Route to Remember
Ordered lists are hard to remember. Water is hard to carry if you don’t have a bucket. Everything is hard if you don’t know how to do it. Let’s try a simile here. What is like remembering an ordered list, only easier?
Commuting. Every day millions of people drive their cars from home to work. They almost never get lost. They never complain about having to memorize this long list of turns. If they have to change the route, they learn it in a couple of tries.
If you ask them for directions to follow the route, they will give you a long list of turns and street names. You will probably not be able to remember the route without writing it down. But you will easily learn to follow the route by driving it a couple of times.
Why is learning a route so much easier than learning a list of phrases? Unless you make special arrangements, a list of phrases will probably turn on only your language modules. When you navigate a route, you turn on the modules you use to store concrete experience and the modules that you use to remember places that are important to you. Those are the modules you use to follow the route. Your language modules just talk about the route.
None of this does you any good in remembering an ordered list. Unless you can make some connection between a route you know and the ordered list. The way you do that is to think of a dramatic, distinctive, or funny image that combines the first item on the list with the first point you chose to use on your route.
For example, take those twelve cranial nerves (please!). The first of these nerves is: Olfactory. I choose my car as the first step on my commute. How would smelling connect to my car? The smell of burning oil would be dramatic. The smell of fresh donuts would be distinctive. The image of the car’s hood turning into a huge nose would be funny.
If you do this with each item on the list, you will be able to retrieve the items in order by following your route in your head. If you make the trip routinely, recall the items on each trip. A few trips and you will know it cold.
One thing to remember: If you need this trick again, try to find a different route (for example, in your house). If you must use the same route, use different points.
Other places to use: In your room. In your house. On your street. On your body. On another body. Around a classroom. Through a building. Around a campus. Time on a clock. Months on a calendar, with special days for special memories. .
Rhythm, Rhyme, and Repetition.
The Four Secrets of a Great Memory
Route, Team study
And team study for parents