Memory tip for 26th of March 2011

Yesterday I talked about a ‘journey method’ which is a very effective way to memorize long lists and other things. Today I do not want to talk about any specific methods, but will give you just one thing which will help you to not to lose your memory as you grow old. That thing is taking mental exercises. As our bodies need exercises, so do our minds. You cannot expect to have a brilliant memory if you do not train it. You need to work with your brains in order to always keep it in ‘good shape’.

There are a lot of ways which will help you to achieve the goal. You can do puzzles, crosswords, Sudoku and even occasionally take an IQ test. You have to give your brain some stronger meat than just thoughts about your daily routine. When you have all modern technologies at your disposal most people send their memories on holiday and record all information the need to remember on their mobile phones, computer and etc. We got so lazy, no worry we can never achieve our fullest potential. So, send back your brain from holiday to work. 

Read my previous posts:

Journey technique

Create a mental picture to remember

Memory tip for 25th of March 2011

Yesterday I discussed a method of forming a mental picture, which is a very efficient and easy way to train your memory. Today I want to take a new method and that method could be called ‘a journey technique’ or a method of loci. It is very good for remembering lists (even very long ones) and this method is one of my favorite ones. In this kind of method you use association method and you associate things you have to remember with places that you travel trough in your mind by placing various objects which you want to remember.

Let us say you have to remember a list of 30 words. Have in mind that an average person can remember around 5-7 items when he goes shopping. So, by using a standard technique of repetition which most people do, it would be difficult to remember so many things. But if you try to use a journey method you will be able to remember a list of 30 words in about 5 minutes and when you train your brain really well this will be done in under one minute. 

The first thing that you have to do is to learn the places where you want to place the objects you want to remember. I made those thirty places points of my journey from my home to the shop. Some of them are: balcony, living room, kitchen, bathroom, toilet, corridor, entrance to my flat, elevator, entrance to my house and etc. As you see I use well known places to start my journey. Of course, in real life I do not go to the balcony before going to the shop. I just use a logical sequence of places that bring me closer to a shop.

So, after you learn those 30 places, you need to start placing those 30 things at those spots (one thing in one spot). You have to create some unusual bizarre situation around those places in connection with those things. This will help you to remember things better. So, you travel in your mind from place A to Z by placing those things and creating a story of your own which will help you to remember the things you have to remember. 

I recommend you to start from 10 things, not 30, so that you would not get disappointed. You will see how easy it is to remember ten things. If you see that some things were not remembered well, be sure that it is not due to the fact that the method does not work, but you failed to create vivid and extraordinary images in your mind. 

I hope I managed to explain the method clearly to you and you will be able to apply it in your daily life. Good luck in creating your stories and training your memory. 

Read my previous posts: 

Form a mental picture to remember

Repeat to remember

Memory tip for 24th of March 2011

In my post yesterday, I talked about a method of repetition which helps to improve your memory. Today I want to briefly discuss another method that will help you to remember things. That method is forming a mental picture. This is a very efficient way to remember something or in fact, a lot of things. Very often we need associations that would help us to remember the stuff that is really hard naturally to remember. If we are able to associate a word which we want to learn in a foreign language we can do that by making some association of the word with some object that we know really well.

It could be a purely visual association, but you can also add some audio in your mind. The word can be associated by means of similar pronunciation that you have in your own language. Or you can associate a word that you want to learn with a person whose name sounds similar to a word you want to learn, at the same time making a visual connection between the word and that person. Let’s say you want to learn a word bean. You can do that by associating a word with an actor Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson). You can imagine him eating beans or gathering them from the floor or simply throwing them at somebody. The point is that the more extraordinary the image is the better you will remember. That is true with other techniques I will discuss in my future posts. So, try to make a mental picture, associate it with somebody or something and remember the thing, the word, the object or whatever you want. 

Read my previous posts:

Train memory by means of repetition

Take interest to remember

Memory tip for 23rd of March 2011

Yesterday I shared with you an essential thing that is necessary if you want your brain to be susceptible to accept things into your memory and keep it there. That thing is interest. If you want to remember anything you have to be interested in the thing. Today I want to give you one tip that will help you to remember things short term. I am sure that you know the method as it is the most often used method by most people. That method is repetition. If you want to record anything in your short term memory you have to repeat things.

This audio based way to remember things is not very effective to train your memory, but it is pretty good if you need to remember something fast. This is one of the ways to learn poems, vocabulary, telephones, number and etc. I used this method at school and university, but I am not using it anymore. I do not mean to say that it is bad. If you are a type of person that has ‘vocal memory’ it is a good way for you to remember things. However, most mnemonics teachers do not teach this method and I am not going to write any more posts on the topic. But before going to more advanced technique I just wanted to mention this one, which is still used by most people and they achieve good results. So, if you want to remember things well you have to remember this Latin quote:”Repititio est mater studiorum”. 

Read my previous posts:

Take interest in order to remember

Journey method


Photographic and eidetic memory

Memory quotes

Memory

You are at blog: Memory improvement tips

Memory tip for 22nd of March 2011

Today I want to give you my first tip on how to improve your memory. I want to tell you that I do not have a clearly cut structure how I am going to present the knowledge that I have on the topic in my blog. At some point I will discuss types of memory, then some techniques of mnemonics and of course, I will give you a lot of practical tips. Here is my first tip!

In order to remember things easier you have to take interest in the thing

Interest is the key if you want to remember anything short or long term. Our brains are constructed in such a way that they delete any information we are not interested in. That easily explains the fact why boys that are pretty bad at remembering historical data or anything connected with school subjects can easily remember sports results. They are very good at that. In some cases they would be better than people with good memories. Why is that? Because they are interested in the thing and their brains easily absorb all the information connected with sports. If only they were able to arouse interest towards any subject at school, they would definitely have the same results at any school subject as they have in the matter of sports. 

So, if you want to remember something, start taking interest in that. Your brains will open up for that information to enter it into ‘the hard disk of your mind’. I know that trying to see something interesting in the thing that has always been boring for you is pretty difficult, but if you make some effort you are definitely going to learn how to do it. This tells us that developing your memory will take some efforts on your behalf, but I think it is worth it, because you will later be able to use what you gain to achieve tremendous results in any sphere of life. 

So, this is the first tip for you! Take interest in the thing you want to remember. 

My previous post:

Memory

Photographic and eidetic memory 

Memory quotes

Memory

Memory is a unique gift from God that we have and can use to achieve great things in life. Most probably you have heard about people who are considered to be geniuses and who are able to remember hundreds of telephone numbers, thousands names and even whole books. Some of them are truly geniuses, but some have used mnemonic techniques to become such memory giants as they are today. You could have heard about Dominic O’Brien who has been a world memory champion eight times. According to him he was not exceptionally talented kid and had a lot of problems to remember things at school. To tell the truth he became interested in the field of mnemonics only after he hit the age of thirty. It happened after he saw a television program where he learned a few tricks how to train his memory.

Dominic wrote a number of books on the topic and his books inspired me to work with my memory too. I have not won any championships and I do not think that I have achieved a lot in the field. However, it is a very interesting topic and I read on the subject from time to time. I am starting a blog on the topic with intention to write a post on the topic each day. I hope I will succeed in that. I also hope that it will be a good incentive to work more with my memory. So much for today. Tomorrow I will start with one tip that will help you to start working on your memory. See you tomorrow.

More on memory in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory

See also: Photographic and eidetic memory