An Introduction to Memory Techniques

The tools in this section help you to improve your memory. They help you both to remember facts accurately and to remember the structure of information.

The tools are split into two sections. Firstly you'll learn the memory techniques themselves. Secondly we'll look at how you can use them in practice to remember peoples names, languages, exam information, and so on.
As with other mind tools, the more practice you give yourself with these techniques, the more effectively you will use them. This section contains many of the memory techniques used by stage memory performers. With enough practice and effort, you may be able to have a memory as good. Even if you do not have the time needed to develop this quality of memory, many of the techniques here are useful in everyday life.

Mnemonics
'Mnemonic' is another word for memory tool. Mnemonics are techniques for remembering information that is otherwise quite difficult to recall: A very simple example is the '30 days hath September' rhyme for remembering the number of days in each calendar month.

The idea behind using mnemonics is to encode difficult-to-remember information in a way that is much easier to remember.

Our brains evolved to code and interpret complex stimuli such as images, colors, structures, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, positions, emotions and language. We use these to make sophisticated models of the world we live in. Our memories store all of these very effectively.

Unfortunately, a lot of the information we have to remember in modern life is presented differently - as words printed on a page. While writing is a rich and sophisticated medium for conveying complex arguments, our brains do not easily encode written information, making it difficult to remember.

This section of Mind Tools shows you how to use all the memory resources available to you to remember information in a highly efficient way.

Using Your Whole Mind to Remember
The key idea is that by coding information using vivid mental images, you can reliably code both information and the structure of information. And because the images are vivid, they are easy to recall when you need them.

The techniques explained later on in this section show you how to code information vividly, using stories, strong mental images, familiar journeys, and so on.

You can do the following things to make your mnemonics more memorable:

Use positive, pleasant images. Your brain often blocks out unpleasant ones
Use vivid, colorful, sense-laden images - these are easier to remember than drab ones
Use all your senses to code information or dress up an image. Remember that your mnemonic can contain sounds, smells, tastes, touch, movements and feelings as well as pictures.
Give your image three dimensions, movement and space to make it more vivid. You can use movement either to maintain the flow of association, or to help you to remember actions.
Exaggerate the size of important parts of the image
Use humor! Funny or peculiar things are easier to remember than normal ones.
Similarly, rude rhymes are very difficult to forget!
Symbols (red traffic lights, pointing fingers, road signs, etc.) can code quite complex messages quickly and effectively
Designing Mnemonics: Imagination, Association and Location
The three fundamental principles underlying the use of mnemonics are imagination, association and location. Working together, you can use these principles to generate powerful mnemonic systems.

Imagination: is what you use to create and strengthen the associations needed to create effective mnemonics. Your imagination is what you use to create mnemonics that are potent for you. The more strongly you imagine and visualize a situation, the more effectively it will stick in your mind for later recall. The imagery you use in your mnemonics can be as violent, vivid, or sensual as you like, as long as it helps you to remember.

Association: this is the method by which you link a thing to be remembered to a way of remembering it. You can create associations by:

Placing things on top of each other
Crashing things together
Merging images together
Wrapping them around each other
Rotating them around each other or having them dancing together
Linking them using the same color, smell, shape, or feeling
As an example, you might link the number 1 with a goldfish by visualizing a 1-shaped spear being used to spear it.

Location: gives you two things: a coherent context into which you can place information so that it hangs together, and a way of separating one mnemonic from another. By setting one mnemonic in a particular town, I can separate it from a similar mnemonic set in a city. For example, by setting one in Wimbledon and another similar mnemonic with images of Manhattan, we can separate them with no danger of confusion. You can build the flavors and atmosphere of these places into your mnemonics to strengthen the feeling of location.

Remembering a Simple List
The Link Method is one of the easiest mnemonic techniques available. You use it by making simple associations between items in a list, linking them with a vivid image containing the items. Taking the first image, create a connection between it and the next item (perhaps in your mind smashing them together, putting one on top of the other, or suchlike.) Then move on through the list linking each item with the next.
The Story Method is very similar, linking items together with a memorable story featuring them. The flow of the story and the strength of the images give you the cues for retrieval.
How to Use the Tools:
It is quite possible to remember lists of words using association only. However it is often best to fit the associations into a story: Otherwise by forgetting just one association you can lose the whole of the rest of the list.

Given the fluid structure of this mnemonic (compared with the peg systems explained later in this section) it is important that the images stored in your mind are as vivid as possible. See the introduction to this section for further information on making images strong and memorable.

Where a word you want to remember does not trigger strong images, use a similar word that will remind you of that word.

Example:
You may want to remember this list of counties in the South of England: Avon, Dorset, Somerset, Cornwall, Wiltshire, Devon, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, and Surrey.

You could do this with two approaches, the Link Method and the Story Method:

Remembering with the Link Method
This would rely on a series of images coding information:

An AVON (Avon) lady knocking on a heavy oak DOoR (Dorset)
The DOoR opening to show a beautiful SuMmER landscape with a SETting sun (Somerset)
The setting sun shines down onto a field of CORN (Cornwall)
The CORN is so dry it is beginning to WILT (Wiltshire)
The WILTing stalks slowly droop onto the tail of the sleeping DEVil (Devon).
On the DEVil's horn a woman has impaled a GLOSsy (Gloucestershire) HAM (Hampshire) when she hit him over the head with it
Now the Devil feels SoRRY (Surrey) he bothered her. Note that there need not be any reason or underlying plot to the sequence of images: only images and the links between images are important.

Remembering with the Story Method:
Alternatively you could code this information by imaging the following story vividly:

An AVON lady is walking up a path towards a strange house. She is hot and sweating slightly in the heat of high SUMMER (Somerset). Beside the path someone has planted giant CORN in a WALL (Cornwall), but it's beginning to WILT (Wiltshire) in the heat. She knocks on the DOoR (Dorset), which is opened by the DEVil (Devon).

In the background she can see a kitchen in which a servant is smearing honey on a HAM (Hampshire), making it GLOSsy (Gloucestershire) and gleam in bright sunlight streaming in through a window. Panicked by seeing the Devil, the Avon lady screams 'SoRRY' (Surrey), and dashes back down the path.
Key points:
The Link Method is probably the most basic memory technique, and is very easy to understand and use. It works by coding information to be remembered into images and then linking these images together

The story technique is very similar. It links these images together into a story. This helps to keep events in a logical order and can improve your ability to remember information if you forget the sequence of images.

Both techniques are very simple to learn. Unfortunately they are both slightly unreliable as it is easy to confuse the order of images or forget images from a sequence.

Using the Tools:
Remembering people's names needs a slightly different approach from all the others explained so far in this section. The techniques used, though, are quite simple:

1. Face association
Examine a person's face discreetly when you are introduced. Try to find an unusual feature, whether ears, hairline, forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, complexion, etc.

Create an association between that characteristic, the face, and the name in your mind. The association may be to link the person with someone else you know with the same name. Alternatively it may be to associate a rhyme or image of the name with the person's face or defining feature.

2. Repetition
When you are introduced, ask for the person to repeat their name. Use the name yourself as often as possible (without overdoing it!). If it is unusual, ask how it is spelled or where it is comes from, and if appropriate, exchange cards. Keep in mind that the more often you hear and see the name, the more likely it is to sink in.
Also, after you have left that person's company, review the name in your mind several times. If you are particularly keen you might decide to write it down and make notes.

Summary
The methods suggested for remembering names are fairly simple and obvious, but are useful. Association either with images of a name or with other people can really help. Repetition and review help to confirm your memory.

An important thing to stress is practice, patience, and progressive improvement.

any suggestions, queries or advises are more than welcome.....plz share your knwolegde to guide me through my preparation....mail me at
rashidsss510@hotmail.com

I realy dont know how to memorize things, your ideas are great, I will surely follow them.

Most astonishing thing for me is I can read and memorize almost 200 to 300 pages in 12 hours easily, I dont know how but its true, I just read books page by page, simple but as I know my capability it makes me lazy most of the time.

Tell me some tequniques of more self motivation for hard work.

Shall be thankful,


Regards,

make it short
ur exaggerating ur work..... ur nt a machine a human being
read 30-40 pages normally n take a breathe n break
den join it again n increase the temp by repeating wt u did jz a while ago n newxt 50 n oonwards....
this way u will be surely a ghost for memorizing thing as ur a god gifted guy as u told u can memorize 300 pages o ma GOD....
Hats off
regards