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November 2001
Memorization Tips: Creativity tips
If you remember, last month's memorization tip dealt with applying the
acrostic method to help memorize a sequence of words. We ended with a
suggestion to come up with an acrostic for President Hinckley's six
"B's": Be grateful, be smart, be clean, be truthful, be humble, be
prayerful. In response, we received some useful feedback from some of
our users- here's a couple we wanted to share with everyone:
Great Scriptures Come Through His Prophets
Jeneal
Great Smart Children Tackle Hard Projects
Tyler
Using memory techniques effectively often requires the use of
creativity and imagination. Those who feel they possess neither of
these traits may feel inadequate in applying such techniques. David
Mitchell, in his on-line book "Mnemonic Memory System"*, provides some suggestions for stimulating the creative imagination:
"If you have trouble creating your own associations, then this is a
sure sign that you don't exercise your visual-creativity very often.
The key to remember is that the more unusual the situation, the more
action and the more detail and senses involved, the easier it will be
for you to remember it- you will have more associations attached to
what you are memorizing. The other important thing is that the
associations that you create will be the most effective ones for you,
because this is how your mind works, and my associations are how my
mind works. Since our minds are different, we create the best
associations for ourselves.
"But, if you still have trouble making associations try some of these
ideas:
1. Try stacking the items on top of each other.
2. Change the size of an item to ridiculous proportions. (A Giant Shoe or
an Elephant the size of a Mouse.)
3. Change one item into the next item. (The Elephant turns into a small Statue.)
4. Use one item as the next item. (The Statue is used as a Baseball Bat.)
5. Give an item characteristics it shouldn't have. (A talking plant.)
6. Vary the number of items. (millions of plants.)
7. Try to involve as many senses as possible: this increases the number of
associations that you have tied to each item.
8. Go from the General to the Specific (bush to a rose bush in full bloom,
ice cream to rocky road ice cream.)
9. Use comedy, drama, tension or other emotions...
"I would like to take a moment to stress that one of the most
effective learning tools we have to strengthen and create associations
and to move our learning into long term memory is practice and review.
The more you practice (while shopping, driving or in a conversation)
the better you will be with these techniques and the faster and
stronger your associations will become."
(*Note: Reference to this site is being made simply to point out the information
contained there. SoftLore, LLC does not have an affiliation with this site, or
any other site that we refer to in our "Memorization Tips", nor does this
reference imply an endorsement of any products, services, or theories associated
with the site)
Do you have some favorite tips and techniques for memorizing? Please
feel free to share them with us.
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