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Learn skills that enable you to increase your ability to remember or memorize information, remember number sequences, remember names. memory techniques, increase your memory, Journey Method, Roman Room technique, Major Memory System, Using mnemonic systems, Number or Rhyme System, Remembering Telephone Numbers, remember number sequences, memory skills, aging, forgetfulness. Learn skills that enable you to increase your ability to remember or memorize information, remember number sequences, remember names. memory techniques, increase your memory, Journey Method, Roman Room technique, Major Memory System, Using mnemonic systems, Number or Rhyme System, Remembering Telephone Numbers, remember number sequences, memory skills, aging, forgetfulness

Three Memory Pegs

| by Retirement Coach, Kristi Nielsen

Summary: Retirement brings great travel opportunities and the ability to remember names and places can be increased through using strategies that work at any age. Memory techniques: The Journey Method, Remembering Names and Numbers using mnemonic systems. Memory problems may not be age related. Memory skills can be developed, increasing your ability to remember names, numbers and events.

The enjoyment of traveling and meeting people is increased when you are more able to remember the information. This allows you to take an occasional trip down memory-lane to revisit the places you went. It is like a holiday without leaving home.

You can also recount your travel stories to your fiends and family having confidence that you are doing it in an articulate and interesting fashion. Your confidence will increase, you will enjoy your travels more and your memories will remain with you longer. The following techniques increase your safety while you travel and enable you to maintain better recall of the trip.

The Journey Method
The Journey Method is powerful, flexible and effective. It is based on remembering landmarks on a journey. It combines the narrative flow of the Link Method and the structure and order of the Peg Systems.

The Journey Method uses routes that you know well. You can code information to be remembered to a large number of easily visualized or remembered landmarks along the routes. It requires less imagination. You know what these landmarks look like; you need not work out visualizations for them!

It is often best to prepare the journey beforehand so that the landmarks are clear in your mind.

One way of doing this is to write down all the landmarks that you can recall in order on a piece of paper. This allows you to fix these landmarks as the significant ones. You can consider these landmarks as stops on the route. It can be used effectively for remembering names of people by associating them with the stops on your journey.

One advantage of this technique is that you can start anywhere within the route to retrieve information. You can work both backward and forward. It requires less time investment to design your list than some of the other methods.

The Roman Room Mnemonic
The Roman Room technique is an ancient and effective way of remembering unstructured information. It is based on imagining a room (e.g. your bedroom). Within that room are objects. The technique works by associating images with those objects. To recall information, simply take a tour around the room in your mind, visualizing the known objects and their associated images.

The Roman Room technique is most effective for storing lists of unlinked information, whereas the journey method is most effective for storing lists of related items.

The Major Memory System
The Major Memory System is one of the two most powerful memory systems currently available. It requires a significant investment of time to learn and master. However, once it is learned it is extremely powerful. It is used by magicians and memory technicians.

The system works by converting number sequences into nouns, nouns into images, and linking images into sequences. These sequences can be very complex and detailed.

We will not go into detail about this system as I feel it is much too complex to cover in this article. If you want to check it out in more detail check the references provided at the end of this article.

Remembering Names
The ability to remember names is perhaps one of the most important memory techniques needed in business. While many of the previous methods work for remembering names, here are some fairly simple straightforward ways of increasing your ability to remember names.

The following techniques can be used:
a.) Make an association with a face. Examine a person's face discretely when you are introduced. Observe the shape of their face. Look at ears, hairline, forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, complexion, etc. Try to find an unusual feature. Create an association between a unique feature and the name in your mind.

b.) Make an association with a name. You may associate the person with someone you know with the same name. Alternatively, associate a rhyme or image with the name.

c.) Repeat the name, again and again.
When you are introduced, ask for the name to be repeated. Use their name two or three times yourself when talking to them.
If the name is unusual, or has alternative spellings, ask how it is spelled. You may ask the origin of the name. (You need to be careful about this one. It may appear to be a racist inquiry.) Ask for a business card. If you are a visual learner it will help to be able to see the name.

Review the name in your mind several times. Name recall ability increases with practice.

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Remembering Numbers
Using mnemonic systems, remembering numbers becomes extremely simple. There are a number of approaches, depending on the types of numbers being remembered:

a.) Short numbers
These can be stored in a number of ways:

The easiest, but least reliable, is to use simple Number/Rhyme images associated in a story. A simple peg system can be used. For example, associating numbers from the Number/Rhyme System organized with the Alphabet system.

b.) Long numbers
This can be remembered using the Journey System. Numbers can be stored at each stop on the journey. The amount of digits stored at each stop can be increased.

Using long journey or combining methods can enable you to remember a number sequence up to 100 numbers or more long.

Remembering Telephone Numbers
These can be remembered simply by associating numbers from either the Number/Rhyme system with positions in a peg system such as the Alphabet System, or the Journey System, and by making an association with the face or name of the person whose number is being remembered.

Remember phone numbers by making associations between the first three numbers and a time of day. Make associations for other familiar number sequences.

Make associations to radio stations, TV stations, 7-Eleven stores, brand names or other number series that you already remember readily. For example a phone number of 850-5757 could be remembered as 8:50 and Heinz 57 twice. The phone number 320-7110 could be remembered as ‘at 3:20 it is time to be back from coffee, which you can get at 7-Eleven with no (0) trouble’.

References

Use Your Head, Tony Buzan, BBC Books, ISBN 0-563-37103-X

How to Pass Exams, Dominic O’Brien, Headline Book Publishing, ISBN 0-7472-5047-2

How to Develop a Super-Power-Memory, Harry Lorayne, Thorsons (Harper Collins), ISBN 0-7225-2784-5
l Fifty Contemporary Thinkers, John Lechte, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-07408-8