Total Recall: Simple But Effective Memory Training Techniques

Come up with phrases

The method of mnemonic phrases is familiar to all of us from childhood. A classic example is a phrase that helps to learn the order of colors in a rainbow: "Every hunter wants to know where the pheasant is sitting", where the first letter of each word is associated with a certain color: "k" - red, "o" - orange, "w" - yellow etc.

Another example is the phrase “Put on Hope, put on clothes”, which allows not to be mistaken in the use of the words “put on” and “put on”. And this is how many taught at school the exception verbs of the second conjugation: "Drive, hold, breathe, depend, see, hear and offend, and also twirl, watch, hate and endure."

How to use. You can compose any phrase-memorization yourself. It is important that the images are close and understandable to you, even if they are absurd and funny.

Here's how you can, for example, memorize words with a similar stress: agreement - sentence - conversation.

Link the images

This method is based on linking information and certain images. Suppose you need to memorize a few words: "pen", "table", "butterfly", "house", "mirror". Make these items the heroes of a colorful cartoon. To enhance the effect, you can distort the proportions and imagine some kind of action. For example: a huge butterfly flies into the house, sits on the table, takes a pen and threatens it in the mirror. It's absurd, but the picture is vivid, will be remembered for a long time.

How to use. Try using images and associations to learn foreign words. For example, German wetter (weather) is similar in pronunciation to "wind". Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine a picture: a breeze blowing in the sails or a tornado rushing towards the city.

English owl (owl) is consonant with the word "aul". A good way to remember is to imagine an owl flying in the mountains above the village.

Visualize

Numbers and letters are similar to certain objects. And you can take advantage of this. For example, the number 210 can be easily represented as a swan (2) swimming towards the flag (1) with a donut in its beak (0).

How to use. Practice visualization more often, and you will get used to transforming the data you need to remember into specific images. For example, many associate the number 4 with a chair, 8 with a snowman or a curvy woman, and 3 with a hero (three heroes). Use these images all the time.

Sing and rhyme

Music is a great way to remember something. It structures information, makes it easy to repeat and remember. Surely from childhood, obsessive songs sat down in your head, with the help of which you learned some rules.

This is how, for example, children sing and learn notes: “Do, re, mi, fa, salt, la, si - crucians have arrived. Si, la, salt, fa, mi, re, do - that means they have a nest here!"

In English lessons, they often use the ABC song.

The same goes for rhymes. With the help of the funny poem “Sweet Hokkaido! I will give you Honshu. For your Shikoku, I will Kyushu for you”- many remembered the names of the four main islands of Japan in geography. And the phrase "Bisector is a rat that runs around the corners and divides them in half" helped to learn geometry. All this will remain in memory for many years.

How to use. Write your own poems, try to remake your favorite songs using the information you need to remember.

Draw pictograms

A way of memorization that suits visual people well. Key words and expressions are matched with pictograms - graphic images. There is no need to be wise here. For example, if we are talking about a holiday, draw a glass or fireworks, if about sports - dumbbells or a ball, and so on.

How to use. If you need to memorize text, highlight key phrases or words while reading and draw pictograms for them. After reading, try to restore the meaning of what you read from your drawings. After some practice, you can use such a coded letter instead of notes and also cheat sheets.

Build a palace of memory

The memory palace (or Cicero's method) is another good way to remember information through associations. It involves the creation of a matrix of images. Anything can become the base for it: your room, your favorite place in nature (for example, a clearing in the forest), the path along which you are walking, an empty room.

You will need to fill this space with images. Imagine that you are placing objects in certain places. Think over the scheme by which you will mentally examine them. In the room, this can be done clockwise, from wall to wall, on the path - moving forward.

How to use. Let's say you need to memorize the sequence of your speech for a presentation. You imagine a room in which there is a flower in a pot on the windowsill. For him, you set the key fragment of your speech. For example, talk about how your company has developed. Then you turn to the wall, where there is a picture with mountains that look like a graph, the data of which you need to voice. Next, you see the chair in which the sage sits, whose quote you want to quote. Etc.

You can create shelves in the room for different subjects (physics, mathematics, and so on) or events. The arrangement of the memory palace is limited only by your imagination. Choose the space and images that are most convenient for you, as well as the scheme according to which you will make the rounds. The main thing here is consistency in use.

Define intervals

In order for the information to be assimilated and well remembered, it must be repeated at regular intervals. This technique is called spaced repetition.

The interval should increase over time. For example, you’ve learned a new English word. It must be repeated in a couple of minutes, then in an hour, after that in two days, five days, 10 days, three weeks, six months, and so on.

How to use. There are apps to help you memorize using spaced repetition. For example, Anki cards.

Follow these tips

Don't try all memorization methods at once. Start small - whichever is more to your liking. And then move on to the next techniques.
An easy way to reinforce and better understand the material you read on the eve of the exam is to retell it to someone several times.
It is easier to memorize any information in small portions. A striking example is telephone numbers, which are difficult to remember with a single set of numbers (for example, 89003546892), but much easier - by breaking them into blocks (8 900 354 68 92).
If you need to memorize the names of several strangers, look for distinctive signs. For example, a person has an aquiline nose, you associate him with a bird and then bind his name and surname to it.