Mindful Ink     Life, Living and Productivity

Ah, memorization… there’s nothing quite so odious in either the academic or the business world. Some people are gifted with the ability to remember every name, date and obscure fact they run across, but most of us have to work at it.

Luckily, there are a number of “tricks” one can employ to help in memorizing those lists of verb endings, functions, and other obscurities. We’re going to list 7 methods here, with lots of great other resources at the end!

1. The Letter Mnemonic Device

This is a classic many of us used in elementary schools for everything from music notes to the planets. It usually involves the first letter, but for things like word endings you can use them instead. Creating your own is very easy and can be very, very handy. For instance, let’s look at some Latin noun endings (it’s something like this, it’s been a few years.)

What I need to know: -us -i -o -um -o -e
Mnemonic: Gus & I own gum & old seeds.

I know that “&” is never part of the mnemonic, and I know that “ee” in seeds is not a real ending, so this works just fine. Adding a few little rules in sometimes even helps you remember the phrase, but what is important is that you do remember the phrase. This works best with short lists.

2. The Rhythm Method

And no, this has nothing to do with birth control. But this is a rather ancient way of memorizing, and a very effective one. This relys on you making the material either have a rhythm of its own as you repeat it over and over again “us-I-o um-o-e” essentially turning the many faceted piece of memorization into a few words you get used to saying. Also, and is far more common for widely used information as it is harder to make up your own rhyme, you can also create a rhyme or little song to remember information. I find these work the best for me - things I’ve memorized years ago still readily come if I’ve done it using this method.

Here’s a classic regarding the wives of Henry VIII

divorced, beheaded, died
divorced, beheaded, survived

3. Link System

This is also a personal favorite. The link is composed of two distinct systems. One involves making up a story to memorize a list.

• Eggs
• Milk
• Bread
• Cheese

“Giant eggs from outer space were after the earth’s milk! They demanded it prepared and soaked in bread, with a side of cheese!”

It’s silly, but for many people this works well. I prefer the other type of link system - the absurd image. I tend to use these to memorize genders of words in other languages - nothing like imagining a telephone looking in vain for missing genitalia to remember it’s a neuter. Others may use it more like the other sort of link system - imagining an image of giant eggs eating milk and bread with a side of cheese.

4. The Method of Loci

One of the oldest known memorization systems, this is also probably the most powerful though it takes the most work to master. Essentially, one memorizes a place and then connotes various locations in that place with the material one wishes to memorize. This one is actually too complicated to get into here, but I’d recommend looking into it here if you’re interested.

5. The Stacking Method

The stacking method is a rote method, not the sort of thing I’m typically fond of as it is a rather “brute force” method and I prefer a bit more finesse. That being said, you can’t argue that it doesn’t work.

The stacking method works by repeating the information, line by line, until you have it memorized. For instance, you’d repeat line one until you can repeat it without looking at it. Then you’d add line two to the list, etc. Find more out here.

6. Teach It!

As opposed to lists of information and such, the Teaching method is more for conceptual information. It’s not about memorizing a specific set of words, but rather helping one establish a concept or narrative. The trick here is to go into a quiet room and “teach” the material for an amount of time each day until you’ve mastered it. This actually works very well.

7. Flash Cards

Tried and true, again - this is a brute force method, but it works for things like vocabulary better than just about anything. We’ve gone into flash cards before - check out some of our past articles about it:

Flash Cards: Part I

Flash Cards: Part II

Additional Resources

When to use what technique

Mnemonics - Memory Techniques

Wired How-To Wiki: Memorize Anything

Other Articles:

Lifehacker: Memory Tag

Lifehack: How to Study

DumbLittleMan: 5 Quick and Easy Memory Tricks

GearFire: 3 Effective Methods to Study for Exams

Study Hacks: Use Focused Question Clusters to Study

ThatCollegeKid: 8 Ways To Aid Your Memory

Books:

Mind Performance Hacks

Improving Your Memory for Dummies

Have any study or productivity tips or links? Send them in!