How to Memorize Anything You Want: A Quick Primer on Mental Mapping | The Art of Manliness

I meant to post this article when it first hit my e-mail some time ago and I forgot, so obviously I need some work in this area. I'll have to remember (somehow) to get back to it and dig into the details.

This all seems so easy when somebody like this expert or former basketball great Jerry Lucas describes how he memorized the Manhattan phone book.

But to me it always seemed as if you had more stuff to remember when the initial problem you have is remembering stuff. I already feel as if I have a bad case of information overload at times.

Nevertheless, this is good stuff.


How to Memorize Anything You Want: A Quick Primer on Mental Mapping | The Art of Manliness:

"Editor’s note: This is a guest post from two-time USA Memory Champion, Ron White.

What if you could play a game of cards with your buddies and recall every card that had been played? You can.

What if you could meet a client today and six months later see him at a football game and recall his name along with his wife’s and kids’ names? You can.

What if you could look at a 50 digit number for 90 seconds and then repeat the number forwards and backwards from memory? You can.

So how do you master your memory to this level? By utilizing a simple system of mental maps, you will be amazed at the amount of knowledge you will be able to store."

He says it's fun, but I found it to be frustrating. Especially since I could more easily remember trivial, historical sports stuff, but forget important things like peoples names.

So how do you master your memory to this level? By utilizing a simple system of mental maps, you will be amazed at the amount of knowledge you will be able to store.

Here’s how to begin:

Select 5 rooms in your home or office.
In each room, number 5 large items. Number these items 1-25. The first item in the first room is #1, the first item in the second room is #6, the first item in the third room is #11, and so on. For example: Bedroom–1. desk, 2. bed, 3. tv, 4. dresser, 5. computer…Bathroom-6. toilet 7. window, 8. shower, 9. sink, 10. towel rack…etc. Remember, this is just an example.You want to select the pieces of furniture in the way they flow around your particular room.
Practice saying these pieces of furniture and their corresponding numbers over and over until it becomes second nature to say them forwards or backwards. We will refer to these pieces of furniture as “files.”

Now whenever you wish you to recall something, turn it into a picture and imagine it interacting with this piece of furniture.

Let’s say that you want to memorize all the Super Bowl winners. Once you have your files (the pieces of furniture) memorized, the next item of business is to turn whatever you wish to recall into a picture.

So you would be looking at a list that looks like this:

Green Bay Packers
Green Bay Packers
New York Jets
Kansas City Chiefs
Baltimore Colts
Dallas Cowboys
Miami Dolphins
Miami Dolphins
Pittsburgh Steelers
Pittsburgh Steelers

In order to remember anything, it must be an image that you can imagine. For example, if you wanted to recall the number 593787, it might be tough to recall. But a photo album with a coffee cup in it would be easy to remember. That is my picture for 593787. For now, lets address turning the football teams into pictures, a much simpler task that turning 593787 into an image.

What could you picture for the Green Bay Packers? Perhaps packaging. Coming up with an image for the Jets is easy–just picture an airplane jet. For the Chiefs, you would picture an Indian chief. The Colts would be a horse and the Cowboys a cowboy. This is pretty simple actually when you’re dealing with teams.