From time immemorial, knowledge has been seen as the ultimate power, and memory skills techniques seen as the best means to obtain it. If you possess knowledge, you hold the highest of seats of honours. But as we all know, memory capacity is not equally distributed in everyone. Granted, your neighbour might remember better than you what to buy in the grocery store while you have to rely on a note, but that does not mean that you cannot train your mind to rival his, even if it was not so to begin with.
When speaking of trying to retain information which you are likely to forget easily, association is a highly useful technique. What it refers to is basically something that all of us practise unconsciously. For example, if you are told about Paris, what is the image that pops up into your mind? Most of you are guaranteed to think of the Eiffel Tower. The same technique works in memory management areas too and is highly effective at that. For example, if you want to know where you put your shirt last, think what were you doing when you opened it. Retrace your steps. When you came into the room, what did you first do? Did you approach the cabinet? Maybe use the hanger? And there you have your answer. The mere association of the hanger with the objectification of the act of putting your shirt up helped you locate it. In ancient times, spies used to carry out messages by doing the same. Since written paper could be compromised, they injured their bodies at specific parts and formed a code corresponding to numbers associated with that part. This way, no enemy could intercept the message and he would not forget it either.
Another extremely important act enhancing your memory is visualization. Try visualizing the message you wish to keep by encoding it in an image which is shocking to yourself in some way, either comically, gravely or otherwise which you find suitable. For example, if you wish to remember what a halberd is (it’s a 12th century two handed weapon by the way), you can always think of a huge bearded man standing in the middle of an empty hall with a big two handed axe. Contrary to popular belief, this visualization actually helps us retain quite a few facts in our brain quite efficiently.
But nothing beats the time tested repetition and rehearsal theory. Keep repeating in your head the information which you wish to retain until it gets embedded into your very soul. Students have been known to cram up information from ancient times. Human brain has an unsurpassed capacity for storing up knowledge and it has been found that we use only a fraction of what our brain is actually capable of doing. But repetition does not mean that you have to go reading the same thing over and over again. Confucius said, “The weakest link is stronger than the best memory”. What it means is that a direct interpretation of facts in the physical world is extremely effective in the form of writing. Practise what you wish to retain by writing it down. Psychology shows that human beings have an aptitude for catching on to something to which they can physically link their actions to.
Outline what you want to remember. The Romans had a very interesting way of doing it. They used to visualize a single empty room as a part of outlining a memory. As the information they needed to store got more and more complex, they kept adding intricate details to their outline, each pertaining to a fact that needed to be remembered. As the full picture became clearer, so did the whole memory. In short, having a framework to hold to a memory helps keep it in place.
Read aloud your facts. The joy of finding out something for yourself by its repetition helps it embed in a deeper part of the sub conscious as being something which has a higher importance than normal memories. Finally, practise mnemonics. A simple mnemonic of VIBGYOR standing for violet, indigo, blue etc. the different colours of the rainbow helps in keeping a particular sequence in memory in a simple manner. But at the end, no matter what memory skills techniques you employ, the wish to know is the ultimate help.
