Mentat Wiki: Link Quickly

Quick and Effective Linking

When linking one image to another, the basis of all memory techniques, there are principles to follow for creating clear, vivid images that stay memorable.

Be Ridiculous

One of the most important principles in memory technique is that the image created should be as ridiculous and as imaginative as possible. If you're trying to link CHEF to PAN, it may be tempting to simply picture a chef cooking with a pan. This image is ineffective and easily forgotten because there is nothing remarkable about it.

To make the image more memorable, it would be better to picture the chef actually frying in the pan, or perhaps you might picture a chef who is a pan. Either of these images is unusual, and will be more easily recalled later, when it is needed.

Picture Principles

Besides the use of ridiculous images, there are many other techniques you can use when creating your images:

• Substitution - Two images switching roles. Example: Picturing the chef used as a pan
• Out of Proportion - Picturing one object is pictured much larger or smaller than the other. Example: Picturing a small chef in a large pan
• Exaggeration - Creating millions of one object coming out of the other. Example: Millions of pans come out of the chef's mouth
• Action - Incorporating actions. Example: A chef being cooked in a pan, and the chef is hopping around to keep from getting burned feet

These techniques are not mutually exclusive. In fact, you'll find that that image is more easily recalled the more you mix these techniques.

SMASHIN' SCOPE

Tony Buzan created a mnemonic for what he considers to be the most important principles for creating memorable mnemonic images for a PegSystem, LociSystem, MemoryPalace, etc.:

SMASHIN' SCOPE =

• Synesthesia / Sensuality - sound, sight, taste, touch, smell
• Movement - shaking, flying, kicking,...
• Association - associate with stable memories
• Sexuality - you can imagine anything having sex
• Humour - silly, connected with jokes
• Imagination - anything at all
• Number(s) - details like sequence and/or order
• Symbolism - associate abstract pattern with meaningful items
• Colour - use more than one color, too
• Order / Sequence - use things like PegSystems or [MemoryPalace](/memory-technique/memory-palace)s to your advantage
• Positivity - people like to remember positive things
• Exaggeration - very big, very small, very small, extremely numerous

For more information, see the Smashin' Scope page at the World Wide Brain Club.

Discussion

I don't know if this is the place to say it or not, but here goes:

I have come to believe that systems for memorization are one of the "essential things" we're looking for in mnemonics.

This may go a ways to explain why the DominicSystem is preferred to the MajorSystem. The system gives you a quicker link, because you are automatically (by the system) given most of what you need to link together. And it gives some boundaries for your imagination to work with. (I'm banking on the idea that creativity is easiest when it has some constraints to work with.)

Systems provide:

• Actors, to link together
• Boundaries, helping creativity

So, for example, in the DominicSystem, you get "Albert Einstein, delivering toys to children." (AEHO) That right there is immediately memorable.

In the MajorSystem, you have 1580, and you get "t/d-l-v/f-z/s," which you need to yank around a bit ("dloves, tvfs, toolafels, dill face, fill fuzz, adolefizz, adolf saw, adolf sew") in order to get "adolf sew."

So I believe two things:

• Systems that give you material for constructing links are generally good.
• I should give the DominicSystem a try.

For more mnemonic acronyms, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic

For specific mnemonics, see http://www.ict4us.com/mnemonics/