Quick and Easy Memory Improvement Exercises

First let's get right to some exercises. After that you can read on to learn techniques to help you remember specific information.

Remember these are exercises, things you can do every day to help keep your memory sharp.

Here, we'll use mnemonic as the first noun from the definition, something you can use to help you remember specific things.

First off for simple things it can take no more than a bit of extra focus. When you're introduced to someone new, make it a point to think about the fact that you want to remember their name. This kind of simple quick information often comes and goes too fast for our brains to store it properly. Just thinking to yourself, 'her name is KAREN, remember that', can easily make the deference in whether you remember it even a few minutes later.

Engage multiple senses, your memory can hold inform from all your senses and emotions. I'm sure you've at some point noticed a smell, tasted something, or heard a bit of a song and had it bring memories of a specific event pouring back. Learn to make intentional use of this ability, and give your mind added details to grab when trying to recall something.

Let's go back to the example of remembering a name for a moment. Is a song playing, a television on, any notable sound you can associate with the name? Are you eating something? Are they wearing perfume, or is a noticeable aroma in the air? Think of these things as you tell yourself, 'remember, her name is KAREN'. The more information you tie together the more things your mind can latch onto when you're trying to recall that information in the future.

That's really the key to remembering bits of information you pick up in passing. Tie the information to as many 'triggers' as you can. The more things your mind associates with the information the more likely it will be able to retrieve it when you want it.

The last bit I want to mention is 'the memory palace', also sometimes referred to as the story method, or peg method, and perhaps, most correctly as the method of loci. I'm only going to explain it briefly here, though perhaps I'll make it a lens of it's own some day.

The concept is to memorize a place, or a trip, or even a short story if you can visualize point in the story well enough. Let's use a place for this explanation, it's best to use a place you are well familiar with, so let's consider your bedroom. You'll need to select areas, or stops throughout the room in a specific order, these will be your pegs, or loci.

When you are trying to remember things you place them in the loci. To recall them you simply make a 'trip' through the room stopping at each loci to retrieve the information. When placing things in your loci keep in mind the techniques mentioned earlier, and try to place it in a manner that engages as many senses as possible. Your mind is also much quicker to recall the bizarre than the mundane. Use this, make your images as unusual as possible in your mind.

Perhaps you need to go to the store and want to remember a few tings you need to get, a box of pens, a notebook, and soap. Imagine that your first three loci are your bookcase, your bed, and your desk. Do not simply picture the notebook on the bookcase, the soap lying on the bed, and the box of pens sitting on your desk. Instead try imagining the pens climbing out of the box and marching around the bookcase, the notebook dancing on your bed giving a lecture, and the soap spewing bright green suds everywhere as it scrubs your desk all on it's own. These type of vivid images will be much easier for you to recall.

This isn't a simple technique to master, but it is considered to be perhaps the most powerful memory technique known. It was featured in the book Hannibal, by Thomas Harris, where the main character used it to recall vast amounts of information, don't bother trying to find it in the movie though, it was left out. Modern memory champions also use it, eight-time world memory champion Dominic O'Brien, refers to it as the journey method and was able to memorize 54 decks of cards in sequence, seeing each card once, that's a total of 2808 cards, in the right order. Many other high level memory competitors also credit this method, or a variation of it for their success.

Thanks for reading all the way through that. That's all I've got for now, but if you want more information there are a few memory improvement products from ebay and amazon.com listed below. Also please stop by the guest book at the bottom of the lens and let me know what you liked, or what you didn't like.

Thanks again

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