10 mnemonic rules and strategies to remember things better

Training memory is a healthy exercise that is recommended at any age. It is also interesting to develop other basic psychological processes closely related to it, such as thought, language and learning. The ultimate goal is to keep an alert, agile and flexible mind. with which we can live a full and meaningful life.

concisely, having a good memory means remembering what we want and when we want.

Starting from the basic principles of memory, a few techniques can help to achieve this goal.

1. Here and now

This strategy It consists of repeating, whenever it suits us, this expression. It is very easy to apply and powerfully helps to focus attention and concentration on what we want at that moment, a fundamental aspect of any type of memorization.

2. Acronyms

With the initial of different words a new one is formed, as it happens with acronyms as popular as RENFE, ONU or ONCE. They work like recall cues or retrieval cues and replace a difficult memorization task with an easier one.

3. Tell a story

Suppose we have to remember seven words, for example: white, Juan, China, suitcase, green, jersey, dog. If we make a little story with them it will be much easier for us to remember them, it will make them much more meaningful.

4. Discover a pattern

Imagine that we are faced with the task of memorizing the following list of fifteen numbers: 258111417202326. The difficulty is greatly reduced by discovering that these numbers have a regular pattern to each other, in such a way that we always add +3 to the previous one. Once the pattern is discovered, all we have to do is remember it. and the start number of the series. Under these circumstances we could “remember” an infinite series of numbers.

5. Association to remember names

The names of people are not always easy to remember. To facilitate this task it is very useful to use the principle of association. For example, if we are introduced to Rosa, we can associate her name with a huge rose or to a family member or friend of the same name; if the name is Pedro, we can think of a stone, the Flintstones, the verbena, that Saint Peter’s Day is someone’s birthday, etc.

The association possibilities are endless, and there are neither good nor bad associations: the important thing is that the associated information is meaningful to us.

6. The method of the Loci

Is about draw a blueprint mentally for example of a house, and go placing the new information in each of the rooms. If we want to recover it, we will only have to take a mental tour of the house and “collect” the data.

7. Fragment the information

To remember a relatively long number, such as a mobile phone or a bank account, we can break into small blocks and associate each of them with something significant. For example, 254019701193 will become

25: Christmas day 40: pants size 1970: year in which such a thing happened 11: month of November 93: Barcelona telephone code.

8. Imaging

For example, if we have to go buy different foods we can imagine them in a virtual still life, forming a clear and sharp image.

9. Reflect

Is think of everything that occurs to us that may be associated with what we want to remember, based on the idea that in memory each piece of information is connected to others in one way or another.

Read Also: Heart-healthy diet: weekly menu and best foods for the heart

For example, we want to remember the name of the protagonist of the last movie we have seen and at that moment it does not come out. We can then recall the situation thinking about the music, who we were with, the name of the actress, the smell of the cinema, how her character was dressed, etc. This strategy is used, for example, in witness memory.

10. Three good things

It’s about remembering, before falling asleep, three good things that have happened throughout the day. This practice is not only useful for memory, but it is also proposed from the framework of positive psychology to increase well-being and happiness.