remember pages and pages of yellow highlighted text, all you have to do when you need to recall what you read is visualize your mind map!

3. Learn How to Access Memory On-Demand

Okay – say you need to go to the library to check out a book.

You have the name of the book, but that’s about it.

You aren’t going to start looking through the whole library shelf by shelf for this book, right?

You’re most likely going to either head to a self-check counter to figure out the location of the book or ask a librarian for help.

This is much faster, and much more efficient than just walking around, sort of hoping you find what you need, right?

Knowing how to access different types of memories works the same way.

And it’s as easy as knowing the right direction to move your eyes!

In your mind, there is what is known as the eye-brain connection.

Your eye movements have a direct connection to your brain and what you see and how you see it is one of the major sources of input through which you learn.

Neuroscientists know that moving your eyes in different directions (up, level with your ear, and down) activate different regions of your brain – and as a result, your eye movement access different types of memory!

When you’re upset, you usually end up looking downward, right?

Looking down, either to the right or to the left, puts you in your kinesthetic state of mind – you’re caught up in your emotions (feelings) and as a result, not in the best state to absorb or process any learning.

On the other hand, try this – ask someone, a friend or family member, to imagine the Statue of Liberty or some other famous landmark, and see which direction their eyes move in.

Ask them to picture it as clearly and vividly as they can in their mind’s eye.

Most likely, you’ll see that their eyes move in the upper right or upper left direction!

These visual memory eye positions are associated with creating images and accessing these images!

So, when you need to create or recall your mental movies, simply look upward, to the same side that you did when you recalled the Statue of Liberty, to either your left or your right, to access your visual memory on-demand!

This is how you can access your mind maps whenever you need to recall the information in them too!

For more in-depth information on the eye-brain connection and how to access different types of memory faster through your visual memory eye positions, check out Total Recall Learning.

Eye movements are very empowering and can make all the difference when you are learning or even given an oral presentation!

4. Learn How to Create Brain-Friendly Associations

You already know that the best learners turn what they’re reading into mental movies in their mind.

What they also do is create “associations” or connections to something they already know really well.

If this isn’t something you do automatically, because you’re more of an auditory or kinesthetic learner, a little practice can help you make this second nature.

One of the ways you can do this, especially when you’re reading about something new or unfamiliar, is asking yourself “What does this remind me of?”

This question helps your brain create an association – in other words, your brain commits information to memory by connecting something new to something it already knows.

A lot of the time, you’ll see descriptions in your textbooks that describe something through comparisons with concepts you’re already familiar with.

For example, you might be reading about plant tissue that’s described as “spongy” or a chemical solution described as “cloudy.”

Since you know all about sponges and clouds, it gives your brain a reference point to try and understand an unfamiliar concept.

Asking “What does this remind me of?” also helps you create colorful and memorable mental movies in your mind that can speed up your understanding and recall.

For instance, the test for carbon dioxide is whether it turns limewater cloudy.

You know you breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, so to remember this test, you can imagine yourself breathing out clouds into a test tube!

Practice turning what you read into images by asking yourself what it reminds you of, and accessing these images, using your visual memory eye positions. You’ll be amazed by how much of a difference this makes to your recall!

5. Unlock Your Total Recall Speed Reading Ability

Did you know that you might have subconscious reading habits that are slowing your learning, memory and comprehension down?

Do you find, for example, that you have to keep going back to reread words or lines you’ve already read, because you lose your place in the text or forget what you were reading?

This is called regression, and it’s very tiring and tedious for your brain – it’s like trying to get somewhere in your car but you have to keep suddenly hitting the breaks and reversing every couple of seconds.

You’d barely get anywhere, making little progress, and it can grow frustrating – all things which can happen when your poor reading habits slow you down!

I recommend taking the Eye-Q Reading Inventory, which helps you pinpoint specifically which reading challenges you might be struggling with.

This in turn helps you choose the right strategies to help you overcome these challenges!

One of the easiest tips, which can help reduce regression or other poor reading habits like fixations (where your eyes get stuck on a word for a little too long) is using a pen or your finger to trace underneath the line as you read.

This gives your eye a moving object to track, and it keeps you from losing your place, getting stuck or rereading.

In the Total Recall Learning course, you are getting 3 courses in one – Total Recall Learning, Total Recall Speed Reading and Total Recall Memory.

So along with the other traditional reading strategies which help you completely remove your poor reading habits, I also introduce you to a hi-tech speed reading method which can double, if not triple, your reading speed instantly, without weeks of drills or practice.

This technique helps drastically improve your comprehension and enhance your memory as you read by using more of your brain’s surface area, and instantly removes poor reading habits with little to no effort from you!

As you can see – it’s completely possible for you to have total recall learning, when you have the formula for faster learning and recall!

For many more tips and strategies, and a complete blueprint for Total Recall Learning that you can use in any new learning situation, do check out my course!

Pat Wyman is the CEO of HowtoLearn.com and an internationally noted brain coach known as America’s Most Trusted Learning Expert.

Pat’s superpower is helping people learn, read and remember everything faster. She has helped over half a million people in schools and corporations such as Microsoft, Intel and Google improve their lives with her learning strategies, learning styles inventory and courses, such as Total Recall Learning™. Use coupon code LEARNMUCHFASTER to make the course $27 today! Save $70!

Pat is the best-selling author of more than 15 books, a university instructor, mom and golden retriever lover!

Related article