11 Easy Ways to Remember Practically Everything

I'm always striving to improve my memory. Below are some tips I use all the time to help me remember.

Remembering Grocery and Other Lists

• Remember the first letter of each item and make a sentence. For example, Milk, Eggs, Sugar, Lemons becomes My Eagle Sings Lullabies.
• Link the list: A mound of sugar with an egg cracked into the middle, lemon wedges all around and a naughty child pouring a carton of milk all over it.
• For errands try to find a common letter: Market becomes "Safeway," dry cleaner becomes "shirts," bike repair becomes Schwinn, even if I have a Giant brand bike.
• Use a memory palace with outlandish associations as Joshua Foer does in his new book "Walking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything." My variation would have a lemon with arms knocking at the front door, a big glass bottle of milk with arms greeting the lemon at the door, the entryway coated with sugar, and raw eggs all over the sofa.

Preserving Random Thoughts

If you don't have a pen and paper, call your voicemail with the message or text yourself.

Remembering Where You Put Things

• Before putting something random away, ask yourself, "Where would I look for this?"
• If your surroundings are organized, it's easier to find things. Invest some time organizing to save time in the long run.
• In a recent article I wrote 50 time-saving tips, including my mother's mantras: "A place for everything and everything in its place," and, "Don't put it down, put it away."
• Use Post-Its to temporarily label outsides of files and other drawers after you reorganize them.

Paying Attention

It may sound absurd that if you use a purse you would leave home without it. But that's happened to me plenty, typically when I'm carrying a couple of things I don't typically take, say, a sandwich. So when leaving home, before I close the door behind me, I ask myself, "Do I have my purse? Do I have my keys?"

Keys

Latch your keys to your purse, so you don't waste minutes searching your home or your purse for them. But then of course you need to remember to take your purse when you leave home.

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Resources

• Stop Forgetting
• Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
• Good Thinking Kit

For More Tips

• Visit my blog, Confessions of a Worrywart.
• See my article 21 Ways to Remember Names, Whether You Took Your Pills & More.

• For dozens of organizing tips, take my Organizing Challenge.

• Packing List and Other Tips Before Trips

• See also my Huff Po Divorce and other articles.

 

Follow Susan Orlins on Twitter: www.twitter.com/susanorlins

Comments

[french queen13]

09:22 PM on 04/03/2011

I find the easy way to get what I need grocery-wise is to write it down on a pad in the kitchen when I notice I'm getting low on something. The list comes with me when I do the weekly shop, or if I think of it on the way home from work, I'll stop in and get smaller items from the list (I don't drive, so they have to be the smaller ones - no getting big bags of kitty litter on the way home for me!)

Having keys attached to something is good too. ("Purse" threw me for a minute, before I remembered that a purse in the US is a handbag here; a purse in Australia is what would be a wallet there, I think.) My keys live clipped to my backpack, and just need to change when I go out on the weekend.

"Where would I look for this?" is a very good idea that I must try!

[Susan Orlins]

01:34 AM on 04/04/2011

It's true that lists work, and I try to write it down when groceries get low. But in general, I end up with a lot of loose PostIts all over the place. Sounds as though you are pretty organized with your keys and list. Where would I look for this is so simple and seems obvious, but it wasn't until recently that I thought of it!
Thanks for writing from down under!

[martman1]

08:19 AM on 04/03/2011

Its easy to remember 20 or 30 "nouns" if you create a story in your head linking them together. Try it or show it to your kids - they'll amaze your friends when they also repeat the list backwards.

[Susan Orlins]

10:34 AM on 04/03/2011

Yes! And there is a way to make a permanent list of nouns for every number by using consonant sounds for each digit 0 through 9 and then you associate any list to these words. It could be a separate post, which maybe I'll write sometime. I learned it from the book, published years ago, Stop Forgetting.