A method of programing a memory device having a plurality of memory cell groups where each of the memory cell group includes N non-volatile memory cells, where N is an integer greater than or equal to 2. For each memory cell group, the method includes programming each of the non-volatile memory cells in the memory cell group to a particular program state, performing multiple read operations on each of the non-volatile memory cells in the memory cell group, identifying one of the non-volatile memory cells in the memory cell group that exhibits a lowest read variance during the multiple read operations, deeply programming all of the non-volatile memory cells in the memory cell group except the identified non-volatile memory cell, and programming the identified non-volatile memory cell in the memory cell group with user data.