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Memorize Anything Using a Photographic Mind

Quick Notes - Memorize Anything:
  • The key to memorization is associating something you dont know to something you already do know or understand.
  • Picture association allows you to memorize anything from people names to phone numbers.
  • Using Mnemonics like acronyms, acrostics, and image associations are just a few great memorization techniques.

The one key to memorization is association. In order to memorize or learn something you don't know, you need to relate it to something you do know:

The most effective way to do this is by using your photographic memory. Everyone has a photographic memory, you just need to know how to use it. Whether your trying to memorize the states and their capitals, a long list of medical terms, phone numbers, or a group of peoples names, there are ways of memorizing these things long term by creating images in your mind and storing them in your brain.

Memorization Techniques - Mnemonics

One memorization technique is to create an acronym which is when you combine letters to form a word. The word that you create helps trigger the brain in memorizing something else, that is usually more difficult in memorizing than your acronym. Acronyms are usually great for remembering the order of something. For example memorizing the colors of the rainbow in order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) can be remembered by using the acronym ROY G BIV. ROY G BIV is a combination of all the colors first letter. The word PEMDAS is an acronym used to help math students remember the sequence of operations they should use when solving a problem. The letters in PEMDAS stand for Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction.

Somewhat of an opposite technique than an acronym is to create an acrostic, which is a sentence where the first letter of each word represents an idea that you need to remember. A very popular acrostic that you may of heard is, “Every Good Boy Does Fine.” The first letters of each word in the sentence give you the following: E G B D F. These letters stand for the G-clef sequence of music notes.

One technique you will find useful, and can be used in combination with other memorization techniques is rhyming. This technique is very commonly used when creating peg words for short lists. You will read more about peg words in other chapters of this website.

Another popular method when memorizing lists or names is using image association which requires the photographic portion of your mind. I will talk more about this technique because in my opinion it is the most useful and powerful of all the techniques related to memorization. This technique requires you to take a photographic picture in your mind of what you are trying to memorize or learn.