Use the ‘Chunking’ Method to Better Remember What You Studied

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Studying can be as easy as sitting down and reading a chapter, but it shouldn't be. I do hate to break that to you, though I'm actually doing you a favor. Just absorbing huge blocks of content isn't necessarily helpful for remembering any of it. Before you do the work of studying, you have to get organized by sorting the content you need to absorb. Even organizing it, especially using the "chunking" method, will help you start to grasp and retain the materials, so by the time you're going through them, you'll be in a perfect position to lodge all that information in your memory. Chunking is a psychological trick that experts swear by. Here's how to master it for yourself.

What is chunking?

Here’s what the American Psychological Association says: Chunking is “the process by which the mind divides large pieces of information into smaller units (chunks) that are easier to retain in short-term memory. As a result of this recoding, one item in memory (e.g., a keyword or key idea) can stand for multiple other items (e.g., a short list of associated points).”

Basically, your short-term memory has a specific capacity for how many units it can store and that capacity is pretty low, ranging from five to nine—but the units themselves can be as complex as you want. The APA says “the exact number of chunks remembered depends on the size of each chunk or the subunits contained within each chunk.”

Each chunk is a collection of pieces of related information, like words, numbers, or phrases. The key here is they have to be related to each other, but not very related to the other chunks. Chunking is all about grouping related pieces of information so you can stay in that five-to-nine units frame.

You probably already use chunking in your real life to remember things. Think of your phone number. You likely already sort it into your area code, those first three digits, and the final four digits. Remembering a string of 10 numbers is hard; remembering three “chunks” of smaller digits is less difficult.

So how do you study in chunks?

Look at the things you have to memorize and start grouping them loosely into categories based on how they’re related. This doesn’t have to be about content, either. If you have to memorize 20 words or concepts, you don’t have to group them by their meaning; you can group them by whether they sound similar, start with the same letter, or whatever you want. If you've ever used a mnemonic device to remember something like, say, the order of the planets, you've already made a "chunk" to study before.

You can create your chunks with something as simple as a pencil and paper, listing the words or concepts together and skipping a few spaces between units. From here, you can make flashcard sets of each chunk or use the first letter of each phrase to create a mnemonic device. Try an acrostic, a phrase where the first letter of each word corresponds with the first letter of one of the things you need to remember. If you think better in terms of numbers, try grouping your words or concepts by how many letters are in them.

The pencil-and-paper technique is helpful for entrenching words in your memory, since you retain things you write down a little better than those you type, but it's not that convenient or functional otherwise. I recommend using apps and digital programs to make this easier. For instance, use a mind-mapping app to sort out your chunks and make them easy to visualize. I always find that even seeing words grouped together and organized can help me remember them and the ways they relate to each other better. Xmind is my favorite app for this, but you can also use something like Canva, which I have absolutely done in a pinch. Next, you can even use an app to create your flashcards. Flashcards are one of the best and most time-tested methods for studying, but it's wildly unrealistic for you to carry a bunch of notecards around. These are my five favorite flashcard apps, which will enable you to keep all your study materials accessible on your phone wherever you are.

I recommend making a new deck for every chunk you create so you can keep your groups separate in your mind. Once you've grasped all the content of your various chunks, try mixing some of the decks together and reviewing them in bigger batches. Known as interleaving, this technique will gradually help you make connections between different concepts, enhancing not only your recall of them, but your actual understanding.

Just don't forget to start out by studying each set—or chunk—individually. Even though this doesn’t break down the amount of content, having them in groups with similar characteristics will help you remember it all together, and you’ll be surprised how much of the real material you retain.

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