Use the “fragmentation” Method to Actually Remember What You’ve Learned

Studying is a necessary pain when one is in school, which is why we have developed so many ways to do it. Everyone learns differently, but some methods are trusted more than others. “Breaking apart,” for example, is a real psychological trick trusted by the smartest psychologists. Here’s how to do it if you have a lot of cramming to do.

What is chunking?

Here’s what the American Psychological Association says : Chunking is “the process by which the brain breaks down large chunks of information into smaller units (chunks) that are easier to retain in short-term memory. As a result of this recoding, one element in memory (for example, a keyword or key idea) can stand for several other elements (for example, a short list of related items).

Basically, your short term memory has a certain capacity for how many units it can store, and that capacity is quite small, five to nine, but the units themselves can be as complex as you want. The APA states that “the exact number of fragments remembered depends on the size of each fragment or the subunits contained in each fragment.”

Each chunk is a collection of chunks of related information such as words, numbers, or phrases. The key here is that they should be related to each other, but not very related to other fragments. Chunking is the grouping of related pieces of information so you can stay within five to nine units.

You probably already use fragmentation in your real life to remember things. Think about your phone number. You’ve probably already sorted it by area code, those first three digits, and the last four digits. Remembering a string of 10 digits is difficult; remembering three “fragments” of smaller numbers is not difficult.

So how do you learn piecemeal?

Look at the things you need to remember and start loosely grouping them into categories based on how they are related. And it doesn’t have to be related to content . If you have 20 words or concepts to remember, you don’t need to group them by meaning; you can group them by whether they sound the same, whether they start with the same letter, or whatever you want.

On a new sheet of paper, create snippets by listing words or concepts together and leaving a few spaces between items. From here, you can create flashcard sets for each section, or use the first letter of each phrase to create a mnemonic device. Try an acrostic, a phrase in which the first letter of each word corresponds to the first letter of one of the things you need to remember. If you’re better at thinking in terms of numbers, try grouping words or concepts by the number of letters they contain.

Explore each set—or fragment—individually. While this doesn’t break down the amount of content, grouping them into groups with similar characteristics will help you remember everything together, and you’ll be surprised how much real material you retain.