Certain things really stick in my mind easily but, I think because of information overload, someone can tell me their name or I'll just have read something and minutes later, it's gone. I used to know all my family's phone numbers but now they're on speed dial so I have no need to recall them. I write lists and set my iPhone to remind of things - like the fact that I need to be in my son's class in an hour to help with reading.
So why aren't memory techniques taught in schools? Less and less is learnt by rote these days but children still need to know the names of Henry VIII's six wives in the right order and their six times tables.
Joshua Foer's Moonwalking with Einstein was a freebie I picked up at work after his publishers sent it in in the hope we'd interview him about it in exchange for a free plug. In it, journalist Josh becomes fascinated by mnemonists who spend days cossetted in ear muffs with blinkers on trying to memorise sequences of packs of cards or lists of binary digits and other numbers. They then face it off to win competitions held in darkened halls, like a secret society. They've developed varying techniques, some simple, some complex, to enable them to retrieve information they've only briefly glanced at from their brains.
The one that I think should be taught in schools is where you've got to memorise a shopping list or to-do list of, say, 12 items. The idea is that you visualise a journey that you know really well like walking round your childhood home or to your local shops. In your mind's eye, you place the objects you have to remember at certain points on that journey. The more vivid the colours and whackier the scenario, the more likely you'll remember them. And because you're placing those objects on a route that you will always be able to recall, you remember them in the right order too.
For example, Josh's friend Ed dreams up a bizarre list of things he needs to remember and gets Josh to try to memorise it: Pickled garlic, cottage cheese, peat-smoked salmon, six bottles of white wine, three socks, hula hoops x 3 (spare??), a snorkel, dry ice machine, email Sophia, skin-toned cat suit, find Paul Newman film "Somebody Up There Likes Me", elk sausages, director's chair and megaphone, barometer.
I've just rattled that list off easily because I was able to do it too. I've memorised placing those objects around the house I lived in when I was seven or eight. The whacky scenarios I've invented are assisted by the fact that the objects are so unusual. So I've got a large jar of pickled garlic being picked up by a Frenchman at the entrance to the driveway. Then Brad Pitt is in a bath of cottage cheese! Opening my front door, I turn right and my brother-in-law, Pete, is laying out slices of salmon on top of the piano where it's being peat-smoked. There are six bottles of white wine on the sofa under the window having a dance, bizarrely. And the brightly coloured odd socks are on top of the lampshade as I walk out of the dining room towards the kitchen. That's where there's someone snorkelling in the sink. I look out of the window and it's all foggy in the garden because of a dry ice machine. I walk outside and Sophia Loren is sat at a computer checking her email. Walking through the French doors into the lounge, Cat Woman is on the TV in a flesh-coloured all-in-one. But Paul Newman is lying on the sofa holding a remote control and he changes channel, then looks up at the ceiling and smiles. On the way to the door, there's a set of antlers on the wall (something we'd never have had at home, but there you go) with a string of sausages dangling off it. Finally, my dad is sat in a director's chair at the foot of the stairs belowing into a megaphone. Above his head is a barometer.
Odd, bizarre, whacky but incredibly effective.
Try it!
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