Mnemonic Devices - How To Remember Like a Genius

Not remembering is perhaps one of the most annoying things of all time. It might help to cope with traumatic experiences, but more often than not, it can lead to disaster. Many suggestions have been presented throughout the history, like reading or listening repeatedly or just rote memorizing (which does not help in long term, or even short term). Apart from them, there are other memory techniques which can perhaps be more solid and useful, like mnemonic devices.

A valid question you may ask. Mnemonic devices are techniques that help bolster your memory retaining capacity by using your imagination to its fullest. With this approach, you encode the things you are to remember so that when you imagine them, you immediately recall the real thing. Most preferably in a way that makes no practical sense, our brain remembers extraordinary quite well! There are four basic types of mnemonic devices:

1. Images and visualization
2. Acronyms and acrostics
3. Rhymes
4. Chunking

Mnemonic Major System is also known as phonetic numerals (phonetics). In this system, each number is associated with a consonant. Numbers are converted into letters or words, from where phrases are easy to form. You have but to decode it to the original numbers. These can help you remember the birthdays and phone numbers; you only need to associate the consonant to the number.

Most commonly used phonetics are-

• 0 – s, z
• 1 – t, d
• 2 – n  
• 3 – m
• 4 – r 
• 5 – l 
• 6 – j, ch, sh 
• 7 – c, k, g, q, 
• 8 – v, f, ph 
• 9 – p, b  

It’s relatively easy once you have it embedded in your mind; The only alphabets not included are W, H, Y, X and the vowels, which can be remembered as “WHY is VOWELX not included.”
Now, let’s see if it can be put into practical use. Take, for example, that you had to remember your teacher’s number, which is 7982417654.

You could convert that into- c, p, f, n, r, t, c, sh, l, r.
You see, these letters just don’t make sense like that, so you make words out of it by adding vowels and suitable letters where needed. The end result might look something like this- CaP, FerN, RaT, CaSH, LoRe.
You can see there are highlighted letters at both ends of the word or are at least noticeable when speaking. It makes the job of your brain way easier.

Linking is an approach where you link things to each other to make an animation inside your head in order to remember things like lists. The more absurd the animation, the more vividly you will remember it and the fewer chances of you forgetting something or two in long lists. It’s pretty easy once you have it down cold.

Try and remember this-

• Darth Vader
• Jam bottle
• Rowing boat
• Microscope
• Minecraft
• Agent Coulson
• Sunglasses
• Laptop
• Jacket
• Bacteria
• Lightning rod
• Mark Hamill
• Soapsuds
• tree

Yes, this may as well be the most uncommon grocery list, but it works for our purpose. Remembering long lists like this can be really hard, but not impossible at all.
Now then, imagine this. Try to make it as vivid as humanly possible.

• Darth Vader takes out his weapon, the jam bottle, and throws it toward the enemy.
• The jam bottle lands on a rowing boat as it crashes on the sand.
• As The rowing boat crashes, we zoom out of it to find that it is sitting on a Minecraft CD on a microscope.
• Agent Coulson wearing sunglasses, flips the microscope into a laptop.
• He takes out a jacket from the screen and wears it.
• The bacteria inside the jacket takes an electric rod and electrocutes Mark Hamill.
• Mark Hamill falls on the floor and coughs out soap suds.
• The soap suds solidify and convert into the soil, from which a tree grows.

You can try this with any lists you want to remember. Practice it a few times, and you won’t even have to look at the list again!

If I told you to tell me the twelfth letter from the alphabet without counting from the start, it would probably be the hardest thing you have done, but you can make it easier. Memory peg is quite a unique approach where you associate pictures to numbers, and we can use the linking technique here; for example, the peg for one is a tie. Therefore, we imagine 1 wearing a tie so fit it chokes itself. 
You can make your own memory pegs, but for a baseline, I will give you a few

• Tie = 1
• Bow = 2
• Tree = 3
• Door = 4
• Fly = 5

(For more information, read; The Monograph by Ben Cardall, 2015)

Acronyms mean to take the first letter of each word and make a word (or at least something like a word) out of it. For example, LASER is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Acronyms are very helpful as they are not so hard to remember or decode
A few more examples-
Indian Space Research Organization – ISRO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO
Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistic Division – SHIELD
Bavarian Motor Works- BMW

While Acronyms make a word out of the first letter of the full form, Acrostics make phrases out of the first word of the full form to be remembered, but that’s up to you.
One example is-
My- Mercury
Very- Venus
Educated- Earth
Mother- Mars
Just- Jupiter
Sent- Saturn
Us- Uranus
Nine- Neptune
Pizzas- Pluto

I don’t think I have to explain what Rhymes are, but for the sake of formality, Rhymes are words that sound similar to each other with a minimal difference, like Cat and Bat, Sand and Land, etc. this help to remember many certain words or phrases, you have but to make a poem or song out of it, run it a few times in your mind and you are all set! We have been taught this since our childhood, and its relatively easy

In this approach, you break down the massive numbers, letters, or codes into smaller parts so that you don’t exactly have to remember the entire thing as a whole but pieces of it to put together. For example, if you had to remember your hypothetical boss’s number, which is 68783468873, you would remember it as 6878-346-8873, much like what we have already seen being done with many phone numbers.

These Mnemonic Devices are maybe the best way to remember and recall things you have stored inside your head. Just some time to settle them down, and you should have no problem with your memory again.