How to Train Your Brain to Remember Everything

Re:How to Train Your Brain to Remember Everything by kinleyd on Monday April 02, 2012 @06:22AM (#3787322)

To follow up with a bit more substance. Rather than sweat it out remembering something like this the hard way (and it would be hard using normal methods):

    91852719521639092112

It's a piece of cake remembering this instead:

    A beautiful naked blond jumps up and down.

The imagery is easy to conjure, and before I get hammered for sexism of any kind, imagine a beautiful naked blond of either gender. ;)

The key linking the two is this:

    1 : t, d
    2 : n
    3 : m
    4 : r
    5 : l
    6 : j, sh, soft g
    7 : k, hard g, hard c
    8 : f
    9 : p, b
    0 : s, z, soft c

A little bit of time and effort memorizing the key has allowed me to handle tables of numbers and dates of amazing sizes and lengths. Thanks to a book by Harry Lorayne I picked up by chance in my 9th grade. :)

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Re:How to Train Your Brain to Remember Everything by pramodbiligiri on Monday April 02, 2012 @12:48PM (#3788956)

I concur. I too chanced across that Harry Lorayne book in high school and it made rote memorization much less of a chore during those years :) Even now I occasionally use it for phone numbers.

For the others, this is the book: http://www.amazon.com/How-Develop-Super-Power-Memory/dp/0811...

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Re:How to Train Your Brain to Remember Everything by lusr on Tuesday April 03, 2012 @01:58AM (#3791692)

He has many other books describing his techniques but that was easily the best one. I remember being able to memorize the sequence of half a deck of cards, forward and back, on my first attempt. It's amazing what you're capable of if you put the effort in (unfortunately I stopped...).

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Re:How to Train Your Brain to Remember Everything by jczhang on Monday April 02, 2012 @12:58PM (#3789017)

Why this specific mapping?

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Re:How to Train Your Brain to Remember Everything by kinleyd on Monday April 02, 2012 @01:09PM (#3789074)

It's the one Harry Lorayne came up with. It could be any other mapping you choose, as long as you stick with it. However, in this method the use of consonants for numbers and vowels as fill-ins is probably already optimal. The Life Hacker post describes some other methods which I'm not familiar with. I plan to try them out to see if they are any more efficient. Memorizing a deck of cards in just over a minute, as described there, is very compelling. I've always required a little bit more time than that to do the same.

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