IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY
On this page I will explain briefly the techniques that memory enthusiasts use and site the authors of the books that I read. With that knowledge you can begin your own journey.
I believe I can fast track you through the process, particularly if you are need to take in a lot of information for studies or work, if so, see my coaching and consultation page. But I am not here to give you the hard sell, with the information below you can use The Internet, or buy a book on these techniques, and begin your own journey. Also, there are Memory Forums where you can learn and swap ideas with other memory enthusiasts. Good luck!
Memory by association. By linking images or concepts together we can create powerful new memories. An example of this can be if you are being introduced to a room full of new people and wish to remember their names. When looking at someone called Amanda, immediately imagine her doing something with someone you already know with the same name - perhaps they are fighting and pulling each others hair, or maybe they are dancing a Waltz around the room. Whatever image you use, make it vibrant and surprising. If you do not know anyone called Amanda, imagine her dressed as A Panda, with a furry costume and mascara all around her eyes. The association does not need to be perfect, when you meet her again your conscious mind will know she is not called Apanda and you are unlikely to not find the name Amanda from such a heavy clue. Internet search 'The Link Method' for information.
Memory by Placement. The mind is far better at remembering something if it knows where that something is. If we park a car in a street in a town we are familiar with, we will easily find our way back to that car. Our 'minds eye' can visualize where the car is and plan our 'journey' back to it, even if we are miles away. It is far more difficult to visualize the car, and where it is, in an unfamiliar street or in a multi-storey car-park, where every floor and isle looks the same. Search 'The Method of Loci or Journey Method. Although the word loci is Latin for 'places', the use of memory placement techniques are to be found in earlier Ancient Greek texts. By creating an ordered set of placement areas in a well known path, such as a route to walk the dog, we can place items to be remembered on that path. Imagine getting the dog leash and finding it tied to a chicken, walk to the front door to find it covered in baked beans, walk down the garden path and trip over a cabbage, struggle to open the gate because there is a loaf of bread jammed under it, walk to the lamp-post and see apples growing on it and as you walk past the lamp-post shouts, 'don't forget the eggs (visual images are not the only way to remember). This simple example of remembering a shopping list is a powerful tool as not only are the items easier to remember but they are in a set order. The correct ordering of items or tasks is rather more important if you want to bake a good cake, prepare TNT or transplant a patients kidney.
Memorizing Numbers. A study published by the University of York (UK) in 2018 found that the average person can recognize five thousand faces - faces they have seen before as either, friends, family, photographs, colleagues or famous people. To recognize one face takes an awful lot of thinking power. The brain takes the data from the optic nerves, interprets the image, compares that image to other facial images stored in the memory and then makes a decision as to whether this is someone we know or not. Our brains are supercomputers that can do these computations with minimal effort. We can do it because our brains evolved over millions of years with the need to do it. Recognizing the faces of our kin or enemies was vital to survival, as was recognizing the emotions displayed in those faces. But telephones were only invented a century ago and written numbers a couple of thousand years before that. Our brains are little equipped to deal with the abstract decimal squiggles 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. This makes telephone numbers , or a number like 2.71828182845, very difficult to remember. So why not turn them into something we can remember, like faces, songs and stories? Well, that is exactly what we do.
Major Memory System is a way in which the ten decimal numbers 0 to 9 can be represented as phonetic sounds. That way groups of numbers become words and the words can be linked together to make stories. It is easier than it sounds and is a powerful memory technique.
The Dominic System is a way in which people can represent numbers using their initials. You create your own list of characters from people very familiar to you. You then give these characters Dominic Actions in specific locations (Loci System) and further link them to other characters, thus turning long numbers into memorable stories. You need to invest a bit of time to get familiar with this system and your characters, but master it and you will be able to recite numbers hundreds or thousands of digits long, should you so wish.
There are simpler ways are available for remembering smaller numbers, such as the Number Rhyme and Number Shape systems.
When a large amount of information needs to be memorized, it is useful to break it down into easily recognizable parts and store those parts in an organized manner in our mind. The previously mentioned Loci System is and example of this, but there are others. The Peg System uses an existing list we are familiar with to attach new information. An example of this is using the 26 letters of the alphabet. When I learned the number Pi (3.141592653.....) to 1300 decimal places, I broke it into chunks of fifty digits and used types of pie to signpost where I was. A for Apple Pie, first fifty numbers and B for Banana Pie would begin the second fifty numbers. The first link for those fifty numbers was the Dominic Character eating that type of pie. There are many other types of Peg Systems you can find online or in memory publications.
Memory Palaces and Roman Rooms are something many people have heard of because they have received the Hollywood treatment. However, the movie industry in not renowned for letting facts get in the way of a good story. Simply put, a Memory Palace is something you can build in your mind to organize your knowledge. You can construct one large building, or even use the outdoors with different mountains, rivers and forests representing different subject. I build a different palace for each project I do. Perhaps an easier way to understand this is if I give you an example using my current study project - Macbeth. I decided to test my memory ability with a hefty task, that is remembering a whole Shakespeare play. I chose Macbeth as many of my friends are Scottish Scientists and I figured it would be full of good one liners to rap their metaphorical knuckles with if they get too smarty pants. Macbeth's Inverness Castle in my mind is a large, granite stone sky-scraper. I make the scene look as real and authentically Scottish as possible, so it's cold and it's raining. As I walk into the lobby I see a long bar and all the list of characters are there, in order as presented in the text I use, sipping on wee drams of whisky. I introduce myself to the first character, Duncan. He tells me about who is and what happens to him in the coming action (I make it his dialogue brief but as emotionally real as possible, like life and death itself). He introduces me to Malcolm on his left, and this carries on until I finish by meeting the Ghost of Banquo and other Apparitions who lead me to the elevator. There are five floors, each representing an Act of the Play. Each floor has a different colored carpet, so I know where I am. I can take the lift to any Act I wish. Every floor has a number of doors, each door representing a Scene. The scenes are labelled by an alphabetic peg image on each door. For example, floor two has a red (numbers 0 to 9 represented by a colour, for me red = 2) carpet. Door A has an axe, door B a bayonet, door C a cleaver and door D a dagger. Each room is a Roman Room in which I can walk around with my left hand to the wall, touching mnemonic reminders (objects and paintings for example) of the meaning of that section of dialogue. If I struggle to remember specific sections of dialogue, I add detail to the mnemonic image which link me to key words to jog my memory. Although it is possible to use memory techniques to remember every single word and full stop, it is more efficient to fully understand the meaning of the play, practice the lines and let the words come to your lips like the lyrics to your favorite classic songs.
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Recommended Reading.
The following are the authors of memory technique books you might wish to look for. These people are not mere authors to me as, despite never having met them, they helped me so much in my life that they feel my friends. The godfather of modern memory and magician, Harry Lorrayne.
Eight time World Memory Champion and creator of the Dominic System, Dominic O'Brian.
Grandmaster of Memory, Kevin Horsley.
Quirky Brit and Grand Master of Memory, Ed Cooke.
USA Memory Champion Ron White.
When looking for a book to improve your memory, beware of the word memory in the title. There are other works which discuss memory or are about the mind, but do not describe the mnemonic memory techniques necessary for improving your memory.
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OCTOPUS MEMORY Inspiration. One final author I must mention is Tony Buzan. Not only a memory expert in his own right, he honed and popularized the technique of Mind Mapping. This is how to conceptualize, visualize and organize large tasks and large amounts of information in diagrammatic form. Mind Maps have greatly helped me in my work and studies. When I decided to help others on their memory journey, I sat down and made mind maps of what I wished to achieve, how to achieve it and how to construct the website. Many mind maps end up looking like squid or octopus, with tentacles reaching in all directions. This was my inspiration to launch myself as Octopus Memory, and not under my own name (which is not a catchy name and tricky to spell correctly on a word search). Like Tony, the octopus is a versatile and intelligent problem solver, so this is my tribute to him.