Amazing Memory Techniques
When faced with some information that we simply have to learn and remember, there is one vital question that you have to ask yourself . Remembering to ask yourself this when you are revising for exams will save you hours of wasted time. This magic question is as follows:
"How am I going to remember this?"
Then you have to have an answer for the magic to work. Perhaps the answer will be 'Because I can see a picture of..." or because "I can hear the teacher's voice telling me loud and clear'. Perhaps in your imagination you have written the formulae all over the exam-room walls in magic invisible ink that only you can see. Or perhaps you have learnt one of the hundreds of memory methods that are around these days - mind-maps, acronyms, mnemonic codes etc.
No article on memory techniques would be complete without mentioning individuals such as Dominic O'Brien or Andi Bell and organizations such as the UK Memory Sports Council. These guys show how the ordinary memory skills we are born with can be enhanced to a truly astonishing degree using a collection of mnemonics. I strongly urge you to buy their books and have some fun.
A common factor with memory techniques is the use of the imagination. It seems the more wacky, weird, funny, painful or surreal the images are that you use, the easier facts and numbers seem to become. Let me briefly outline a few techniques:
- Try converting the numbers from zero to nine into pictures: 'Zero'
could become a doughnut, 'One' could be a flag-pole, the number 'Two'
looks a bit like a swan swimming on the water... you get the idea. 'Three'
sounds like 'Tree', 4=yacht, 5=bee-HIVE, 6=Elephant (the 6 looks a bit
like its trunk) 7= boomerang, 8= snowman, 9= Gnome. Then a number like
29573 might create a little story like this: A swan
gets angry and starts kicking a garden gnome
who rolls over and bumps a bee-hive, The
bees swarm out of the hive in a boomerang-shaped
formation and finally settle in the top branches of a tree.
- Dominic O'Brien has a fantastic technique which takes this one stage
further. It sounds like a lot of work to set it up, but the results are
truly spectacular. Each number digit has a letter which is always associated
with it: 1=A, 2=B, 3=C, 4=D etc etc. Therefore a two digit number becomes
a two letter pair eg the number 34 is 'CD'. These two letters are then
turned into a person's initials. CD could then become the Author 'Charles
Dickens', or the actor 'Charles Dance' or your Geography Teacher if his
name happens to be Christopher Dunhill... It is a brilliant method - I
urge you to read Dominic's
books.
- For lists of words, link each item to the next and create stories. For
instance a list such as 'banana, heron, harbour, locust, fountain, buckles,
train' you might think of a story as follows: one of those inflatable
bananas you see at the sea side gets punctured
by the beak of a heron. The fast-deflating
banana zooms across the water and into the harbour
wall - THUMP! This impact awakens thousands of sleeping locusts
who erupt from the ground like a fountain
of water. They try to swarm into the houses but all the windows have shutters
which are secured with big brass buckles.
The locusts give up and go on holiday by train....
Well, I warned you that it had to be a bit weird! The less ordinary, the
easier to remember it will be.
- Another great method is the 'pegging' system. If you have items on a
list to remember, hang them on pegs that you keep (in your mind) in a
place you know well. For instance ten locations in your kitchen might
be easy to remember. Then put the items in their places: item one with
the toaster, item two on the hob, item three in the dish washer... the
list could go on and on.
- An alternative pegging system is to use locations on your body instead of a geographical location. Feet is peg number one, knees are two, thighs are three etc etc. Then associate the item or task with each part of your body.
There are many other methods to chose from, depending on the material that you want to remember. Derren Brown's book 'Tricks of the Mind' has an excellent chapter on memory. outlining some other powerful methods.
The Derren Brown stuff...
Derren Brown is a British performer, magician, illusionist who uses hypnosis and NLP skills to produce some amazing effects... More…
Interesting Stuff:
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