14 Ways to Keep Your Mind Sharp For a Lifetime - Page 4

4. Outline your notes. Make lists and fill them in.

Make outlines that work for you, Grohol urges, even if they might be confusing to someone else. Use words that make sense to you, translating the words in material you may be reading. “Chunk” together the groups of words or facts or ideas that you feel belong in a group. The goal is to produce an outline that will help you remember the material, not anyone else.

Writing may work better than keyboarding into a laptop. There’s some evidence that using our fingers in that way helps us think. Read aloud an important sentence if you’re alone or mouth the words if you’re in a library. You may think it’s babyish to mouth or read aloud. Actually, poetry was the first way that human beings remembered stories and we haven’t changed that much.

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