How to Use the Chunking Method to Improve Memory

Ever wondered how some people seem to remember everything from grocery lists to complex theories effortlessly?

It’s unlikely they’re all blessed with coveted eidetic memory; perhaps, it’s the chunking method at work.

Rooted in cognitive psychology, this technique helps our brains process and retain information more effectively. Whether you’re preparing for a presentation or trying to keep track of daily to-do lists, mastering chunking will reduce cognitive load, improve learning efficiency, and help you recall faster.

Let’s find out more about the chunking method.

How to Use the Chunking Method to Improve Memory

What Is the Chunking Method?

The chunking method is a memorization technique that involves breaking down large chunks of information into bite-sized pieces. You can create these chunks based on similarities, personal associations, or visual cues.

Our working memory, or short-term memory, can process around four chunks of information in one go. When the brain receives a new input, it can handle it in two ways. One is to overwrite existing data to make space for new ones. The second option is to shift meaningful chunks from short-term memory into long-term memory, from which you can recall it later without much mental effort.

When trying to retain a piece of information, you want to push it to long-term memory. And this is something chunking can help you with.

It works great for students who have to learn and memorize larger chunks of information daily. Grown-ups have less need for memorization, but still, there are a few key things we all have to remember by heart—important phone numbers, card numbers, faces and names of people, vital work processes, and passwords, to mention a few.

If you’re not a student, you may not have to take a test to put your memorization skills under scrutiny. But having a good memory makes your life a little easier, both personally and professionally.

History of the Chunking Method

Cognitive psychologist George A. Miller introduced the concept of chunking in his paper ‘The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information’ published in 1956.

Miller proposed that the human brain can hold only a limited number of items in its working memory at once (around 7 ± 2 items). However, by grouping individual items into larger, meaningful units or ‘chunks’, people remember and process more complex information effectively.

Miller’s research provided the groundwork for advancing cognitive psychology, especially in understanding how individuals mentally organize and process information.

Neal F. Johnson iterated something similar in his paper ”The Role of Chunking and Organization in The Process of Recall” (1970). He spoke about four key concepts involved in the organization of memory: chunk, memory code, decode, and recode.

Chunks are behavior sequences grouped together, often occurring in specific patterns. They can be sets of information stored in the same memory code. Recoding involves learning the code for a chunk, and decoding translates the code into usable information.

How items are organized affects their associative relations—items within the same chunk have strong associations, while those from different chunks show weaker or no transferable associations.

Today, the chunking method is important in our education systems and everyday problem-solving. Now, let’s find out how you can use this approach to surprise everyone with your power of recall.

How to Use the Chunking Method

Let’s understand how you can practice the chunking method in your daily life:

Prioritize vital information

The human brain processes thousands of people’s information every single day. But not all of it deserves the coveted status of lingering in our long-term memory. So, the first step is to find out the key information you want to retain.

You can use a priority matrix to prioritize information based on importance, impact, timelines, or any other criteria that apply to your case.

The inverted pyramid technique is also helpful. Draw an upside-down pyramid on paper and divide it into sections using horizontal lines. Now, start filling in information in descending order of importance.

For instance, let’s say you have to deliver a speech on the importance of cybersecurity at a business conference. You’d divide the inverted pyramid like this:

Core information (top of the pyramid): The primary message you want to convey—why cybersecurity is necessary for businesses, types of threats, and ways to prevent security breaches
Additional information (middle of the pyramid): Tips on how to be cyber-smart in our day-to-day lives
Supporting information (bottom of the pyramid): This section includes all the data and statistics you’ve sourced to support your arguments

The core and additional information are what you must remember while delivering the speech. For the supporting information, a PowerPoint presentation should suffice.

Identify associations/connections

Try to find a link or similarity between things and group information based on those similarities. The extent of information will decide how many groups you need.

For example, if you’re handling a small firm’s strategy, you’ll have to take care of multiple moving pieces.

Handling keyword research, creating topic clusters, on-page and off-page SEO, launching a newsletter, posting and engaging online regularly, writing blogs, tracking KPIs, and more—you get the drift.

Identify connections between these tasks and group them into broad categories: SEO (keyword research, creating topic clusters, on and off-page SEO), content creation (creating blog posts and social media content), and so on. You can dedicate one day each week to strategize on one group. Chunking tasks together helps maintain focus and keeps you organized, and the outcomes are more impactful.

You can also combine old information with new to retain it better. Let’s say you meet your team members from other locations twice every year. You can use associations to quickly recall where they’re from.

If you have a hard time remembering that Tim is from Michigan, you can try linking your pre-existing memories of Michigan with Tim. Maybe you traveled there with your parents? Create a mental link to remember key information and carry out conversations smoothly.

Take the help of other memorization techniques

‘My Very Excellent Mom Just Served Us Noodles’—remember this popular mnemonic you were taught in school to memorize the names of planets in the solar system? Or the acronym ‘VIBGYOR’ to remember the seven colors of the rainbow?

These memorization techniques come in handy when you cannot find links or similarities between steps.

Let’s say you’re learning how to write effective emails. There are way too many tips to remember, so you can shorten it down to CLEAR.

C (Concise): Keep emails brief and to the point

L (Logical): Maintain a logical flow from start to the end

E (Engaging): Write in a way that engages the reader’s interest

A (Actionable): Ensure your email includes CTAs or next steps

R (Respectful): Maintain a respectful tone and avoid inflammatory language

You can create similar acronyms or mnemonics for different processes in your workflow. This way, remembering complex steps will feel like a breeze!

Use mind mapping

Remembering a big block of text can be challenging, but if you create a visual representation, you’ll retain the information longer.

Let’s assume you’re new to business management and trying to remember the different parts of a business plan. First, divide the primary concept into several chunks/sections and subsections. Then, create a mind map like this to visualize the concept:

Once you understand the basics, you can add more branches (major topic/concept) or twigs (subtopics) to the mind map and incorporate other important details.

One of the most popular note-taking methods, this one works wonders when you’re learning something new or brainstorming ideas.

Practice, practice, practice!

The more you practice, the more adept you’ll become at creating associations, identifying similarities, and understanding how chunking works. With daily practice, you can move complex information from the working memory to the long-term memory and recall it as naturally as you can recite the alphabet.

Popular Usage of the Chunking Method

From personal to-do lists to professional responsibilities, organizing information into chunks helps you stay focused, recall things quickly, and improve productivity.

Many memory techniques rely on chunking principles. Techniques like the method of loci (memory palace) involve placing information in familiar locations, essentially creating chunks of associated ideas.

Actors memorizing lines might use a similar approach by grouping scenes or dialogues.

Athletes might chunk their routines or game plans into smaller, more manageable steps. A baseball batter might visualize the pitcher’s wind-up, pitch types, and swing as distinct phases.

Speakers often break down their speeches into key points and supporting arguments. This allows them to focus on delivering each chunk effectively without memorizing a massive script verbatim.

While we might not hear them directly credit “chunking,” it’s a safe bet that many successful people use similar strategies to organize and retain information effectively.

Here’s how you, too, can apply the chunking process in real-life scenarios:

Remembering numbers: Instead of remembering a long sequence of numbers, chunk them into a set of three or four. For instance, remembering π (pi) as 3.141 / 592 / 653 / 589. This trick works for phone numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and numeric passwords
Memorizing lists: Suppose you’re out grocery shopping to get apples, strawberries, chocolates, cashews, tomatoes, beans, broccoli, eggs, and chicken. Categorize this long list into fruits (apples, strawberries), veggies (tomatoes, beans, broccoli), snacks (chocolates, cashews), and proteins (eggs and chicken)
Recalling meeting agendas: Discussing everything at once during a meeting can overwhelm your team, and you might miss out on mentioning important points. To avoid this, structure your meeting agenda into sections or chunks to stay organized from the get-go. For instance, if it’s a quarterly review meet-up, divide the meeting into opening remarks, project updates, financial reports, and future plans

You can use chunking for many other tasks, such as recognizing people by their faces or names, remembering birthdays, recalling book/movie references, and the list goes on!

Get, Set, Chunk! Tips to Implement the Chunking Method in Your Learning Routine with ClickUp

Implementing the chunking method becomes a lot easier when you have a comprehensive tool like ClickUp by your side. You may think of ClickUp as a project management tool, but it works equally well as a learning aid for students and professionals looking to upskill.

Let’s explore how you can apply the chunking method to enrich your learning experience and improve memory:

1. Divide a concept into smaller chunks

Take any concept or topic you want to learn and break it down into small, manageable bits. This step helps you understand the different aspects of the topic one by one, keeps you organized, and allows you to dive into the details without feeling overwhelmed.

Use ClickUp’s Project Hierarchy to add a structure to your learning routine. It helps you divide a broader topic into several sections, subsections, and more.

Let’s explore how you can use this feature:

Create a Workspace on ClickUp dedicated to the subject you want to learn
Divide the Workspace into multiple Spaces
Break down the Spaces into Lists (containing individual Tasks and Subtasks)
Group similar Tasks/Lists into Folders

Organize your work/lessons into a neat structure with ClickUp Hierarchy

Let’s say the topic in question is digital marketing. You create a Workspace for digital marketing and divide it into Spaces such as SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, and Digital PR, to mention a few.

Now, if you want to zero in on SEO, you can divide this Space into Lists such as Off-Page SEO and On-Page SEO. The Off-Page SEO List can be further broken into Link Building, Local SEO, Social Media Optimization, and Reputation Management.

Social Media Optimization and Reputation Management share some similarities, so you can group them into a Folder to maintain cohesion and improve learning.

Add your study materials within each ClickUp Task, and you can quickly retrieve the right information at the right time.

2. Identify what’s most important

There’s only so much you can do at once. To understand which topics/tasks you should take up first and avoid competing priorities, you must arrange them by priority.

You can use ClickUp’s Task Priorities for this step. It allows you to sort your tasks into four types of priorities: Urgent, High, Normal, and Low, so you can quickly identify which one needs immediate attention and which ones you can go easy on. This categorization is similar to dividing ideas into smaller units in the chunking method.

Relationships on ClickUp lets you link related tasks, ideas, and concepts together. For example, when finishing one topic helps you understand another one better, you can link them together.

ClickUp Tasks — Link similar tasks together in ClickUp to aid in association and faster recall

Want to go a step ahead with grouping? Choose the Group by menu and decide how you’d like to organize your tasks. Available on List, Board, Timeline, Table, and Workload View, this feature lets you group tasks by Priority, Status, Due Date, and more. So, if you feel like viewing all of your priorities in one go, you know what to do!

ClickUp Group by Menu — Group your tasks by Priority, Status, or Due Date

3. Connect the dots with Mind Maps

When it comes to memorization, visuals speak louder than words. While breaking a topic into chunks, adding some visual elements helps you grasp information faster and retain it better.

This is where ClickUp Mind Maps come into play. It lets you visualize your tasks, topics, and ideas with the help of an easy-to-comprehend diagram. With this feature, you can:

Add, edit, or delete items to create a fully customizable mind map
Use colors that correspond to Lists and Tasks for seamless organization
Create free-form Mind Maps in Blank Mode and add a creative touch to the learning process

Pro tip: If your mind map looks too cluttered after an intense brainstorming session, use the Re-Layout option to clean up its structure. This feature automatically realigns items to preserve the original hierarchy and priorities you had initially set.

ClickUp Re-Layout feature — Restore the original Mind Map structure with the Re-Layout feature in ClickUp

Also read: How to Use the Mapping Note-Taking Method

4. Keep a tab of key points

You can also apply the chunking method to your note-taking strategy, be it academic lectures or corporate standups. Chunking helps you organize and structure notes in a way that emphasizes key concepts and relationships between them.

You have to work smart when you have many resources to learn from but too little time. Instead of skimming through page after page, use ClickUp Brain to extract the essential information from your materials.

As an AI Co-pilot, ClickUp Brain cuts the busywork out of your schedule; here’s how:

Summarize notes from ClickUp Tasks and ClickUp Docs
Get voice and video transcriptions for audio-visual learning materials
Edit contextually and spell-check your written work within seconds
Translate texts into your local language (Brain currently supports French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German, and Italian)

With this AI tool, you can ensure that nothing falls through the cracks and that all important information is right at your fingertips.

Edit, improve, spell check, and summarize notes in an instant using ClickUp Brain

Chunking Your Way to a Powerful Memory

From education to the workplace and beyond, the chunking method has made processing, retaining, and retrieving information easy. No matter how complex the subject is, chunking creates a secure place for it in your long-term memory, and you can recall it instantly whenever you need it.

This method is a gem in a world where the word ‘memory’ reminds us of phone storage rather than the human brain. It keeps your brain active, improves cognitive abilities, and makes you a smarter version of yourself.

Give chunking a shot with ClickUp—it might change how you learn, for the better!

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How to Use the Chunking Method to Improve Memory

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What Is the Chunking Method?

History of the Chunking Method