According to memory expert Dominic O'Brian, there are three principles to effective memorization: association, location, and imagination. Specific techniques include association, organization through chunking and categorization, using visual aids like chained images or the method of loci, and verbal methods like stories, acronyms, acrostics, rhymes and songs. Placing information in a vivid location and forming connections between items are important for effective memorization.

1. Tips to help you to memorize

2. Dominic O’Brian
 of the World Memory
According to O’Brian (8 time winner
Championships), there are 3 principles of memory:
 Association: memory and creativity are based on
associations
 Location: there is something about placing mental images
in a specific location that makes them easier to recall
 Imagination: the mind remembers things that are
exaggerated, so mnemonic images should be vivid and
exaggerated

3. The importance of location

O'Brien said that mnemonic
associations should be given a
specific location.
When someone's name can't
be remembered, the first thing the
mind does is say, "where did I meet
this person?" As soon as the person
can be placed in a location (e.g., "I
met this person at a cafe last
year"), all the other associated
information about the person
usually comes flooding back.

4. Some specific techniques

We can classify them in 3:
 Association
 Organization
 Visual
 Verbal

5. Association

 The association technique consists to
link new information to something
already known.
 Thus we can use the information we
have stored to give meaning to the
information we just learned to
memorize it more easily:
 Search for a context when you’re
trying to remember someone: where
did he/she was born? When? What’s
his/her job?
 Use different senses: how does it
smell? How does it looks like? How
does it taste?

6. Organization

This involves:
Chunking
Categorization

7. Chunking

Although the capacity of short-term memory is
7+/-2 digits, it may increase if you try to remember
groups of information instead. This units of
information is what we call chunks. For example, the
numbers 6-8- 5-0-3-1- 7, can grouped 6.85.03.17 . That
makes it easily to remember!

8. Categorization
Strategies
 This strategy
a
involves list of words to
memorize, and you’ll have to remember the most
significant of them (the word that encompasses
the rest of the group).
 This word in memory will give way to the second
most important word in the group. This will result
in a process similar to a falling row of dominoes so
the most important word in the hierarchy will be
used to remember the second one, and this to the
next and so in succession.

9. Visual


10. Chained images

This consists on making a picture story of each
item to be connected together (it is very similar
to the technique of stories, but is based on the
image display).
In a list of items, this is the first figure of the
first two elements vividly, and then
associating each image to go to mount further.

11. Chained images

For example:
SHIRT PIANO HOUSE ALARM
You can imagine a clock wrapped in a shirt.
Once we have this, we can think of the two
top of a piano, and when we get it, think of a
house containing a piano on which is the
jacket that surrounds the clock ....

12. METHOD OF LOCI
you must identify a
 Before using the technique,
common path that you usually walk (you home, the
path to your job…).
 What is essential is that you have a vivid visual
memory of the path and objects along it.
 Once you have determined your path, imagine
yourself walking along it, and identify specific
landmarks that you will pass.

13. METHOD OF LOCI

 Watch this video to see how to implement this
technique:

14. Verbal


15. Stories

 This is about building stories.
The evocation of an element
leads to the evocation of the
next and so on until
completion.
 This technique is appropriate
when we remember a list in a
certain order
 It is also useful to remember
number

16. Stories

 For example, if we want to remember
007-727-180-7-10-2230-2300-2
 we can invent the following story:
"The plane rose to 007 727. He saw a stewardess 1.80 and
decided to ask seven cafés to talk to her. He saw his watch was
10. The plane landed at 22:30, asked her out and left at 23:30.
They ate and talked until 2 am "

17. ACRONYMS & ACROSTICS

ACRONYMS
 You form acronyms by using each first letter from a group
of words to form a new word. This is particularly useful
when remembering words in a specified order. It’s a very
common technique:
 NBA (National Basketball Associations),
 SCUBA (Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus),
 BTUs (British Thermal Units)
The memory techniques in this section, for example, can be
rearranged to form the acronym "SCRAM" (Sentences
(acrostics), Chunking, Rhymes, Acronyms, and Method of loci).

18. ACRONYMS & ACROSTICS

SENTENCES/ACROSTICS
 Like acronyms, you use the first letter of each word
you are trying to remember. Instead of making a new
word, though, you use the letters to make a sentence.
Here are some examples:
 My Dear Aunt Sally (mathematical order of operations:
Multiply and Divide before you Add and Subtract)
 Kings Phil Came Over for the Genes Special
(Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Genus, Species)

19. RHYMES & SONGS
 Odyssey? If you
 Are you familiar with Homer's
are, then you know that it is quite long! That is why it
is so remarkable to realize that this, along with many
ancient Greek stories, was told by storytellers who
would rely solely on their memories. The use of
rhyme, rhythm, and repetition helped the
storytellers remember them.
 It so simple: all you need it’s a melody, and
something to remember
 Using these techniques can be fun, particularly for
people who like to create.

20. RHYMES & SONGS

 You can use the same techniques to better remember
information from courses. For example, even the
simple addition of familiar rhythm and melody can
help. Do you remember learning the alphabet? Click
the video below:
 In fact, a student demonstrated how she memorized
the quadratic formula (notorious among algebra
students for being long and difficult to remember) by
singing it to a familiar tune!