Linking and Memory Techniques

There are some great memory improvement techniques you can learn. Techniques that will help in turning numbers into words, memorizing names and remembering shopping lists. Let’s discuss how to memorize a list of grocery items. We will use 4 items only but you will see the size of the list does not matter.

What we do in memory techniques is to take something we already know and associate it with something we want to remember. So we connect the 2 together or link them together. We can use what is called the “Roman Room” to link items together so we can bring them up in our mind later on.

The reason this works is because there are certain things you will not forget. You know where you live. You know how your house looks and what rooms there are. Assume that you are going to buy the following items from the store:

Bananas
Soap
Bread
Paper Towels

Pick any room in your house or apartment. Now we will associate the items in the list with something in the room you choose. Imagine you walk into your living room and this is what you see:

Book Shelf
Table
TV
Couch

These are the first 4 things you see in sequence when you enter your living room. Take each item you want to remember on your shopping list and place them with one of the items in your living room or replace the item in your room with one from the list.

This is what you might see in your mind:

You walk into your living room and Bananas are shooting out of your Book Shelf. Some Bananas fall onto your Table and are skating on top of Soap. A bar of Soap slides off the Table and goes toward the TV, but the TV is not there. Instead there is a giant loaf of Bread. The giant Bread eats the Soap but throws it up all over your Couch. Out of your Couch come arms and they are holding Paper Towels and it starts to clean the mess on itself with the Paper Towels.