Suppose you're going to the store for groceries and you need the following five items: eggs, bread, bacon, cheese and milk. How can you remember the list? For short lists, the easiest way is simply to "link" the words together in a long chain, like this: -- Useful eBooks -- 1. How To Naturally Regrow Lost Hair. 2. Dry Itchy Scalp & Dandruff Causes & Remedies. -- Sponsored Links -- Your Ad Here eggs -> bread -> bacon -> cheese -> milk Then, think of some animated story in your mind to link the items together. For example, imagine walking to the store with a grocery bag in your hand. We start with a grocery bag because it's a grocery list -- it would be difficult to jump immediately to eggs. On a street corner someone appears from nowhere, hands you an egg then walks off. Dazed, you take the egg and drop it in the bag. It cracks and makes a mess. (The mess is a vivid picture in your mind that strengthens the picture of "egg" even more.) So by the time the next person comes out of nowhere and hands you a loaf of bread, you don't want to put it in the bag, so you carry it in your other hand. You hold it by the tie and it twirls as you walk. This is a long story so far, but remember, you're not writing a story on paper, you're just thinking of it in your mind, so it goes rather quickly. In fact it often goes so quickly through your mind that the added, extra detail is very helpful in remembering later. The more ways you experience an object -- if you think of its appearance, its touch, its smell, etc. -- the more likely you'll remember it later! Suddenly, there's bacon on the sidewalk as you're walking, and it crunches under your feet. The grease gets on your shoes. Next there's cheese on the ground, and you walk on it. Yuck! Now there's grease and gooey cheese on your shoes. When you get to the store, there's no restroom or water fountain, so you, strangely, just take a gallon of milk, open it, and pour it on your shoes to clean them! (Don't worry, this is only imagination -- you would never do this in real life!) -- Sponsored Links -- Your Ad Here Wow, what an exciting finish to the story. Notice that we didn't just put all the grocery items in the bag one by one. The instances would be so similar we'd get them mixed up! So a lot of variety was used. The story was so fun that, no doubt, you can stop right now, look away from this document, think through the story again and remember perfectly the five items. Try it again tomorrow morning and see if you still remember! Memorizing Long Lists The grocery list was easy, but what about longer lists, such as a list of all of the states of the United States? If you forget a word in a middle, the chain is broken and you've lost the rest! Also, if you want to remember the 15th state -- useful if you memorized the states in order of population or size -- you have to recall the first fourteen. Another way to memorize lists is to use what are called"peg words." Before we begin, memorize this short list of peg words. Note that they are numbered, and the peg word actually does translates into the correct number, so you should be able to form some associations right away. 1. Hat 2. Hen 3. Ham 4. Rye 5. Hill Practice recalling the peg words before continuing. Now, let's use the peg words to memorize a list of the five biggest cities in Michigan, in order: Detroit, Grand Rapids, Warren, Flint and Lansing. We'll take each of the peg words and place them next to each item in the cities list. Next, we'll form some simple paired associations between the words. Note that instead of making a huge chain, we are now working with only pairs. PEG ITEM ASSOCIATION 1. Hat Detroit Picture large top-hat with Model T cars stiched on it in an interesting pattern 2. Hen Grand Rapids Hen steps into a river, then is quickly carried away and gushes through rapids 3. Ham Warren Ham on platter is given to Warren Beatty (movie star), who looks at it oddly 4. Rye Flint Start with rye bread. Use Flint and steel to make spark to burn the bread! 5. Hill Lansing The hills are alive with the Sound of Music (movie)! The whole land begins to sing!! After studying the above associations, cover it up, then look at the five peg items by themselves. Can you name all five cities on the list? Hopefully, you can. Note that we've solved our problem. Our long chain of items has been changed to a numerical chain, an easy list of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. These correspond to a certain peg item, which, after a little practice, you can easily name. Finally, we associate simple pairs of words: the peg words with the actual list of items. You probably could have done it easily by using the short list method -- I didn't want to give you a huge example so fast -- but it's obvious that this method would be very helpful for long lists (like the 50 states). To memorize longer lists, all you need to do is memorize a basic set of peg words, words which are derived from their associated numbers directly. Some example words are given below; you can also come up with your own. Try to come up with the shortest possible words for your list, because many different words can stand for a number, and you want to reduce the number of possibilities. (When memorizing numbers that aren't peg words, you can use longer words, because in that case, you will only be converting words to numbers, and a word always produces a unique number.) 1. Hat 11. Dot 21. Net 31. Mat 41. Road 2. Hen 12. Town 22. Nun 32. Moon 42. Rain 3. Ham 13. Dime 23. Name 33. Mummy 43. Room 4. Rye 14. Tire 24. Nero 34. Mower 44. Aurora 5. Hill 15. Doll 25. Nail 35. Mule 45. Roll 6. Shoe 16. Tissue 26. Notch 36. Match 46. Rash 7. Cow 17. Duck 27. Neck 37. Mug 47. Rock 8. Ivy 18. Taffy 28. Knife 38. Movie 48. Roof 9. Bee 19. Tape 29. Knob 39. Map 49. Rope 10. Toes 20. Nose 30. Mouse 40. Rose 50. Lace The peg words method for lists is great for lists of items that must be in a specific order, because peg words are tied to specific numbers. Assuming you've previously memorized the five peg words, note how easily you can come up with the 4th item -- just go 4... rye... Flint -- without having to go through items 1 through 3 first. For unordered lists, where the assigned number is not important, you could even exchange items in the list to come up with easier associations. Memory Improvement Technique - Techniques for Memorizing Lists Memory Improvement Technique - Techniques for Memorizing Lists

A Tutorial by Kevin Jay North
Memory Improvement Technique - Memorizing Numbers

We live in a society filled with numbers: social security numbers, dates, license plate numbers, prices, zip codes, etc. Yet without a special technique, numbers are very difficult to memorize because they are so hard to associate. Our brains think with pictures, not with numbers. It's easier for us to visualize an elephant eating a ham sandwich than

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to picture the string of numbers $2,347.91. But what if we could mentally convert a number into a word, a word that represents a mental picture? It turns out that we can.

Suppose we assigned each of the digits 0 through 9 to a consonant. Then, when we want to remember a number, we convert the number into consonants, insert vowels, and form a word. This word can then be used to form an association much more readily, rather than trying to use the number itself.

As an example, suppose we want to remember that the Old Testament has 39 books, and suppose 3 and 9 translated into M and P, respectively. We could then insert the vowel A between the consonants to come up with the word "map". We would then visualize a huge map in front of us, with the Mediterranean Sea, Israel, Egypt, Mt. Sinai, etc.: a nice map of the Old Testament. Two weeks later we want to remember how many books were in the Old Testament. We recall that huge map with all the places on it. MAP... consonants are M and P... that's 3 and 9. 39! We did it! That's sort of a roundabout way of doing it, but it works, because of the associations.

So, you ask, how do I know that M is 3 and P is 9? The answer is that you must first memorize the following table of consonants and digits. Oh dear, you say. But wait... once this chart is memorized, it can be used for life! And second, there's even a scheme to associate the numbers with the letters!

NUMBER LETTER/SOUND MEMORY AID
1 t, d t has one downstroke
2 n n has two downstrokes
3 m m has three downstrokes
4 r "four" ends with R
5 l Latin 50 = L
6 j, sh, ch J reversed looks like 6
7 k, g (hard) Visualize a K drawn with two 7s
8 f, v Cursive f has two loops like an 8
9 p, b P reversed looks like 9
0 z, s "zero" starts with Z

This is the standardized mnemonic system used by memory experts. It has been optimized in order to make it easy to learn and use. Note that pairs of letters have been grouped together because of their phonetic similarity, such as t and d or p and b. If you are not familiar with phonetics, whisper the word "dog." Notice that it sounds like "tok". This is how you can tell which sounds are phonetically similar.

Here are some rules about using the number alphabet:

The alphabet is strictly phonetic. For example, the word "cough" should be thought of as KoF and translated into 78; "gem" is pronounced JeM and is thus 63. Double letters are not counted. For example, "Butter" translates into B, T and R (only one T).


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Three consonant sounds do not appear in the chart: W, H and Y. Why, you ask? Good question! Good answer!

Vowels are always ignored, as well as W, H and Y mentioned above. The long word "hollow," for example, contains just one useful letter: L.

When creating words from consonants, vivid nouns usually work the best, rather than adjectives, verbs or other related words.

Before reading further, take a few minutes to memorize the number alphabet. Thanks to the memory aids, it shouldn't take long. Cover all but the "number" column and try to name the letter or letters. Then write the groups of letters in random order on a piece of paper, look at the letter groups, and try to come up with the number.

You are now ready to memorize most any kind of number! Suppose you need to remember that a bowling tournament is being held on the 25th of this month. 25 translates into NL which might stand for "nail." Now picture yourself bowling, but when the ball hits the pins, the ball surprisingly bounces back! That's because someone nailed the pins to the floor. Bowling, nail, NL, 25, 25th. It works!

What about the periodic number for Potassium (19)? Perhaps you will think of bananas, which have lots of potassium, sitting on a table. Table = TBL = 195. But note that the number for potassium only has two digits, so we can throw out the extra 5. We get 19! How about silver (47)? Perhaps a RAKE made of pure silver? How about gold (79)? Perhaps you might think of a mysterious person in town who has gold in his cupboard? Pronounce it "kubbard," throw out the extra numbers, and you get KB = 79.

What about much longer numbers, like an employee ID number of 857502? It would be almost impossible for you to come up with a word that fits "FLKLSN," and it would also be hard to come up with a series of words that don't have any extra, unwanted letters in them. Let's break it down into three parts: 85-75-02. Now, let's come up with a word for each part. Perhaps file, coal and sniff. Sniff represents 028, but since we are memorizing only pairs, any extra numbers are ignored. Imagine you come into your office, and go to your FILE cabinet. Opening it, you see that someone has dumped coal into it! And then when you sniff the drawer, it smells awful! The next time you fill out some form at the office, all you have to do is remember that story, and then write down 857502 instinctively.