The Journey System

With the Journey System you use a journey, a journey that perhaps is familiar to you, and position your ideas along the way. This memory system is good for memorising lists of things in a certain order. You mentally run through the journey and meet each thing memorised in turn. The classic is a shopping list. Lets say you want to remember eggs, milk, cheese, carrots, bread, butter, and jam. As with all other memory systems you want to use as many perceptions and sensations as possible. Lets say you open your front door, as you take a step out crunch! You have stepped on the eggs! The yolk is all over the ground now! And on your feet! You wipe your feet on the mat, but oh no, you have knocked over some milk bottles and the milk is running down your path! There is gallons of the stuff, the whole path is white! When you get to the front gate you notice it is not the usual gate, but a one made of cheese! You open it but it just crumbles. Smell that cheese. You get the idea? Continue creating these scenarios on your journey. Make the images as vivid as possible. Get creative with it as well, the stranger the better!

The Link System

The Link System is very similar to that of the Journey System. Instead of placing items to remember along a journey, you link them together instead.

The Peg System

There are several types of peg system, namely the number shape system, the number sound system, the number system, and the roman room system.

The Number Shape System

As the name suggests, this memory technique uses shapes that represent the numbers 1-10. For example, the number one could be a lighthouse, a candle, or even an erect penis. Number two could be a swan. Number 3 could be hills, or even breasts. Whatever is most appealing to you.

To memorize the shopping list again one could see eggs falling from the top of a lighthouse, crashing down on the rocks below. For number two, a swan could be swimming in a lake of milk, and so on.

This memory technique is useful when you need to memorize a list not necessarily in any order. The limitation is that it is most useful for lists of up to 10 items. You could get really creative and use more than one number shape – therefore allowing you to memorize 100 items.

The Number Sound System

Again, as the title suggests, this memorization technique uses the sounds of numbers to link objects to. For example, number one could be bun, sun, or anything that rhymes with one in your particular accent. Two could be shoe. Three could be tree. Four, door etc. Again this should be your choice as you will be using it, and it is used in the same method as the number shape system. You could even use a combination of both. The key thing about these techniques is creativity.

The Roman Room System

This system dates back to roman times when actors and senetors needed to impress audiences. They would create a mental model of the layout of their homes, as well as the objects in it. On each of the objects they would attach items they wish to memorize. You can do the same with your home. Using the shopping example again, you could place eggs in a plant pot, milk on your sofa, cheese on your coat stand. You could also use various places, for instance the houses of families and many other places to form an unlimited space for storage.

The Number System

With this memorization system a key is used to represent long numbers. Each number has its corresponding letter or letter sound. No vowels are used to associate with a number. They are simply used to ‘pad out’ the consonant associations.

0 – z/s : ‘z’ as in zero, ‘s’ as it looks similar to z. ‘O’ is the last letter of zero

1 – l : ‘l’ looks similar to 1

2 – n : two downward strokes

3 – m : three downward strokes

4 – r : ‘r’ as in the last sound of ‘four’

5 – f/v : ‘f’ or ‘v’ in ‘five’

6 – b/p : ‘b’ looks similar to 6, ‘p’ and ‘b’ sound similar

7 – t : ‘T’ looks similar to a 7

8 – ch/sh/j : because of the ‘gh’ in ‘eight’

9 – g : ‘g’ looks similar to a 9

So for example say you needed to remember a number 7754984303. With this system you could

77 – tit
549 – forge
84 – shore
303 – mom

From that you can form a sentance such as ‘a tit forged on a shore for my mom’. Again, you can get creative. This one takes a lot of practice to master.

Memory Exercise

This is a general memory exercise you can do at anytime or even when you are lying in bed. What you want to do is pick a moment that you had during the day, be it when you first got out of bed or when you left the house and walked to your car. Simply choose an event during the day, and run through it as if it was happening now. For example, lets choose leaving the house. See again you pulling the door shut, put your attention on the colour of the door, how cold the metal handle feels, the smell of the air outside, the position of your body, the feeling of the breakfast that you had, what you were thinking at the time, the clothes touching your body. Re-experience as it happened, turning around and facing the outside world, the vision slightly shake with each footstep, who you can see outside. Continue this for about a minute or so of that journey. You can do it as many times as you feel like. Continue this each night for two weeks. You will see a big difference in your ability to remember and also to imagine. Do not be scared if your ability to imaging becomes vivid.