How to Improve Working Memory for Better Decision-Making
Proper decision-making is one of the most important skills in your personal, academic, and professional life. Information retention, processing, and application all combine to form the working memory, which aids in making better decisions.
If you’re wondering what decision-making truly means and how to get better at it, keep reading to learn more.
What is Working Memory?
Working memory is an executive function (a set of mental processes) that helps you focus, plan, exercise self-control, and balance multiple tasks simultaneously. Working memory is a short-term and dynamic form of memory.
It helps in solving problems, following instructions, learning information quickly, and evaluating choices.
Ways to Improve Working Memory for Better Decision-Making
1. Simplify Complex Information
Big and complex information, tasks, or decisions can overwhelm your working memory. So, break it down into smaller bits. This will help you undertake a bigger responsibility in simpler, manageable steps.
For instance, instead of cleaning your entire home at one go, focus on cleaning a single room first. Break it down into simpler steps, such as sweeping, vacuuming, and wiping.
If your home is spacious, tackle one room or space at a time. For instance, clean the living room and some bedrooms today, and do the remaining bedrooms and kitchen tomorrow. This prevents cognitive overload, helping you focus on one thing at a time.
2. Rely on Visual Aids
If the mental load is too much, even breaking it into smaller chunks doesn’t help, use visual tools, such as to-do lists, sticky notes, whiteboards, or reminders on your device. Colourful charts, step-by-step instructions and visual routines work particularly well for small children with poor working memory.
With fewer burdens on your working memory, you can avoid the struggle of remembering and recalling, and instead focus on the process better.
If nothing works, you can always seek executive functioning coaching from a professional who offers one-on-one coaching to high school and college students. With consistent support and encouragement, they help students improve their working memory.
3. Practice Mindfulness and Focused Attention
Mindfulness can train your brain to pay attention and be grounded in the present. It prevents your mind from wandering off. For instance, begin your day with 10 minutes of breathing exercises, accompanied by focusing on the present moment, including the sounds, visuals, and even your thoughts without judgment.
You can also try a relaxation method, where you lie down at bedtime and listen to guided relaxation audios. It boosts dopamine levels, enhancing focus and memory.
Regular practice strengthens working memory as your brain becomes more adept at retaining visual, auditory, and verbal information.
4. Play Memory-Boosting Games
Whether you’re an adult looking to improve your own decision making or want to help your child, memory-boosting games can help your working memory either way. Some options are Simon Says, card-matching games, and Sudoku. In these games, you have to hold on to simple memories to win the game. These challenges strengthen your working memory, guiding you through fun ways to retain verbal and visual information.
5. Try Working Memory Exercises
Specific exercises can strengthen your working memory and enhance your ability to process and manipulate information. An interesting game is chunking or grouping information into manageable units. In this, you organize phone numbers, such as 1234-567-890, instead of reciting them as a single string, like 1234567890.
Some practice mentally rearranging numbers in ascending or descending order. Another common and effective exercise is recalling tasks by repeating shopping lists, phone numbers, account numbers, or instructions aloud, rather than writing them down. If you’re reading something, summarize the paragraph in a sentence in your mind and say it repeatedly.
These exercises help retain information and recall it more quickly when needed, thereby reducing mental strain.
6. Improve Sleep and Exercise
Cognitive skills, including working memory, are connected to your physical health, including sleep and exercise. Sleep supports improved memory and resets the learning capacity of your working memory. Statistics show that the average person gets less than 7 hours of sleep per night, and 50-70 million adults in the US have a sleep disorder. So, you need to pay extra attention to getting proper sleep,
Additionally, you should also engage in aerobic exercise, such as walking, cycling, jogging, and dancing. They boost executive function and brain flexibility. Both adequate sleep and moderate aerobic exercise help keep your memory sharp and support better decision-making.
7. Create a Routine
Your daily life is filled with various chores, including meal planning, cooking, cleaning, paying bills, and shopping. If you mentally choose which to do when, it will involve a lot of complicated thinking, causing decision fatigue.
Create a routine with fixed times for every task throughout the week. Routines will reduce the burden of remembering everything and keep your working memory free.
Conclusion
Improved working memory can enhance your decision-making abilities. So, take proactive steps now to improve your daily life.