Remembering Short Lists

Despite what everyone says, remembering a list of items (such as a shopping list) is quite a simple process.

The following technique is amazingly powerful, and can be used to help memorize any type of list.

Suppose you're going to the supermarket and you need the following five items: kippers, cheese, jam, chocolate cake and milk. How can you remember the list? For short lists like this, the easiest method is to 'link' the words in the list together to form a chain:

The starting point is to link the first item to yourself in some imaginative way. For example, imagine a kipper has suddenly fallen into your hair (no idea where it came from… but that isn't important). This kipper is a few days old, it's begun to crumble into little fishy pieces; imagine the texture of the fish as you try to pull it out of your hair. Fish-bits fall down your face, some have certainly gone down your neck!

Now, that is quite a memorable image!

Next, link the kippers to the second item (cheese). Just picturing the kippers lying next to the cheese in a refrigerator is not likely to create a strong mental image – not one that will be truly memorable. So, create a strong, unusual image. Perhaps you are cutting into a nice piece of cheddar and suddenly notice that tucked inside is a piece of kipper, bits of the fish fall out onto your cheeseboard and make a terrible mess.

Now move to the next item on the list: jam. Link the cheese to the milk. Cheese and milk are already associated since they are both dairy product – but that's not good enough. If a link is ordinary, you are more likely to forget it. Generate something unusual: perhaps you see yourself pouring milk into your morning cup of tea; the milk doesn't come out of the bottle, instead slimy lumps of cheese drop out and splash into your drink. See them fall, hear the splash, note the cheesy-tea spilling out of the cup and marking your table.

Next we link milk and jam. Maybe you're pouring milk into a jar of jam instead of your drink. Naturally, when you stir the mixture bits of jam and milk froth around inside the jar.

Finally, link jam to chocolate cake. It's your birthday, you have a cake. Blow out the candles; cut the cake. The knife breaks and the cake falls apart, in the middle of the cake, sticking out of the chocolate, is a huge jar of jam.

This has been a long (and tedious) process. It is a very lengthy business to explain, but only a matter of moments to do it for yourself. Remember, you will never need to write out the "story", you will only think of the images. In reality, the whole process is very quick and convenient.

Ok, now you can stop thinking about the items, you don't need to force yourself to remember them, and you don't need a list. You will remember them!

Let's go to the supermarket

(Scroll down slowly to test yourself)

Think of yourself – that reminds you of...

                   ...ah, the kippers in your hair.

Think of kippers –

                   ...oh, they were inside the cheese.

Think of cheese –

                   ...you will see it falling out of a milk bottle.

Think of milk –

                   ...that relates to jam, remember the gloopy mixture?

Think of jam –

                   ...ah, yes; chocolate cake!

There you are, painless. The whole process is (honestly) very simple, and very easy to use. No paper to write on, no expensive gadgets to buy.

Try it for yourself with the following six items. Make up a series of good, clear linking images, starting with yourself. Try to use as many senses as possible for each image, smell the smells, feel the texture, hear the 'crunch' - or whatever.

• Bottle of wine
• A box of tissues
• Paracetamol tablets
• Felt tip pens
• Leather belt
• Hair brush