1) We’d all like to be more effective in reaching our goals, and according to behaviourists, the way to improve our effectiveness is by rewarding ourselves for the little steps that take us closer and closer to those desirable outcomes. First, find something you really like to do or something you’d like to have that can, realistically, serve as a reward. Then, take the goal that you are hoping to achieve that, realistically, you could achieve but just haven’t succeeded at yet. Next, work backwards from that goal to your present state. Arrange to give yourself those desired rewards as you inch closer from where you are now to the desired end point. As you start to make progress, only give yourself a reward when you’ve moved forward from where you are now. For example, if you’d like to cut back on your television watching and instead read more often, reward yourself by allowing yourself to watch television only when you’ve read for 20 minutes, then 30, then maybe 2 hours. By the time you’ve gotten to the 2-hour mark, who knows, you may enjoy reading so much that you won’t even care about watching television anymore.  Â
2) Working memory is that part of your memory system that allows you to keep information actively in “consciousness,” either because you are learning something for the first time, or are trying to recall something you learned in the past. Theoretically, you could keep information in working memory indefinitely if you thought about it and nothing else, but obviously this would not be a very feasible task. The trick is for you to keep information for as long as you need it or be able to haul it into working memory when you need it. Psychology has three simple tricks to help your working memory: 1. Chunking- by organising large amounts of information into a smaller number of units (the “magical number of 7 plus or minus 2”), you will be able to store the information much more efficiently but then you have to use step #2; 2. Encoding so you can retrieve- you have to be able to pull up the organisational framework you created at the time of encoding if you’re going to be able to use it later, so you need to follow the adage “If you don’t encode, you can’t retrieve,”; 3. Using “deep” processing-  According to levels of processing theory, the more meaning you put into what you’re trying to remember, the better your chances of remembering it. Even putting a list of words you need to remember into a sentence, rather than just memorising them through rote, will give you that deeper processing edge. At the same time, though, we know from eyewitness memory research, people’s memory is highly unreliable. We are likely to forget small details, or change the small details of experiences to fit with what we had expected to have happened.  The classic eyewitness memory research asked participants to estimate the speed of two cars involved in an accident. If they were asked how fast the cars were going when they “smashed” into each other, participants estimated the speed as higher than if asked how fast they were going when they “contacted” each other. Similarly, people can be misled into thinking that an item was on a word list when it in fact was not. If you read a list of words that all relate to the category “sweet” (but don’t actually include “sweet”), people will think that the word “sweet” was on the list. Relying on your own, or other people’s, eyewitness memory is a risky proposition. If you need to remember something that’s happening in front of you, either write it down or snap a picture with your smartphone!
Hope this helps xox :)
