Sharpening Memory and Recall Lists

Suppose you have a grocery list with the following items:

Eggs
Bread
Bacon
Cheese
Milk

What would you do to memorize this list without writing it down? For a small list of different items, the most effective technique of remembering items is to relate the words and combine them to create a chain.

Eggs-Bread-Bacon-Cheese-Milk

Then, try visualizing a humorous story in your mind so that the objects on the list can have some linkages. For example, imagine entering the grocery shop with a bag. Start with the bag, as it is difficult to think immediately of eggs. Imagine someone appearing out of nowhere, giving you an egg and disappearing. Overwhelmed, you take the egg and put it in the bag. The egg cracks and makes a terrible mess. The mess will be a noticeable image that will make you remember of eggs. Then the next person arrives and hands you the bread. Due to the mess, you do not put the bread in the bag, but hold it in your hand. You tie a string to the bread and swirl it while you walk.

This narrative can be quite lengthy, however remember that this story should be in your mind and not written on a piece of paper. In fact, it is more vivid that going a little more detailed will help in remembering the list later. The more variety in the story such as appearance or smell or shape the more chances of remembering the items.

Heading back to the story, from out of the blue, you spot bacon on the sidewalk, and you step on it. As bacon is greasy, you mess your feet. Then, you notice cheese lying on the grass, and your other foot steps on it. Now your feet are a mess. Back at the store, there is no washroom, so you have to use milk to clean your feet.

This has turned into a funny story. If you did not notice, the grocery bag was not used. If we had, there would have been similar sequences and that would have made the story dull. As the story is already funny, look away from the article and think through it again, and try narrating it in you own words. Try it again tomorrow and see if you can remember the story.

The grocery lists are easy to remember, so try longer lists that can go up to 50 items. If you forget a word somewhere in the middle, the chain breaks and the sequence is useless. When you want to remember the 34th president of the United States, try remembering the names in the order of service, which means try remembering the first 33 presidents.

You can also try to remember longer lists by using the peg word system. The system uses use peg words, that are common words pegged to digits from 0 to 9 and helps in memorizing items on the list.