Shortcut: 4 Ways to Memorize Anything

When Short-Term Is Too Short

Moving information from your short-term memory into your long-term memory—or even into your medium-term memory—can take purposeful effort, but you can improve that process by following proven techniques designed to strengthen your recall abilities.

1: SEE the Information

In Unlimited Memory, Kevin Horsley writes that we learn everything through association—by making mental connections between knowledge you already have and information you’re trying to learn. He writes that to create effective associations, you should use the SEE (Senses, Exaggeration, Energize) method. We’ll walk through an example of memorizing the musical terms forte, allegro, and octave:

• Senses: You perceive and learn about the world through your senses, so when you associate information with them, it’s automatically more memorable. For example, to remember that forte means loudly, imagine someone yelling loudly (an auditory association) from the top of a fort (a visual image).
• Exaggeration: Making your associations ridiculous or illogical helps them stick in your memory. For example, to remember that allegro means fast and lively, think of a pair of legs (which sounds somewhat like the term) growing comically long so that a person can walk faster.
• Energize: Once you have your exaggerated sensory images, animate them. This turns them into a narrative, and it’s easier to remember action than nonaction. For example, to remember that octave means a range of eight notes, think of an octopus animatedly playing eight notes.

2. Think of Images and Places

In Moonwalking With Einstein, the former winner of the US Memory Championships, Joshua Foer, also emphasizes the importance of drawing connections between new information and knowledge already in your memory, arguing that memories never exist in isolation; they’re stored in a web of associations. He writes that our brains are good at remembering images and places, and by tapping into this natural inclination, we can better memorize things our brains aren’t good at remembering, like lists of numbers or words.

To do this, first transform information into an image and then place that image into a memory of a place you know well, such as your home. For example, you can remember you need to buy eggs by imagining eggs on your doorstep. To make these images even more memorable, add some of these characteristics:

• Make it funny or lewd: Our brains find humor and sex interesting, so if your list includes orange juice, imagine a good-looking celebrity sipping a glass of it in the buff.
• Make it novel: We’ve evolved to pay attention to new stimuli, so if you need to remember apples, imagine them being blue and your brain won’t ignore that thought as just another typical apple.
• Make it personal: You remember things better when they’re related to your own experiences, so if you’re a country music fan, you’re more likely to remember to pick up butter if you imagine Shania Twain singing about it than Led Zeppelin.

3. Make Connections Between List Items

In The Memory Book, Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas offer a different approach to making connections—find associations between the words of the list you’re memorizing, rather than between each word separately and an unrelated image or setting.

For example, to memorize the list moon, pencil, coffee, and cloud, start by connecting the first two words. You might, for instance, imagine the moon anthropomorphized and writing with a pencil. Do the same for each subsequent pair of words: You might picture a pencil stirring a cup of coffee, and then the steam from the coffee forming a cloud.

Lorayne and Lucas recommend incorporating action into your connections wherever possible, as our brains are wired to remember movement more than static images.

4. Make It Emotional

In Limitless, Jim Kwik notes that information is forgettable, but feelings are memorable. If you can attach emotions to what you’re learning by making it, for example, exciting, adventurous, or poignant, you’ll be more likely to remember it.

You’ve probably experienced this phenomenon already. Think back to a time when you got an extraordinary piece of news, either good or bad. It’s likely you remember where you were and what you were doing at the time, even if it was many years ago. The emotion that the news triggered seared the memories of that experience into your brain. (This is why, for example, people can tell you exactly where they were when they heard that JFK had been shot, or can relate their experiences on the day of the 9/11 terrorist attack.)

One easy way to attach emotions to a piece of information is to make it funny—the joy of humor acts as the emotion that helps make something memorable. This is why silly acronyms and mnemonics can be so useful, such as “righty tighty, lefty loosey” to remind us which way to turn a screwdriver.

The Bottom Line

In general, memory experts agree that the trick to remembering new information is to connect it to information already stored in your long-term memory. We do this to some extent unconsciously when learning anything new, but by purposefully and consciously creating these associations—to existing memories, to our five senses, to other new information in strange ways, or to our emotions—we can boost our natural memory-making abilities. And, in the process, make our trips to the grocery store more successful.

Read the Full Guides

Shortform note: Read the full Shortform guides mentioned in this article (image: Engin Akyurt):

• Unlimited Memory
• Moonwalking With Einstein
• The Memory Book
• Limitless

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