Some memory improvement sites

Many lists of memory improvement sites go out of date because the sites they link to fade way.

This list may well exhibit the same tendency over time.

• http://memoryskills.blogspot.co.uk/
• http://www.ludism.org/mentat/MemoryTechnique

Memory Palaces and Journeys

Memory Palace

Journey

A Memory Palace is a set of locations that you can recall easily. And when you want to remember things, you put them in the locations.
You might recall the rooms of your house easily. And so if you want to remember a list of items, you put each item to remember in the room.
To help recall the item when you visit the room in your mental memory palace, you might need to make the image bizarre, imaginative, strange so that they stand out in your mind. This helps you pair the item to the location, and aid recall.
This is sometimes called a ‘journey’ method because you can create a ‘journey’ through the rooms, and possibly use different journeys for different lists.
The ‘journey’ or chain of locations doesn’t have to be a house, it could be a journey that you make regularly that is already burned into your mind:

• the commute to work
• the walk to the shops
• a walk around the streets where you live

Find one that you can recall, and has locations where you can pair items to remember.
I think I found the notion of it as a ‘journey’ in a Dominic Obrien book.

Location

A variation of this is to use a physical location.
This works well if you need to remember things in an actual physical location so you can look around and have your recall triggered by the actual place.
You need to:

• know the physical place pretty well
• identify ‘slots’ in the physical location to place items to remember
• still create bizarre images to pair the items with the slots

Then as you look around the physical location your recall will be triggered.

Peg Systems

These do seem to be variations of a ‘peg’ system.
The ‘journey’ notion is useful for remembering items in sequence.
The ‘location’ notion is useful for remember stuff in ‘random’ orders depending on when you visit the locations or wander around the physical location.