When remembering phone numbers or other pieces of information, I realised that I typically recite them in a musical fashion, that is with a distinctive melody or timing. It works pretty well for me: my memory is good. But not as good as a woman I met on a course who arranged her memory in a series of transparent sheets of different colours, each colour relating to a different area of her life, and the sheets arranged as diary pages. The transparency meant she could stack a bunch of these sheets together and see what she had done or was going to do on a given day. Interesting.

What strategies for memory do you use, or have you come across?

@Adrian...we meet again...i remember you

In my youth i read the Autohagiography of Alistair Crowley and found it memorable that he equated memory to a card indexing system. Later i listened to Peter Thompson's Conversation:The power of Influence and he used the windows folder system in that we hear,see smell, feel and open a folder in connection which in turn has other folders in. I now suspect a prerequisite for creative genius is the ability to cross reference those "folders" in a non linear way.
I then read Derren Brown's book, Trick of the Mind, in which he begins to teach the memory palace technique. This is a visual technique used to remember huge amounts of data and used by the memory champions alive today.
And finally and most recently in my evolution of memory, was at a Chris Howard seminar and he tells the story of mice taught to run a maze. Bit by bit they had their brains removed by the scientists...until only the stem remained, and they where still running the maze!!!!(I know the feeling Scientist's reasoning was that somehow the universe, and therefore us and our memories were holographic and not just located in a single area. I cannot varify this theory as i have not seen the data behind it and would be pleased if anyone could conclude.
Of interest Authur C. Clark postulated some time ago, in the sci fi series 2001, that the Hal9000 series had AI because it used holographic memory.
I like the idea of a holographic universe and will stick with that for now,
best wishes,
Giulio

Tony Buzan... The major system...

And... logical levels theory...

Allowing yourself to interpret your own re-presentations...

Wayne

Chunking, synaesthesia and a castle

Mind Maps, Cognitive Maps and other Knowledge Maps
Ars Memoria

Art of memory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Giulio wrote:
And finally and most recently in my evolution of memory, was at a Chris Howard seminar and he tells the story of mice taught to run a maze. Bit by bit they had their brains removed by the scientists...until only the stem remained, and they where still running the maze!!!!(I know the feeling Scientist's reasoning was that somehow the universe, and therefore us and our memories were holographic and not just located in a single area. I cannot varify this theory as i have not seen the data behind it and would be pleased if anyone could conclude.
Of interest Authur C. Clark postulated some time ago, in the sci fi series 2001, that the Hal9000 series had AI because it used holographic memory.
I like the idea of a holographic universe and will stick with that for now,
best wishes,
Giulio

Read The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot

StevenGoodall wrote:

Read The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot

Thanks...i have made a note of the title....now i need to get through my pile of books,

Best wishes

adrian r wrote:

When remembering phone numbers or other pieces of information, I realised that I typically recite them in a musical fashion, that is with a distinctive melody or timing. It works pretty well for me: my memory is good. But not as good as a woman I met on a course who arranged her memory in a series of transparent sheets of different colours, each colour relating to a different area of her life, and the sheets arranged as diary pages. The transparency meant she could stack a bunch of these sheets together and see what she had done or was going to do on a given day. Interesting.

What strategies for memory do you use, or have you come across?

Particluarly with numbers I make up little mathmatical strories about the number sequence and refer a lot to other numbers I know - it probably seems really complicated but I have always done this - it all started with my birthday: 21 07 77 - 2+1 is 3, the next number is seven - three times seven is 21, and there are three sevens in a row also 21.

Different areas which interconnect, storage by time, colour, scent, feeling, place, sound, subject. If I cant get to it one way I can go another.