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Many lists of memory improvement sites go out of date because the sites they link to fade way.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

Tips to make it easier to remember anything

The following heuristic notions that can help with organic memory organisation. If you decide you really want to memorize something, then learn memory techniques, if you want to remember organically then this list might help.


Make it Meaningful
If whatever you are trying to store makes sense to you, then you will find it easier to recall. Organize it in such a way that it makes sense.

Rhyme it to find it
When you convert it into a ryhyme then when you recall you'll have an easier time.

Is it on familiar ground?
If you already know the topic then tie in the new information to stuff you already know.

Repeat it
Whatever you are trying to remember. Repeat it to yourself. Have a gap. Test yourself. Repeat it. Essentially utilizing Ebbinghaus's work.

Information Theory
Information theory informs us about redundant data, so if we identify patterns in the information then we can use the lessons from information theory to help us construct what we tried to remember from minimal data.
Essentially, look for patterns.

Decide you want to remember it
Give yourself a reason to remember it. Make sure you are interested in the thing and in the recalling of the thing. This simple act will help massively.

Associate it with the environment
Remember the tip of the memory strategy where you visualize where you learned something? Well make it easy to use that strategy by associating what you are learning with your current environment.

.

Studying Techniques for memory recall

Plenty of techniques exist to help you study quickly, and you can use them to help you recall what you study:

Review the territory
Survey the material. Skip through it all quickly. Read the summaries. Look at the images. Get a feel for the structure.
I imagine that when I do this I'm blocking out space in my brain to put all the information I'm going to learn. I have no idea if the brain works like this, but it gives me a simple model of justification that works for me.

Create Questions
Write down questions about what you think you are going to learn. Check that the material you have studied answered those questions.
This helps you identify 'why' you want to study and remember the information. It also helps you identify what you already know about the topic.

Read it
Yup, you have to read it. I usually read it a number of times. I read it fast. I read it slow. I read it backwards. I read it in chunks.

Make Notes and Review
Having read it, I make notes. Sometimes on a mind map, sometimes as unstructured text, sometimes as a visual adhoc map. Whatever helps me review it.
The notes are really there to help me review. I can review what I've written against what is in my head. I can review my notes against the text to see how complete my understanding of the top is. i.e my notes don't have to contain all the information, but do they trigger the recall of the information from my brain? That is their main purpose.

Repeat
Yes, repeat each of the steps, in various orders, until you are confident with the material.

It's on the tip of my tongue

That moment when you can almost recall something, it's there, you can feel it, you can almost see it, but it won't manifest.

"It's on the tip of my tongue"

People have put forward plenty of theories to explain it, but do we care about theories? No we do not.

Do we care how to avoid it? Well, we avoid it with effective storage strategies such that we can recall it.

Do we know who to trigger access to it, when we didn't store it effectively?

The alphabet strategy:

• Cycle through the letters of the alphabet and see if that triggers it. It might help you narrow down the range of values.

The context strategy:

• You could access the environment where you think you stored it. e.g. if you were told the fact, or name, or whatever is on the tip of your tongue by someone. Then imagine them telling you again. Visualise the place they told you in. Remember some of the background noises. All of that context can help your brain plot a route to the stored information and might recall the information.

And once you have the information?

Re-store it using a variety of meta data to help you retrieve it again. Or use whatever memory technique you normally apply.

Sometimes re-storing it with newly associated meta data can work as an organic memory technique. So if you forgot someones name, but bring it back through the alphabet strategy, then re-store it, but visualising their face, and associating the face with the name. Perhaps shout it loud in your head. Stamp it on their forehead. Make the first letter really big to allow you to use the Alphabet strategy. You decide.

But if you don't do something to re-store it and make new associations that allow you to search and retrieve the information then you will face the same recall difficulties as before.

Simple System for remembering PIN Numbers

Many of the memory systems seem over complicated for little things.

Particularly for PIN numbers, we don't need a formal number alphabet.

The great thing about numbers is that they are all different, at least in English:

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Zero

I know you don't need to have them listed, but look, none of them rhyme, none of them are particularly similar, which means if you have a short PIN e.g. 9843

You don't need a complicated system, just find words that rhyme with the numbers and use them in a phrase. You can add any other words into the phrase so long as they don't rhyme with one of the numbers.

e.g.

• Nine - mine, fine, line
• Eight - gate, fate, mate, rate
• Four - door, floor, bore
• Three - wee, tree, she, twee

I don't need to have a specific set of words, I can use whatever is appropriate for the phrase e.g.

• a Line at the Gate was For a Tree
• the Mine(rs) Fate? Pour the Tea

When I practice recalling the phrase I say it in English in my head and overdub the number on the word at the same time.

If it is a pin I have to physically enter in a keypad then I practice recalling the phrase as I move my fingers to the keys to build in some muscle association as well.

I practice the recall of the number, phrase and movement while holding the card or pass that the PIN is for, or visualize the keypad that I have to use.

This means I'm using a system based on rhyme. I practice it in multiple ways to build associations with the context the PIN will be used in. I use my imagination to build the phrase to make it novel and memorable. 

We can, and should, design our own systems to help us remember things. 

The most important graph in the World by Tony Buzan Book Review

Book Review of "The most important Graph in the world" ...and how it will change your life by Tony Buzan with Jennifer Goddard & Jorge Castaneda [ amazon.co.uk | amazon.com ]

This book has multi-coloured pages, presumably to help you remember and harness the Von Restorff effect, covered in the book. And it tries to put in various pictures etc. to help your Association and thereby allow you to recall better.

And the writers are all 'experts' in this area, so presumably this stuff works for people. Me, I want you to get to the point and I'll summarise the information in ways that I can remember it, I don't really need the author giving me the associations, because I need to create them. So I guess I have a slightly different learning theory than the authors.

So guess, what? Yep, I thought the book had a lot of padding. Which I found annoying because it has a lot of good information.

What's the title? "The most important Graph in the world" on what page does the book really start discussing the "most important graph in the world" page 35. You can get a feel for the kind of padding that they use on this promotional video by Jennifer Goddard. In this video you see the graph for about 3 seconds, and learn nothing about it.

So what is the graph? You can see it on the page promoting the book I assume the image is copyright Buzan so I haven't included it here. (shhh, but I don't think the graph image is really that important)

It collates the important principles covered by the book:

• Primacy Effect - we remember things covered early in the learning experience
• Recency Effect - we remember things covered late in the learning experience
• Von Restorff effect - we remember things that are different and unique
• Association Effect - we remember things by linking them to our own models
• Understanding and Misunderstanding Effect - we can remember stuff that didn't happen
• Interest Effect - you'll remember stuff you are interested in
• Meaning and Insight - we piece things together as a whole

The graph and executive summary are available from the official site as a pdf, this also covers Chapter one where the graph is explained.

The book then elaborates on these principles with 'handy' hints and tips.

Use the Primacy Effect by making sure you make a good first impression (sadly the book didn't do this for me), start presentations with a strong opening, plan out your week at the start.

Use the Recency Effect by create a good last impression, take breaks if you want to learn stuff (that way you have more starts, and ends), end presentations with a call to action.

etc. The book has a chapter or so about each of these principles.

Part 2 works better for me. Small, concise, practical chapters. Particularly chapter 13, which is mostly contained in Matrix Templates and Mind Map from the official site.

Chapter 14 presents an acronym to help us understand how we learn TEFCAS

• Trial - an experiment
• Event
• Feedback
• Check
• Adjust - based on the feedback
• Success - did we move closer to our goal or not?

This model is compared to the Scientific Method:

• Hypothesis
• Experimental Design
• The Experiment
• Results
• Conclusions
• Next Experiment - design what to do next after analysing the results

Chapter 17 provides some helpful hints on adapting your presentation style around these principles. And the later chapters provide various examples relating the principles to PR and how to use them for time management so that you learn effectively

I found the book a little slow but if you like lots of examples and 'real world' association then this book might  work well for you. Certainly all the principles on offer are very important, I just didn't like the presentation.

Useful Links:

• http://www.thinkbuzan.com/intl/products/books/mostimportantgraph
• http://www.mostimportantgraph.com/
• Matrix Templates and Mind Map 
• graph and executive summary and chapter 1 
• http://www.mostimportantgraph.com/resources/
• amazon.co.uk | amazon.com
• Other book reviews and summaries of this title
• http://staroversky.com/the-most-important-graph-in-the-world-book-summary/
• every other review I saw seemed to be from either promotional material or people who had been given a free copy to review. The reviews on amazon seem pretty positive.