I’m convinced that memory is something like a muscle – if you don’t use it, it shrinks. Over the years I’ve heard many people, in treatment and in my personal life, complain about their memory. Some folks make excuses in advance, don’t trust their memory, and consequently don’t rely on it. This can be a self-fulfilling prophesy. There are many factors- some biological – that affect memory. I’ve come to believe that one of these factors is a “reinforcement loop” involving (1) trusting your memory and (2) relying on its accuracy from experience and therefore exercising it more often. If you don’t have a biological or psychological impairment, you mostly remember the things you actively commit to short-term memory. This increases your trust in your memory and increases your reliance, which further increases your trust, etc. Part of having a good memory is cultivating good memory habits.
Another factor is mindfulness, as opposed to “being in your head,” lost in thought. I used the term “actively commit to memory” above. Actively committing something to memory is something like active listening: it requires mindfulness. Mindfulness is being present in the only time there is – this moment. I’ve admitted in a previous post to having obsessive-compulsive traits. There are times when I leave the house preoccupied with thoughts, and then worry because I can’t remember locking the door. But when I lock the door mindfully, it’s as if I have a video recording of the event in my head, and there’s no subsequent anxiety.
This is an example of committing something to short-term memory simply by paying attention, being mindful. But there are also memory aids known as mnemonic devices that can help you commit things to your short- or long-term memory. Acronyms can serve as mnemonic devices. Ever since I heard of Roy G. Biv ( a made-up name) I’ve been able to name the colors of the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. The first letter of each word in the following sentence is a mnemonic device for recalling the planets in the solar system, in order of their distance from the sun: “Molly very easily makes jam, sometimes using no pectin.” A sentence is often easier to memorize than a list of names, and this sentence is the key to remembering: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupitor, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. You can make up your own mnemonic sentences to memorize things. Rhymes can also be mnemonic devices, as with “Thirty days hath September/ April, June and November./ All the rest have thirty-one/ Except the second month alone./ To it we twenty-eight assign/ ‘Til leap year gives it twenty-nine.”
Another mnemonic device – an ancient technique now known as image mnemonics – involves visualizations that serve as “pegs” to hang list items on. I’ll share two variations on that technique that will allow you to reliably store a ten-item shopping list in your short-term memory. The first variation is to memorize ten places in or around your home, in a specific order, such as the order in which you’d encounter them when you come home. Number one might be your driveway, number two the walkway to your front porch, number three the front porch, number four the hall table just past the door, etc. Once you have the places memorized in order, have somebody name random grocery list items – slowly, as you indicate you’re ready. When each item is specified, imagine it -perhaps in some altered or exaggerated form – in the sequential locations. The weirder the image, the better. If the first item is bread, you might imagine a giant loaf blocking the driveway. If the second item is eggs, imagine a row of colored Easter eggs on the walkway. If the third item is chicken, imagine a live chicken clucking on the front porch. Once you have an image for each grocery item pegged on one of the memorized locations, all you have to do to recall the items is to mentally go to the ten locations in order and name what you put there.
The other variation is to memorize these ten words that rhyme with the numbers one through ten: bun, shoe, tree, door, hive, sticks, heaven, gate, line (as in clothesline) and pen (as in pigpen). As you’re given the ten items, match each one of them with one of your ten images, in order. You might end up with a whole, raw potato in a bun, a shoe filled with milk, a tree hung with toilet paper, a giant fish standing at the door, a beehive buzzing with flying shrimp, a fried egg on a pile of sticks, a turkey at the gates of heaven, a gate made of cheese, bagels hanging from a clothesline, and a pen filled with bacon.
This mnemonic device works by allowing you to create an association between random items you want to commit to your short-term memory, and a fixed sequence of mental pegs on which to temporarily hang the items. I’ll be writing more about memory in future posts, but in the meantime you can amaze your friends with your ability to memorize lists. Once you understand the principles, you can create your own mnemonic devices, and work at developing good memory habits.
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