Memory Tricks

I can remember full sentences from conversations 10 years ago, passages and facts from every book I have ever read, random trivia from magazines I flipped through in high school, and I can remember the thousands of people I have met over the course of my life. This can be really useful for carrying dozens of threads of conversation at the same time: to be continued when I see the person next, or as a party trick when I state international demographic information from 2009. It can also be "creepy" to people who think I have placed an undue amount of attention to remembering their personal details, so I tend to pretend I forget information I know fully well.

Obviously, I have been often told that I have a great memory - even "creepy good". It is sometimes followed with "My memory is terrible!", and "I wish I could have a memory like yours" but never a plan for how to improve it. I think a common misconception is that memory is something finite that you are born with, but I believe that it can be trained to an extent - like math skills. My memory is innately a visual memory that is probably slightly above average, but the emphasis I put towards remembering important things makes it seem like it is exceptional. It all started when I met a girl who remembered my name from weeks prior - where my name was mentioned once in a room of 20 people. I told her she amazed me, and then I decided I wanted to be just like that.

I was told that my memory is like my Mom's, she can see something once and remember its details clearly. My Dad's memory, however, is not visual and very patchy. Although this is true, it does not explain all of my "ability". My Mom frequently cannot remember people's names, but my dad can remember high school and university level mathematics down to the tricks and edge cases. I asked my Dad how he could be so good in remembering math but not my story from 30 minutes ago, he told me that he has to deliberately place important things in a "spider web" that he created in his mind. It is true that some people have innately better memory than others, but it is not the end of the story.

Step 1: Find your memory holes

I have a terrible time remembering names. I would give everybody a new name if it was socially acceptable (some of my friends allow it). I struggle with numbers and the order of things. I jumble up 7 and 3, 6 and 4, and to a lesser extent 8 and 2. If I change my mind in the middle of an experiment, I will forget what I changed my mind to, or how many times I changed my mind. I forget how many flights of stairs I climbed or how many points I won in a game. Lastly, I have a particular blind spot to random phrases in another language. I can forget a phrase I heard just 15 seconds prior.

Step 2: Find your learning style

You probably heard a lot of oversimplified presentations about your learning style: visual, auditory, or sensory learning. You also probably fall into the "visual category" and high five every single other person in the room.

The learning style soundbite that most people understand is misleading. Everybody can picture the face of their loved ones in their heads, or be stimulated by a nostalgic melody, and the sensations of panic when they fell off their motorcycle on a hillside. A lot of people decide they are visual learners, 70% of us are according to some sources, but we have multiple senses and they work best when they work together. Moreover, a lifetime of reading piloting books won't will never make you a pilot until you get inside a real cockpit and fly. So what is your actual learning style?

I can remember directions I have walked and I am able to retrace my steps very well. I can memorize a piece on the piano but when I try to play on a different piano I mess up because my fingers remember the spacing between the keys of the piano I learned with. I can remember conversations, phrases, paragraphs, extravagant eyelashes, awkward stances, and textures of objects. I can recreate reality on a paper by imagining I am taking a photograph and printing it out. I can hear an elevator tone and be instantly reminded of how a song begins. I can smell perfume from a passing stranger and suddenly remember a field trip from Kindergarden. Memory can be tied to almost any stimulus.

I started trying to memorize things by remembering the dialogues in my favorite movies: I did it by transforming it from a long sequence of random events to a progression of emotions. I memorized songs, especially rap songs, by piecing it together by chunks and remembering what each chunk was about. I remembered miscellaneous keywords for my programming exams by comparing different computer structures to real life systems. I made connections between microbiology and large scale factories. I associate people's names to their temperament, to how they say their own name, to who was around them, to where their names originate from, to the way they "look like" their names. I place the name in a mental spider web, placing similar names together, placing people in groups by relationship, and also sorting the names based on origin. I summarize conversations I have with people to myself at the end of the day, and I keep a diary of key information I don't want to forget. When I remember the person I spoke to, remember how the person impacted my mood, or my perception on reality: the rest of the conversation can be pieced together pretty easily.

Step 3: Memorize something you want to remember

This isn't a chore: this isn't memorizing a long string of numbers at the expense of enjoying the sun and the breeze. Although Joshua Foer did this in "Moonwalking with Einstein", which inspired me to write this, but from my own less intimidating perspective. This is like learning how to sing, how else than singing your favorite songs?

My current favorite thing to memorize are song lyrics, I like to sing when I drive and I hate to forget the lyrics halfway through. In 2016 I put several hours into memorizing Rap God by Eminem because Daniel Radcliffe showed off he could do it. The first thing I did was to pull up the lyrics online so I know all the right words. I read through them all and at first it was daunting, lyrics on their own look like a random assortment of words; there were a lot of words. I listened to the song a dozen times with the lyrics. I mouthed along as it went along. I stood up and listened to the song without the lyrics and kept forgetting what happened next. Since the usual technique wasn't working, I analyzed the song for meaning. The song is divided into stories 2 to 5 lines long. I had to remember what each story was, and in which order. Then I can piece together a larger story chunk by chunk. Learning in chunks is not that useful by itself though, because my most common choke point in playing piano was the transition between phrases. I painstakingly recited each verse but not after I had repeated the entire song up to that point - "12 days of Christmas" style. (Don't ask me to repeat the song, it has been 3 years since I last heard it).

What I do is pure memorization. There are other ways to remember things that actually have more to do with learning than memorizing. For example, finding relationships and patterns in when cramming for the Computer Networks exam.

For daily things, my anecdote comes from a scene in the Harry Potter books after Hermione punched Draco in the face. Ron told everybody to shut up for a few seconds because he needed to take time to solidify the memory in his mind. Singling moments like this and taking a few extra seconds to remember the exact feelings and environment has consistently helped me remember key things in my life.

Step 4: Build habits that help you remember important things

After a lot of practice, you will end up with a toolbox of useful memorization tactics that you can use to tackle any important thing you set out to remember. For instance, the memory palace described by Foer in his book. Break down the item into pieces and associate them with items in a room that you are very familiar with. You will walk inside and see your dresser and that is associated with the first speech point, you will lift the hairbrush and attached to your first argument, and so on. A funny example is in "The Office" when Michael struggled to remember one line Janet wanted him to remember for the trial. He proceeded to associate every word in the sentence to a random nonsensical sentence - which worked, surprisingly.

At first, the multiplication tables looks terrifying to a second grader. But after getting familiar with them, using them all the time, and looking for patterns to make it easier, most of us have reached a stage where 7 times 4 doesn't require more than a few seconds to compute. The same goes with exercising memory or learning. If you want to have a better memory, you have to hit the brain gym regularly and then you can tackle daily memory problems much more easily.

Written November 2016

Updated March 2019