Mnemonic acronyms or rhymes have stood the test of time. They have proven themselves to be a highly effective way to ease the learning and recall of mundane or troublesome facts - just ask any doctor. The medical profession is rife with facts, lists and acronyms; consequently, medical students use around 60-100 mnemonic devices just to get through their course.

However, mnemonics have their problems. Retention is sometimes weak; what goes in to your memory quickly, tends to fade quickly too.

As with all memory work, the effective grasp of the information will fade if it is not used (or revisited) at intervals. To do this, we recommend two things:

• our Optimum Plan
• our Mnemonic PocketMems

Optimum Plan
Experience has shown that if you learn information and follow this plan you will retain it - permanently.

Therefore: review the information after 20 minutes, then after 2 hours, then the following day. If you don't use the information in the meantime, you should still be able to recall it after a week (but check that you can). Check again after two weeks, and again after a month. If you get to this stage, you will know the information.

Mnemonic PocketMems

The above system works with short pieces of information you intend to use. Clearly, if you are not going to use the information, you may need to ask yourself if you really need to commit it to memory.

A case in point is 'trivia'. Snippets of factual information we can drop into conversation or (hopefully) use to amaze our friends during the next pub (or TV) quiz.

The Optimum Plan also requires that you check the information at intervals, so you need to have it with you. A mnemonic can help to lock it in your mind, and a PocketMem booklet can help (in the initial stages) because it gives you a printed copy of the information to check yourself against.

To see it work for yourself, try out one of our Mnemonic PocketMems now. Download it, print it, fold it (instructions). That's it.