How to Remember Amazing Amounts of Information - Pt. 1: The Basics

Mnemonics have always fascinated me.  Finding ways to remember inhuman amounts of information always attracted my attention, as I saw ways to impress friends, improve my ability to remember information at work and simply do things that others thought impossible to do.  So over the next few weeks, I’ll share some interesting ways to remember things.  You’ll simply amaze yourself!

Assumptions

All mnemonics are built on some pretty simple assumptions.  I call them assumptions, but more and more are being proven as fact and laws as more brain research is done.  It really doesn’t matter if they are research-based; the only important issue is whether these assumptions work.  In my years of using the techniques that I’m going to be showing you, I’ve found these assumptions to be spot-on:

• The human brain thinks in pictures. Although we read words printed on a page, our brain converts them to images that it “sees”.  We may listen to others talk, but, again, our brain converts the spoken words to pictures.  This is much like a computer taking my words that I’m typing into it and converting them into 1’s and 0’s so it can understand me.
• The human brain learns — and remembers — new information by associating it to something it already knows.  In schools, we administrators insist that teachers, prior to introducing new material, “activate prior knowledge”.  One day, this may mean simply reviewing the previous day’s lesson.  Another day, this may mean doing an activity that forces the student to recall something that they had learned as a result of environmental experiences.  In either case, the student “sharpens the hook” upon which new information will be hung.
• The human brain remembers wild and outrageous things easier than the mundane.  Imagine driving to work and seeing three people dressed in brown pants, blue pants, and gray pants.  In a week, one will forget these people.  However, drive to work and unexpectedly see three circus clowns pushing an red elephant into a small green car and that image will remain with us for years.  Stupid?  Yes.  Memorable?  You bet!
• The brain needs a trigger.  Something needs to initiate the recall.  We’ve all been in situations where we’ve heard a sound, smelled an odor, or felt a touch that triggered an intense memory of an event that occurred years ago.  I can still hear a certain Barry Manilow song and suddenly, I’m transported in my mind back to my early college years when I first met my wife.  I can vividly remember the cold weather, as we first began dating in the winter.  I can still feel the cold wet snow hitting my face and hear the sloshing of my steps as I asked her out for the first time.  That song triggers it.  It happens every time.  This is NLP’s basic anchoring at it’s most primitive use.

By using the four “assumptions” listed above, one can remember inhuman amounts of information.  In fact, by using the methods that I’ll be sharing over the next few weeks, I still remember phone numbers of people I knew 30 years ago.  I recall the names of people that I met only one or two times decades ago.  I still can look at a painting and it practically tells me every historical and artistic fact that is important about it (Yes, I used these techniques to for art appreciation classes as I worked toward an art degree).  I looked at each painting only one time and linked all needed information to the details in the painting.  Looking at the painting is like reading a book.  The painting itself tells me every important fact about it.

None of this information is new.  It’s been tested and proven true for thousands of years.  The problem is that we don’t consistently use these techniques.  When I don’t apply the techniques, I don’t remember things.  When I do apply them, it’s almost like I can’t forget.

Example

So buckle up and hang on!  This is going to be fun.  Let’s start out with a simple exercise that demonstrates the power of thinking visually.  I used to have an OCD thing about checking doors.  I would have to go back and check to make sure that I locked doors at least 10 times.  I have been more than half way home (30 minutes into the trip) and have to turn around and go back to pull on that damned door one more time, only to find that, yes, I locked it.  This is not a good issue to have when you are in charge of locking up a fairly large building at the day’s end.  Then I read how Harry Lorayne, one of the first famous memory experts, would teach an audience how to think visually and to show how strong that visual memory is.  He would be on stage and bring pocket fulls of common items.  While the audience  watched he would place the items at various places on the stage.  A handkerchief would be set on the bar.  A pocketknife would be laid on a chair.  A wallet would be set on a coffee cup.  With each item, he would describe what he was doing with it.  During the routine of placing objects, he would reach into his pocket and take out his keys and tossed them on the coffee table that was on the set.  As the keys fell to the wood, he told the audience to imagine that, as the keys landed, they exploded like a hand grenade.  He described, in great detail, how the coffee table blew up, throwing splinters of wood up to the ceiling and all over the audience.  He described the fireball that resulted when the keys blew up.  He described the dense smoke that filled the auditorium.  The producers of the show took down phone numbers of random guests before they left.

Several weeks later, Harry came back on the show.  The host, using the telephone numbers gathered earlier, called several audience members who were present for the original interview when Harry placed all the common items on the set.  They were quizzed as to where Harry left each item that he had placed.  All the guests could not remember where Harry had placed the items.  After all, no one told them there would be a quiz on this stuff!  Remarkably, however, everyone remembered the keys!  Instead of saying that he placed — or tossed — them on the coffee table, the unanimous response was, “They blew up the coffee table!”

Why did it work?  Visual memory was a large factor.  It also works because as we focus on the item or act to make these visuals, it forces us to really pay attention to what we’re doing.  Our mind is attending to what we’re doing rather than imagining being on the golf course.  It forces us to be in the moment.

Reading that, I changed my practice in locking my building doors.  Whenever I walked up to check a door and pulled on its handle, I imagined that the door blew up.  I imagined the metal and glass erupting in a fireball and being blasted off its hinges.  The door would fly past me, slamming several times on the concrete sidewalk before coming to rest in a hot, fiery, and smoldering heap.  I tried to make that visual as real as possible in my mind’s eye.  Interestingly, when I began to question whether the door was actually locked and began to feel the urge to go back and check it, that vivid scene of the door blowing up played back through my mind.  Natural memory took over and I knew that I had locked and checked it.  I never went back to check another door since then.

The next time you have to remember where you place something, give this technique a try.  Have your keys blow up the dining room table.  Place your wallet on the kitchen counter and imagine the wallet melting the counter as it sinks right through it, leaving a large gaping, steaming hole.  See if when you look for your item, these images will pop up.  Ah!  My keys blew up the table!  That’s where I left them!  My wallet melted the kitchen counter!

That is a small sample of the things you will be able to remember.  Over the next few weeks, we’ll discuss:

• How to remember numbers — short ones and long ones — front-wards and backwards.  Phone numbers will be a breeze.  Account numbers will be a piece of cake.
• How to remember lists of items — shopping lists, checklists, etc. — with ease.
• How to remember people’s names and other important information about them.  Their own face will remind you of everything you need to remember.

This series will be fun!

Comments

[Nick Fitzsimons]

Great article; I can't wait for the rest of the series. I've always had terrible trouble with names and faces, so that instalment should be of tremendous help.

Similar question to Sundeep Gill: as a software developer I have to remember a lot of technical details. In the middle of a project involving a specific technology it's easy to remember all kinds of intricacies, but coming back to a technology after a break involves a lot of checking in reference manuals, standards documents and suchlike for the first few days. Will you be exploring techniques for embedding this kind of information deep in one's memory?

[Ahmad]

Thank you. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.
We need to learn how to learn before set out to learning.

[Adam]

Thanks for a great article Bert. I look forward to your next post. Really interesting stuff!

Keep up the good work!

/Adam

[Abid Omar]

What is really interesting is that hundreds of people (including myself!) who from these "self-help" blogs probably never picked up a book on these topics. Countless books are available, especially on memory skills. Blogs make it easier to digest the same information by putting it in bite-size chunks delivered over a peroid of time. Think of To-Done (to-done.com) as a book versus a blog, where would you learn more?

[Jeff]

Great article. I'm definitely going to try this out.

One question about this approach, however:

Say you have a repetitive task that you'll do every day, or once a week. (Like your example of remembering to lock the doors.) If you visualize the door blowing up every time, when you try to recall this, how do you know if you're recalling today's explosion or yesterday's? How do you keep instances separate?

The only solution I can think of is to vary the "special effects" slightly every time... but if you have to change it daily, eventually you're going to get to a point where you walk up to the door and think: "Okay, what happens to the door today? Does it melt? no, it did that last Tuesday. Should it shatter? No, that was Friday..." It seems like you'd eventually run out of ideas.

On the other hand, the creative effort involved in coming up with new images would probably assist recall anyway...

[tinkertailor]

Visual memory may have been a factor, but not necessarily a large one. The explosive keys were memorable probably more because there was an element of surprise ("wild and outrageous"), not so much because it was visual.

[Bert]

Tinker-- You are correct. The visual element is simply a tool just like the other necessary ingredients like making it a wild image (or surprising one).

Jeff & Patrick - The visual image, again, is just a tool. For some, it helps to remember the item to recall. To others, the image's creation simply makes them concentrate and pay attention. Simply being more aware and thinking about what is to be remembered is what helps the recall. At some point in the process, natural memory comes into play and draws distinctions between today's events and similar ones that we remembered yesterday, days ago, or weeks ago. It's funny, the same visual seems to help me remember without modification time after time.

Nick & sundeep Gill - Later, there will be ways discussed to remember technical jargon and industry-specific buzzwords. In my study of educational law, these techniques were invaluable in helping me cite case law in important landmark cases involving educational matters.

Tom - I posted my articles with dates for over a year. I found that I became more obsessed with regular posting than with the quality of what I wrote. I passed some off as, "They all can't be diamonds." By removing the date, I'm able to let a post incubate for a day or two longer so I can give it a fresh set of eyes before posting. I'll tell you what, I'll put the date in the footer to help. That way it won't be yelling at me. :)

Everyone - Normally I like to respond to comments daily. However, this past week has been a bear that has truly taxed my organizational skills. Now that it's over, I can go back to my regular posting schedule. For the next few weeks, approximately 2 - 3 posts per week will be on memory skills, and other topics will be explored for the rest of the five-day week. I don't post on weekends.

[jc]

doesn't memorizing go against the GTD system of taking everything off your mind onto external things?

[Cigarettes]

Visual memory may have been a factor, but not necessarily a large one. The explosive keys were memorable probably more because there was an element of surprise ("wild and outrageous"), not so much because it was visual.

[Cigarettes]

Continuing the basics - using association to link items in a list (this teaches another basic memory skill that is used later)

Memorizing numbers - phone, account, and other important numbers can be memorized, even looooooong ones, frontwards and backwards.