How to memorize anything
Remembering doesn’t have to be hard.
There are three areas to work on if you want to improve your memory: energy, mnemonics, and retention.
1. The foundation: Energy
Even if you use all the memory tricks in the world, you’ll never teach anything to a corpse. At the most fundamental level, the brain needs oxygen and glucose to function. But thinking in broader terms, there are a lot of things that anyone can do to improve their brain’s core functioning. Before getting into mnemonics and retention tactics, I strongly recommend working on your mental energy.
There are some very simple steps that you can take today that will make an ENORMOUS impact for most people’s mental focus. Dive into the details here: Energy
2. The magic: Mnemonics
Our brains like to remember things that are memorable. Numbers, dates, and vocabulary words aren’t usually too memorable in and of themselves. So the key to making anything easier to remember is simply to make it memorable. Duh, right?
Most people would have trouble remembering the number 3594. It’s nothing special in and of itself. But many athletes will forever remember that number in association with Roger Bannister’s clock time when he was the first human to break the 4-minute mile (think about it: his time was 3:59.4, just 0.6 seconds short of 4 minutes).
See, the key to remembering numbers, words, and names is to associate them with something beyond themselves. With training, anyone intelligent enough to speak and read can eventually become exceptionally good at remembering anything with these techniques. Mnemonics are the bulk of what we talk about at Master Of Memory.
Check out the fun stuff here: Mnemonics
3. Keep it: Review
If you apply the right energy and the right mnemonic tactics to any memory project, you’ll have an easy time retaining the information at first. But just to make absolutely sure that it stays with you forever, it’s important to review your information at least a few times, at appropriate intervals.
Some strategies for doing this can be found here: Retention
Just a little work each week in all three areas will quickly put your memory ahead of 95% of the people in the world, no question. Feel free to browse within each of those topics using the links above, or if you want to see how to apply these subjects to language learning, try our free Accelerated Spanish Course!
Next article: How to learn vocabulary faster than ever.