extreme webmaster evernerve

As I said, this blog of mine shall be about life and web success. So I will start to share with you the skills and knowledge that made my life easier over the years. These skills will make you more efficient, expand your mental capabilities and bring more success in your life.

The wonderful possibilites of human memory

I will start with a series of lessons where I’ll explain to you how to boost your memory. First and foremost, you should know that your memory is infinite. The human mind is limitless. You can memorize anything you want, and any amount of information that you want. But, you must know how to properly memorize things in order to be able to do that. A good mnemonic technique must be able to provide you with the following capabilities:

1. Quick memorization. A good technique should enable you to memorize things in the shortest possible time. If it’s a phone number, you should be able to memorize it in a few seconds. Big numbers, long lists, etc, may require more time, but still a lot less than any classical method of learning and memorizing.
2. Easy recall. You should be able to recall and access memorized information with ease and instantly.
3. Long-term storage. A great mnemonic technique will make possible for you to recall information that was stored in your memory banks months, even years ago, without any difficulty.

I will teach you the techniques that have all these characteristics. I chose to show you how to memorize a list first because this is the easiest thing to do in mnemonics. It will also introduce you to the main concepts in the art of memorizing and recall.

A little experiment

Image credit: Agnes Geirdal

OK, let me give you a list of things that you will memorize. Try to do it in any way that you’d usually do it. Read it only once! Here is the list:

1. Car
2. Pen
3. Fish
4. Ball
5. Lightning
6. Telephone
7. Tiger
8. Milk
9. Tree
10. Chair
11. Gun
12. Key
13. Serpent
14. Violin
15. Keyboard
16. Book
17. Tomato
18. Stamp
19. Bell
20. Eagle
21. Shoe
22. Ring
23. Door
24. Horse

OK, how many things did you manage to memorize? If you tried to memorize the list by heart by using any standard way of memorization you probably didn’t get too far. Even if you re-read the list, you will still probably retain only 7 or 8 objects at maximum, in the order in which they appeared in the list.

Now, how can one memorize all 24 items in the list, or say, 50? Yes, there is an easy method. Read below!

The key is to use your imagination

Imagination and visualization are at the core of every memorization method. You will just apply the power of your imagination in a specific way. Here is how you can easily memorize any number of things in a list. I want you to imagine this:

1. Picture yourself standing in your bedroom, where you wake up every morning. Imagine a car being parked over your bed, with its engine running, and thick, black smoke coming out of its exhaust pipe, making dirty the blankest, walls and pretty much everything in the room. See this in your mind’s eye in detail.
2. Move to the next room where you usually go after waking up (most people will go to the bathroom to take a pee). OK, so you are in the bathroom now. Imagine a giant, oversized pen writing obscenities on the wall.
3. Imagine yourself inside the kitchen now. Imagine that there is water in the kitchen up to your waist, and that a big, really big fish is jumping in and out of water all the while saying “I’m a kitchen fish! I’m a kitchen fish!” in a funny, squeaky voice.
4. Picture yourself in your living room now. You see a huge ball inside the room, which sits on the floor and reaches all the way up to the ceiling. It is rolling forward and backward, smashing all the furniture in its way.
5. Imagine that you are in the hallway that leads to your front door of your apartment/house now. You see and hear fierce lightning bolts appearing from the ceiling and violently hitting the floor, while all the corridor is bathed in white-blue blinding light.
6. Once outside your apartment/house, you see a big, oversized telephone in front of your door, ringing loudly and jumping up and down.
7. Move to the next point in your mental journey, be it your garage, street corner or the bus stop where you take a ride to your college/work/whatever. Vividly imagine a tiger standing there. Imagine that the tiger is holding a person in its mouth, who is screaming, while blood is spurting all over the place.
8. Go to the next point in your usual daily routine and imagine a huge number of milk fountains protruding from the ground. Imagine that milk is gushing out of each fountain, and that naked people are bathing in it.

And so on and on, until the end of the list. OK! Now it’s time for the recall! Without looking at the list, start writing the items down in the order in which they appeared (write them down so that you can compare your list to the original one). How to start the recall? Easy:

You are in your bedroom now. What do you see? A car, with its engine running, and all the room being blackened by the smoke coming out of the automobile’s exhaust pipe. Move to the next piece… it should be the bathroom… and what do you see there? A bizarre scene: a giant pen scrawling obscenities on the room’s walls. Now move on to the next point in your house/apartment. What is it…? The kitchen! And you are standing… where? In water up to your waist and there is that big, funny-sounding, talking fish there. Just continue. You will see that you’ll easily write down all the elements in your list, in their original order of appearance.

What makes this memory technique work?

First and foremost, we are visual beings, to say so. More than 80% of the information about our surroundings comes to our brains through our sight. That’s why visualization and imagination are the most powerful tools when it comes to memorizing information. Try to remember your childhood or high school days. What comes to mind? Images. The places where you spent your time. Their pictures come to your mind.

You have certainly noticed that I instructed you to imagine the items in the list as being oversized, or to place them in unlikely and impossible situations and contexts. That’s precisely why it worked - why you managed to memorize the list. Here is what works best when memorization is involved:

• Size increase. Making things big, giant, absurdly oversize.
• Absurd, impossible situations. Everything that is out of the ordinary.
• Violence. Blood, murder and such.
• Sex. No need to explain here.

The above are proven to work. And if you combine these characteristics and apply them to the items in your list (any list, really), you will memorize them perfectly and recall them perfectly. Case in point: a big, talking fish swimming in your kitchen or the naked people bathing in milk which is gushing out of thousands of fountains.

This all makes perfect sense: Which one is more likely to catch your attention? Someone crossing the street or that someone being hit by a car while crossing the street? If you ever witnessed a severe traffic accident, especially one where blood or death were involved, chances are you will probably remember it for the rest of your life. Or this: Imagine yourself walking down the steer, and there is a couple making love in broad daylight, right in the middle of the road, completely naked. That kind of scene will stick in your memory for a long, long time. Imagine that you see a flying saucer passing next to your window. You’ll remember something that weird forever. Or if you, say, saw a giant cat or dog roaming around your neighbourhood. You get the picture now (pardon the pun ).

As always, practice makes perfect

So, these kinds of images, scenes in your mind will stick inside your memory for a long time. Even forever, if you wish so. If you made a mistake in this little exercice I gave you, don’t worry. You are trying this for the first time!

We all have the gift of imagination. The more you practice memorization techniques, the better you will become at imagining things in vivid colors and details. As you practice, you will be able to memorize things more faster, until images will come to you in a snap, just like that.

Here is a little recommendation: As you become proficient at visualizing and imagining things, add other senses to them. I have instructed you to imagine a big fish who is talking in a funny, squeaky voice. That is an added element of absurdity: the fish is talking, and in a tone that is funny and more likely to be remembered than an ordinary voice. Moreover, you are seeing it as you stand in water up to your waist. So you can add the feeling of being inside water, of small waves splashing against your body, being wet… The more real you make your scene, the easier it will be to remember it. That’s why I told you for the first item (the car in your bedroom) to imagine the engine running (sound) and to see black smoke coming out of it (smell).

Memorizing longer lists

That’s all fine and cool, but if you have a really long list that you want to memorize? Remember, you are on a mental journey, a voyage that is taking place in your mind. You may expand the number of places that you visit (all the rooms in your house, all the rooms in your office/school, etc). But there is a much more simple and effective method:

Put more than one item in your list in the same spot/room. Instead of having items at separate locations, combine them to make the scene even more absurd/violent/incredible. Imagine the car in your bedroom again, but this time put the oversize pen inside it, with its pointed edge protruding out of the windshield, smashing it completely.

Picture the big, talking fish swimming around the big ball. You may even make the ball and fish insult each other, or have them beat each other up. Or the fish playing football on the surface of the water, smashing the stuff in the kitchen along the way. How about tigers having sex in a milk fountain? There is no limit to what you can imagine.

When shortening a list, I usually don’t overdo it: I go for four objects in one place (two pairs of two). If six, seven or even more work for you, cool. Find out what works the best for you and improve on it. Now you may ask me…

How to make a new list along the same mental journey?

Easily. Just walk along your mental road, but this time imagine that everything is empty: There is no one around. The bedroom is silent and peaceful. Everything is in place, your bed, furniture, etc, but no unusual stuff. Not even a sound can be heard. Imagine the streets completely devoid of people, deserted. There is no one around. This is how you erase the list you stored previously. You must empty all the places before you start memorizing a new set of items. OK, but…

How to retain the information for a longer period of time?

Easily, of course . The ancient Romans used to say “Repetitio mater studiorum est”, which means that repetition is the mother of learning. So, you should repeat your mental journey. Go over it again, like you would do with a poem that you are trying to memorize. The difference is that you will memorize things much faster and far more effectively than you would by just reading something over and over again. Images stick and they stick fast.

So you see that memorizing a short or a long list boils down to the same concept, the same method. There is no difference in the way you do it, whether you are dealing with a short or a long list.

Conclusion

Memorization techniques that fulfill the three conditions mentioned at the beginning of this article (quick memorization, easy recall, long term storage) have existed since antiquity and wise people knew how to use them. They haven’t changed that much really, they have only been refined. This is nothing new. I only wonder why isn’t this stuff being taught in schools systematically? Sheesh.

Now, what can’t be memorized with the list/journey method is something abstract, like numbers, for example. There is a separate mnemonic technique for this, but I will write about it in a separate post. Have fun with your newly gained knowledge and post a comment on your success with this method, I’d love to hear from you!

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