As we head into the middle of the month (as written in Feb 2025), I thought I would stay away from Valentine’s themed posts and bring it back to Halloween…
Stay with me, as this newsletter builds on last week’s memory retrieval ideas.
When it comes to your CIPS revision I want you to think of your revision plan as a spider’s web. 🕸️🕷️ This analogy was created by Blake Harvard and I loved it, so decided to share with you all.
A spider’s web that has more connections and is more complex will be much stronger than and will do a better job at catching flies. The web that is very thin with few connections is more fragile and will not have the ability to capture and hold the flies that fly into it.
Memories of similar things, such as your CIPS revision are very similar. The more you contextualise the material, bring it back to your organisation or a well-known one, and add depth and understanding to it, the stronger that web becomes, and the more sticky it gets – those flies (CIPS learning outcomes) will get stuck in the web (long-term memory) and you will be able to retrieve more information effectively. All of those other details surrounding the memory you were intending to recall make that spider web more complex and those memories stronger and easier to access.
How can we strengthen our web? 🕸️🕷️
- Using mnemonic devices (acronyms, rhymes) and memory palaces (imagining placing information in specific locations in a mental “palace”) helps improve recall and can strengthen the web even more.
- Visualisation. Creating mental images of what you are trying to remember enhances encoding and retrieval. Using visual associations or drawing mind maps can improve retention
- Gamification. Make a game out of your revision, reward yourself points after completing sections – points can be converted to whatever motivates you (for me it is chocolate!)
- Storytelling: Making your revision into stories creates dopamine and helps you strengthen the web and make it sticky.
- Scent or Sound Cues: Associating specific smells (e.g., a particular scent) or sounds (e.g., background music) with study material can help trigger memories during recall when those cues are present again, again strengthening the connections in the web.
I hope you have found this useful, let me know which ones work the best for you!
Just to let you know we are launching our new FLIP live podcast on the 24th of February at 12noon GMT on the Alchemie network. This will be a live show where myself and Caroline Dakin – resilience and leadership trainer extraordinaire discuss all topics around procurement female leadership.
We will be having special guests join us, and we kick off with a conversation around the Gender Gap and what we think needs to be done. We hope you join us live or watch the recording back! To listen you have to be a member of the Alchemie Network which is an amazing free platform designed for procurement and supply chain professionals to network and share training and information. We will be discussing topics such as the menopause, resilience, sustainability, neurodivergent female leadership and are we as females being lied to? If you would like to join the network and our podcast conversation (live or to catch up) please use my link here for FREE!