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.

How to Remember Lists - Lesson 1

It’s been a long week of activities required to bring school to a close

for the summer.  After textbook inventories, key management, room

checkouts, and the myriad of other things needing done, things are

beginning to wind down.  This gives me time to continue our series on

memory.

We will start very simply:  How to remember a string of items.  We

start with this project because it teaches a basic skill, upon which,

more advanced techniques are built.  For example, to remember

numbers, we have a system to turn any number into a picture that the

mind can see.  Long numbers wind up being a series (or list) of

pictures that we will remember using the technique introduced today. 

It goes back to the old adage that we must crawl before we walk. 

Today, we crawl.

Let’s begin with a simple list of 10

items.  One can actually remember

lists that include hundreds of items,

but the concept can be taught with as

little as three.  Going past that is

simple reinforcement.  Here’s our

short beginning list.

plane

Woman

For

To memorize these ten items,  we will simply do two things:  turn

each item into a picture and, second, associate each subsequent

item with the one that comes before.  To do this we will use two of the

assumptions from the last post:  Wild and exaggerated pictures and

association.  To teach this, I’ll take you through my thought processes

that I go through to memorize a list like this.

The first issue is to remember the first item.  This is more difficult than

the others because there is nothing to associate the first item with

since it is the first.  Later, I’ll share ways to link the first item to a

“trigger” that will bring it to mind.  For now, I’ll give you paper clip. 

Don’t just think of a paper clip, go outrageous.  Remember that we

remember the wild and outrageous better than the mundane.  Think

of a paper clip as big as a building…or bigger.  Another way to

exaggerate paper clip is to think of millions and millions of them.

The next task is to think of a wild picture about a snowball and link it

to the first term, paper clip.  For me, I would imagine myself outside in

the snow being pelted by hundreds of snowballs.  Guess what the

snowballs would be made out of.  You got it, millions and millions of

paper clips.  In my mind, I take a moment to vividly imagine that

scene of being bombarded with snowball after snowball made of

millions of paper clips.  If you make the image wild enough and vivid

enough, you will only have to think about it one time.  If, later, you find

yourself faltering on the list item, snowball, you simply review the

imagined scene one more time, trying to make it more intense or

outrageous.  Many times, when we falter in remembering a list item,

it’s because the picture we chose was too plain, making not

memorable.

The next item on the list is tree.  Again, we make a picture that is wild

and outrageous and somehow link it to the previous item, snowball. 

This time I would think of a huge tree, miles and miles high.  That

takes care of the outrageous part.  Now for the link to the previous

item.  Instead of the tree being filled with leaves, imagine it being

filled with large snowballs.  Picture it in your mind.  See it swaying in

the wind.  Imagine the snowballs slowly melting and dripping huge

drops to the ground.  Imagine large snowballs falling from the tree like

apples falling from an apple tree.  Take a moment to vividly imagine

this.

The next item is book.  We follow the same process.  I would imagine

opening a very large book.  When the book is opened, millions of tiny

trees come flying out of it, hitting me in my face.  I imagine I can

hardly see or breathe due to the shear number of trees shooting out

of the pages, hitting me in the face.  I’ve exaggerated the scene so

it’s memorable for me.  I’ve also linked the term “book” to “tree”.

The next item is clock.  The scene I imagine is a library full of books. 

I can see miles and miles of library shelves full of books.  All of a

sudden, I hear a clock bell ringing, and millions and millions of clocks

come falling out of all those bookshelves, each one ringing as it falls

to the floor, breaking into even millions more pieces.

Let me take a moment and say that these images work for me. 

These same images may not work for you.  This is highly

personalized.  Feel free to substitute your images for mine.  As long

as you make the picture very exaggerated and link it to the picture

that comes before it in the list, your picture will work.  For each

image, take a minute and really imagine it vividly, with all the sights,

sounds, etc., that would normally accompany the scene.

The next item is football.  We create an image that links the term

“football” to “clock” (the previous item) and make it exaggerated and

wild.  In my case, I imagine a clock on the wall, the hands of which

are made out of two huge footballs that are three-feet big.

Fire truck is our next list item.  I’m thinking of a fire crew racing to a

fire.  I see the fire fighters on top of the vehicle as it races through the

streets.  Instead of a truck, they are riding a huge football with wheels

on it.  Two fire fighters are driving up front and one is hanging on to

the ladder, which is mounted on top of the football’s laces.

Our next item is an airplane.  I would imagine a bright red fire truck

racing down the street, when wings sprout out from the sides, great

balls of fire explode from the engines mounted on the wings.  The fire

truck takes off flying like an airplane.

The next term is “woman”.  I imagine an airplane flying overhead. 

Instead of a metal, fixed-wing aircraft, it is a huge woman, hundreds

of feet long!  Even more, she is naked! (I told you to make it wild! 

That certainly would make it memorable to me!)  By the way, don’t

ask where her engine exhausts are coming from, but beans instead

of jet fuel must have been used!  Now, if you dare, close your eyes

and imagine that quite memorable scene.  (Ok, ladies, I’m not sexist,

I’m just trying to make it memorable.)

Finally, the last term is fork.  I imagine eating a salad.  As I look down

to load the bite on my eating utensil, I notice that, instead of a fork, it

is a very small woman (make her naked if you need to).  As I put the

bite in my mouth, my scene has me biting her in two. 

AARRGGHHH!  Blood and guts everywhere!

Now, if you have done exactly what I said, you should easily recall

There you have it.  A list of ten items memorized easily.  If you had

any difficulty, go back and reinforce the image that you are having

trouble with and make it more wild and outrageous.  If you do this

correctly, you will have to think of the image only one time and you’ll

have it.

This also takes practice.  Now, it may take a few moments to think of

the image and the scene that you can use.  Later, the wild images will

come easier and faster.  The associations will also flow faster as you

gain proficiency.  This is one area in which practice is fun.  For

practice, I’ve memorized grocery lists, states and capitols, and

segments of a speech (for my Toastmasters Club speeches and

other presentations that I do) so I don’t have to rely on notes. 

Yes, I know this is extremely simple.  After all, this is a foundation skill

upon which later ones will be laid.  Have fun with this one for a couple

of days.

this list.  Let’s give it a try with the following quiz.  Remember, I’ll start

you with paper clip since I haven’t shown you how to trigger the first

item yet.  Answer the following questions:

id so) out of the book

shelves in the library?

What were the hands on

the clock made of?

What were the

(sorry, I couldn’t think of

another term that wouldn’t

give this one away) riding

on their way to a fire?

They were riding this

instead of what?

The fire truck sprouted

wings and became a what?

Instead of a metal airplane,

what was flying overhead?

When the woman was bitten in half what was she being