Memory

Memory Tips

The vast majority of us would like to have a better memory. There is nothing more frustrating than being told some directions, then forgetting them when you really need them and ending up lost.

Or trying to recall in vain the name of that person you met last week who would have been a great contact for a business acquintance. We also forget every day automatic things as well, such as where we put the car keys, or our glasses. The problem with the glasses is particularly vicious as without them it is even harder to find them!

However, there are techniques and tips that can be used to improve memory or ensure that we don't actually need to rely on our memory at all. Here's why.

Remembering where Everyday Items Are

The key here is to ensure that you develop a system and stick to it. Then all you need to remember is your system and to stick to it.

So for instance you might decide that when you throw the car keys down when you enter the house you always put them on the bottom of the stairs, or the right hand edge of the book case - what you do exactly doesn't matter as long as you determine one place and stick to it everytime. This will save so much hassle down the line and stop those frantic searches for those everyday items!

When it comes to remember pieces of discreet information that may be a little hard to store in memory, such as PIN numbers or phone numbers, then use another type of system. The ones that work best are association schemes.

These work by helping you to link something abstract like numbers to something real and tangible, like a room of your house, like a product, a type of chocolate bar, an animal, makes of car or infact whatever you want to attach them too.

For instance, you can associate the number '2' with a swan, and perhaps the number '4' to you looks just like a sailboat. So if the phone number or whatever numerical code you want to remember as a '24' component you can think of this as a swan on a sailboat, and get that bizarre vivid image in your mind of what that might look like.

Having bold images and using your imagination are good and simple ways to boost your memory for information such as this.

If you are trying to remember a list of different objects that have no obvious connection with each other, for instance a shopping list, then there are still other methods you can use.

One good method is to devise a common journey and then link each item on the list to something on that journey. This is a good way to remember every item on a list methodically from start to finish, whether the order of recalling that list matters or not (perhaps not with a shopping list, but for instance if recalling a list of items that are ordered then this is a bonus).

A common example would be the 'journey' you do in the house every morning when you wake up.

That is, get up and out of bed. Pull back the curtains and look outside. Go into the bathroom and have a shower... and so on. You can probably think of at least ten steps you do every morning before going out to work. Then just associate an item on the list with each step and then as you recall your journey - which you already know - it will prompt you to remember the items on the list.

This is a great method as it uses your existing knowledge and learnt processes to help you remember new and hard to remember information. Here's how.

If the first item on the shopping list is a bunch of bananas and the second is a massive chocolate bar of your favourite brand, then you can start the journey like this.

Imagine waking up and seeing to your surprise the room is filled with a mass of giant inflatable bananas. Imagine the colour and look of them.

In order to get to the curtains you have to wade through all the inflatable bananas kicking them out the way. Then when you reach the window and pull back the curtains, you are amazed to see the postman staggering up your drive with the most enormous chocolate bar on his back, trying in vain to post it through the letterbox. And so on!

For each item on the list, create some silly image in memory and attach to your route. Then when you get to the supermarket just recall that familiar journey and each step on the road will trigger a memory.

Memory

Author: Fred

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Last Updated: Sep 8th 2006

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