To practice, I picked 4 numbers at random:

7821.

At first, I couldn’t come up with a word, until I tried:

CVNT = Savant!

Then I remembered the 7 is supposed to be soft c, but you can bet I’ll remember the number either way!

Jim has written a book called Memory Smart, which was actually written to help parents and teachers teach kids how to memorize things. He reminded us of some mnemonics we used to learn things as kids—like the year 1492(Columbus sailed…) and the ABC song to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star…There are many of them, and the fact that we still remember them today attests to their ability to work.

Jim describes 9 different techniques, applying visual, audio, and sensory inputs, and applies them to the various things kids are required to memorize in school, such as multiplication tables, states and capitals, atmospheric layers, etc. (Many of the techniques use the silly but very memorable pictures someone described above. These are linked somehow to the actual subject, or name, or word as in a foreign language, to keep the images from being confused.) He even goes beyond the basics to show techniques for learning the consonant code for memorizing numbers, how to memorize a whole book, and how to become a “Memory Black Belt.� Like a Martial Art, the memory techniques must be practiced regularly to work. And like a martial art, much of the benefit is not in the actual practice, but where it spills over into your life.

The book is geared toward kids, but the techniques are the same. Just for fun I decided to revisit my childhood and re-memorize some of this stuff, and the techniques really work. It’s been less than 2 weeks since the class and I’ve already memorized many things, including half of the 100 numbers of the consonant system. What I have found is that my mind is becoming sharper—I’m much more attuned to paying attention to things. It seems that it is really good exercise for the mind, and from what I understand, like the body, it’s use it or lose it. And it’s fun. So for those who say they can just look things up, I agree, there are references for when you need them, and it may be pointless to memorize long strings of numbers. But life could be much richer if you can spend a minimum amount of time to develop memorization skills and a few facts so you have a better foundation on which to hang new insights and observations, and a better chance at retention…

Jim Wiltens works with faculty at Stanford University on Memory skills. He is a great speaker if you can get him. The technique he recommends for learning languages can be found at 200words-a-day.com We used this in the class –it was fun and it worked very well….

By the way, Jim runs what looks like a great wilderness summer camp for kids, called Deer Crossing Camp— check his website. (JimWiltens.com)

I’m wondering if there’s some aspect of the technique that I missed, that helps more for the long-term memorization? In my case, the more hokey the image I used (and it recommended that), the more difficult I found it to isolate the key parts of the image later.

“…Using the above conversion table, 8209 could equal “fanâ€? (82) and “soapâ€? (02)…”

shouldn’t 02 here be 09?

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Oops! Good catch! Corrected… Thank you. Tim

In our school systems (in the US) today, classes require students to memorize junk. Here are some examples:

Elementary: memorize the pledge of allegiance
Middle School: memorize all the presidents
High school: memorize the periodic table
College: memorize all kinds of units
Med School: oh the agony!

So while the brain is a great tool for coming up with new ideas and such, it’s great at memorizing too, and we definitely have no choice but to memorize stuff in this day and age … until the robots take over. 0.o

Just because some people don’t have brains that aren’t doing these memory tricks naturally doesn’t mean that these “tricks” are crap. They’re still good methods for memorizing a bunch of stuff real fast. Plus most of what we humans do nowadays are stuff that we learned from others - i.e learned habits.

Anyways. I still believe genius can be learned, along with everything else … including a photographic memory and whatnot.