The Three Parts Underlying All Your Memories
所有记忆背后包含的三个部分

What does a ten-dollar bill look like (or a common banknote, if you're not American)? Do you think you'd be able to draw one? Although we see coins and banknotes on a regular basis and therefore have virtually limitless opportunities to learn their shape, few people could sketch one accurately. Looking at something repetitively does not guarantee that we will remember it later. Why can't we draw a ten-dollar bill, yet we could recognize it instantly if we saw one?
10美元长什么样子？（或者如果你不是美国人，常见的钞票长什么样？）你觉得自己能画出来吗？尽管我们经常看到硬币和钞票，因此的的确确有无数机会了解他们的样子，但很少有人能够准确地勾勒出来。反复看一个东西，并不保证我们日后能记起它。为什么我们没法画出10美元的样子，可是一旦看见立刻就能认出它呢？

To unravel this mystery, we need to break the act of remembering things into its atomic parts. Those parts are:
要解开这个谜团，我们需要把记住东西这件事分解为更基本的部分，分别是：

1.Encoding—the process of putting the information into your brain.
编码——把信息输入大脑的过程

2.Storage—the process of keeping the information in your brain.
存储——在大脑中保存信息的过程

3.Retrieval—the process of getting the information out of your brain when you need it.
检索——在需要的时候从大脑中取得信息的过程

Understanding these three functions is essential if you want to have a better memory. Any attempt to improve your memory must either encode the information better (or in a format you're more likely to retrieve), store the information better and longer, or retrieve it in the situation you need.
如果想要拥有更好的记忆力，那么理解这三个功能至关重要。任何尝试提高记忆力的做法，要么更好地编码信息（或者以一种更容易检索的形式编码），更好、更持久地存储信息，要么更好地在需要的情况下检索信息。

Let's look at all three and see how we might be able to improve our memories.
让我们来分析一下这三个部分，然后看看可以如何提高我们的记忆力。

——节选自《记忆的科学》