How to Remember Things: 19 Proven Memory Techniques

So … you want to know how to remember things.

Excellent. You’re in the right place.

The memory techniques I’m about to show you are the most effective strategies you can possibly use.

How do I know?

I used them personally to help me pass my Ph.D. in Humanities at York University, part of which involved dealing with Classical languages and hundreds of details about history and philosophy.

Then, after starting to teach memory techniques, I used these skills to help me learn how to run this blog, my Youtube channel and podcast. I’ve come to master a very complicated set of tasks that I would not be able to handle without proper mnemonics.

I’ve also studied hundreds of memory science research articles and was even invited to deliver a memorized TEDx Talk to share some of my many findings over the years.

As a result of both my scholarly and online accomplishments, I’ve helped thousands of my students memorize information to pass certification tests. I’ve also helped people accomplish all kinds of goals related to language learning and personal projects like memorizing scripture or better understanding philosophical concepts.

Further, I read every book on the topic of memory I can find. Personally, I am always looking to improve my own memory skills and learn more about the science of memory.

Quick Answer: How to Remember Things (Top 3 Steps)

In my experience, to remember anything, there are three main things you need to do:

There are dozens more techniques and memory tricks I’ve picked up from all of of my reading and teaching in the memory improvement space.

Let’s take a look at each of the best techniques you can apply to different things you want to commit to memory.

You can either read the article below, enjoy the video version by clicking “play,” or simple browse this table of contents:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpXL7VOQ1qQ

Now, to set the stage properly, let’s start with a very basic fact when it comes to improving your memory:

People with excellent memories and memory championship winners are not too different from you. They just use a combination of techniques to enable their minds to memorize things.

Now, you might find it hard to remember names, facts, equations, lists, tasks you need to take care of, a new language, and so on.

But if you follow the right techniques, you can remember almost anything you want. The techniques you’ll discover on this page will work for you, no matter how bad you think your memory is.

The Top 19 Ways To Boost Your Recall

As we go through this list, rather than try to master each and every strategy overnight, I suggest you explore each approach over time.

Start by picking the one that resonate with you the most.

Then come back and add another.

1. Apply Mnemonics

Mnemonics is a big topic. In brief, the word “mnemonic” refers to any memory technique that helps you form a strong, long-term memory.

Usually when people use the term, we specifically mean the use of mnemonic images and multi-sensory associations.

For example, if you meet a new person named James, mentally associating him with James T. Kirk from Star Trek, or James Hetfield from Metallica will form a mnemonic link in your mind.

By hearing the voice of a James you already know, you add a multi-sensory element that makes the mnemonic even stronger. As this

Beyond memorizing names, many people use mnemonics to improve their retention while studying. Throughout this page, you’ll find the most common mnemonic devices.

You can also consult my complete Dictionary of Mnemonics for other tools. This mnemonics dictionary is also freely available on this website.

Why Use Mnemonics to Remember A Variety of Things?

Mnemonics are incredibly versatile. You can use them to help you remember:

• What you read
• Names
• Remember lists and things you need to do in the future (prospective memory)
• Music (theory, notation, melodies, even the names of your guitar strings when just starting out)
• Math
• Help with learning a language

Of special interest is the role of mnemonics in daily life. As this study shows, when mnemonics are combined with other memory aids like the ones explored on this page, your overall memory can be substantially improved.

2. Memory Palaces

The Memory Palace technique is perhaps the most powerful mnemonic device ever formulated.

It works by using a familiar location to lay out the kinds of mnemonic associations we just discussed.

Here’s a Memory Palace Walkthrough shot in one of my homes using a complex poem I memorized to help explain the technique:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STlYIiF9RzI

If you are a fan of ‘Sherlock’ – the BBC series, you have seen Sherlock Holmes use his ‘mind palace’ to remember practically everything. This memorization method isn’t just used by fictional detectives. Memory champions swear by the memory palace.

The mnemonic device, also referred to as the ‘Method of Loci’ or ‘Cicero Method’ was developed in Ancient Greece.

How does it work?

As I discussed in the Memory Palace walkthrough video, I suggest you get started by making a quick drawing of a familiar location first, like your home.

The following illustration is a Memory Palace drawing made by my friend and language learning expert, Olly Richards:

Once you have your first Memory Palace drawing, you’re better equipped to understand how the technique works.

That’s because this memorization method begins by visualizing yourself walking through your home and remembering every single detail that you can. It’s also a great mental exercise, but one made much easier when you’re just getting started because looking at your sketch reduces cognitive load.

However, you necessarily do not need to visualize at all. You can physically walk through your home when first learning this technique.

Linking Information with your Memory Palaces

To remember each item you want to remember, you associate it with a specific object or space in your home.

Associating items within your mind with a real physical space helps your brain ‘file’ important things to remember more easily.

Mind Palaces can be used to remember names, faces, languages, lists, academic material, and pretty much anything under the sun.

For a full tutorial on this technique, please check out my Complete Guide to the Memory Palace Technique.

3. Spaced Repetition

It’s easier to remember something that you read yesterday than a paragraph you have read a year back.

Why?

Well, Hermann Ebbinghaus referred to this situation as the “primacy” effect. He used it to help describe what we now call the forgetting curve. His research into the psychology of memory observed that we forget most newly acquired information within a few hours or at the most a couple of days.

However, Ebbinghaus found that when you reinforce what you learn at regular intervals, it’s easier to retain that piece of information in the long-term storage areas of your brain.

The spaced repetition method is all about practicing remembering at the right time.

You do that by reinforcing a bit of information in your mind just when you are about to forget it.

A simple way of applying this memory technique is to use flashcards. You can organize your flashcards into three batches depending on how easy it is for you to remember.

If you remember something clearly, test yourself with the same flashcard within ten minutes, but if you do remember, test yourself at a longer interval.

There are several tools out there that claim to be spaced repetition software, but which are actually not. If you wish to try out spaced repetition, the best approach is to make your own flashcards.

Ideally, you’ll combine these cards with Memory Palaces. You can also consider bringing in Zettelkasten (an advanced type of flashcard with Leitner boxes to help organize how you revisit them).

For more detail on spaced repetition in daily life, I’ve written extensively on how to stop forgetting things and how these principles apply to never losing your keys again, and more.

4. Use Chunking to Remember

Chunking is the process of breaking information down into smaller units or groups.

For example, when someone recites a phone number, they usually give it to you in clusters of 3 or 4 digits. That’s chunking.

As a memory strategy, you can apply the chunking principle in many different ways.

For example, rather than memorize your grocery list from top to bottom, you can use chunking to arrange the items on the list according to where you normally find them on the store shelves.

As you can see in the illustration above, all the dairy products are chunked away from the produce and grains.

The same principle applies when learning a new language. As mentioned above, when words are related by a strong context, such as breakfast food items, winter clothing, grammatical function and so on, you can place them in specific Memory Palaces.

This approach is helpful for memorizing at scale because the human brain naturally tends to look for patterns. Because chunking allows the brain to store information in easy-to-remember packets, the combination of methods leads to better retention.

Here are 21 more study tips related to chunking, some of which are a bit unconventional. And that’s why they work.

5. “Expression Mnemonics” or Acronyms to Remember Things

You have probably come across this method in school. You create an acronym of the different things that you wish to remember.

If you have taken music lessons, you would remember EGBDF (the treble clef) with the acronym, “Every Good Boy Does Fine.”

Another common expression mnemonic you might remember from your school days is HOMES – for the Great Lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior).

Acronyms are best when they’re difficult to forget. There are similar Expression Mnemonics which involve rhymes, songs, and so on, but sometimes simply coming up with a keyword in which a principle helps trigger your recall of a larger list of information is best.

I even give presentations from memory sometimes based entirely on simple acronyms.

For example, I sometimes write “NAME” on a chalkboard when teaching people how to remember names using the strategy we’ll discuss next. If you look at the image of me above from one of my live memory training sessions, you can see NAME on the whiteboard behind me.

Detailed Walkthrough of Memorizing Names Using the N.A.M.E. Process

The NAME acronym is a process used to remember names. This specific technique for memorizing people’s names quickly is based on an interesting book I read recently – Boost Your Memory by Darren Bridger.

For those of you who are seriously into memorization and mastering how to remember something you forgot, it’s a worthy read. Even if you’re already well established, I suggest reading it for a quick review of the major principles that support remembering things.

Step One: Notice

Notice is the first word in the name acronym. It’s basically the same as memory expert Harry Lorayne’s point that you can’t remember information to which you haven’t paid adequate attention.

In Bridger’s case, the author is not only talking about memorizing things like names by noticing the person’s hair, eye color, and other distinct features of the face. He’s also talking about noticing the sound of the name as part of learning to recall things better.

It sounds silly, but think about the suggestion for a second. Even a seemingly pedestrian name like “Bill” becomes quite interesting if you pause to think about it. You can even pay attention to how your mouth feels as you recite it, giving yourself a level of kinesthetic awareness to create an additional trigger for recall.

You can even go so far as to pretend in your mind that you’ve never heard the word before. Just as we want to pay close attention to the sound of the words we are memorizing using the Magnetic Memory Method, when we learn a person’s name, we want to swirl it around a bit.

It’s almost like tasting wine. That’s kind of a weird way to think about learning someone’s name, but I’ve tried it out many times, and it actually does bring an interesting quality to the memorization process.

Step Two: Ask (And You Shall Remember)

Ask is the second word in this powerful acronym that teaches you how to remember names or even information for a test.

In the case of names, Bridger is suggesting that we ask for the name to be repeated if we haven’t heard it the first time. When it comes to how to memorize things for a test, it’s really the same process.

For example, I’m sure you’ve had this experience:

You hear someone’s name, but don’t quite catch it. Instead of asking for it to be repeated, you let the name issue drop and hope it will come up again … but it almost never does.

And so, as Bridger suggests, there’s no shame in asking for a name to be repeated. Likewise when you study: there’s nothing wrong with going back and repeating the information. And then add the act of asking with this quick tip:

If you want to remember things better, start asking people about their names. Like this:

“That’s an interesting name. Where does it come from?”

These are perfect questions to ask a person. Questions like these will not only increase your rapport with the person but also cause you to pay more attention to the name in the first place.

It’s the same thing with any information, and you can always ask questions about any information using this formula:

• What is interesting about this?
• Why is it like this?
• How did it come to be this way?
• What if it was different?

Remember: a great deal of what memorizing things boils down to is noticing and paying attention to the target material. It also comes down to “rotating” the information in your mind by examining it from different angles.

Step Three: Mention the Name to Help Remember Things

The author uses the word “mention” for the purposes of his acronym, but usually, tips on memorizing names tell us to repeat the name we’ve just heard.

Memory experts are actually divided on this point. Yes, it helps the name you want to remember to sink into your memory. And yes, it tells the person that you’ve heard their name and that you care about knowing them. But it can still come off as rather corny.

Still, I spend a lot of time in places where the language is not my native tongue and have found repeating the names of people I meet to be an essential habit.

Pronunciations of names vary widely, and there are often subtle sounds that people will gladly correct for you once they’ve heard you mispronounce their name. It’s only polite to make sure you can pronounce a person’s name right.

Plus, pronunciation is one of the weakest points for me. I’m always working on improving it in my own memory improvement journey – largely due to being 80% deaf in my left ear.

Even though it can be a bit corny to repeat the names of people you’ve just met, just do it. Taking that simple step when it comes to recalling things like names is worth it in the end.

Step Four: Envision

Here Bridger finally shows us how to bring it all together.

Envisioning is simple. It’s the part of the mnemonic process where we take the visual characteristics of a face and associate the name of the person with some distinct feature.

To use Bridger’s teaching, which seems pulled straight out of Harry Lorayne, let’s say I meet someone named Jacob and he has rather bird-like features. All I would need to do is imagine him having the face of a Blue Jay and then imagine him puffing on a corncob pipe.

(Jay + Cob = Jacob). Simple stuff.

The only problem is …

I don’t like doing it this way. Placing images on faces makes me look at the people strangely later as I’m going through the recall process. I prefer seeing the images I create either behind the person, on their shoulder or above their head. That way, when recalling their name, I’m not looking all screwy-eyed at them.

The Missing Memory Step

Plus, there’s a missing step… “Envisioning” is one thing. But having a place to find what you envisioned quite another.

That’s why I’ve had at times dedicated Memory Palaces just for names.

If I meet a person named Jacob and see him as a Blue Jay smoking a corncob pipe. But I don’t want to let the association just float around in the void. I want to Magnetize it somewhere. To do that, I put the Magnetic Imagery in a Memory Palace.

Later, when I want to recall his name, the association will come much faster than it would have otherwise.

Why? Because memory no longer needs to hunt for the association or “envisioned” information. When we associate without placing our associations somewhere, we often have an “uhhhhhhm” moment where we’re searching for the association we know that we’ve created.

Plus, without a Memory Palace, we have no means of performing Recall Rehearsal. We will find the imagery in our Memory Palace later, but still have to reverse-engineer it in order to get the target material.

That’s the key: always locate your material somewhere and then use that Memory Palace to rehearse the information into long-term memory.

6. Use Tactile Mnemonics from Ancestral Memory Approaches

Did you know that people used to carry portable Memory Palaces covered in beads?

They’re called lukasa or memory board. Here’s an example:

Here’s how they work:

• Each bead represents a specific fact, name of a person or law
• By running your finger over the board, you can recall the information you’ve encoded on the memory board

By combining spatial memory with touch, you create more memory hooks in your brain.

Applying the Lukasa Technique to Everyday Life

When I was first struggling to improve my memory, I used to meet people and squeeze a coin in my pocket when I heard their name.

As I did, I imagined writing their name onto the coin.

Although coins don’t provide much space, it’s a place to start that doesn’t require carrying around a large memory board.

Using Your Hand Itself as a Tactile Memory Space

Another technique that I’ve used a lot is based on the Guidonian Hand memory system.

You’ve probably seen an image of someone with string tied around their finger to help them remember something. Think of the Guidonian Hand as a more elaborate version of that principle.

One of the most common uses of this approach was in music as you can learn in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBq-S_QdU2U

But as I learned from Tyson Yunkporta in his book Sand Talk, the “Hand Memory Palace” technique is useful for remembering points that come up during meetings.

If you apply numbers to each finger, you can also remember when you have various meetings. Even if it’s only for short-term recall, it’s a powerful memory strategy.

And as with most ancient memory techniques, the hand can be used in combination with other strategies.

7. Learn How to Remember Numbers with The Major System

Except for phone numbers where we can use chunking, numbers are very hard to remember.

That’s why our ancestors created techniques people still use today.

One of them is called the Major System, It is also called the Major Method or sometimes referred to as Harry Lorayne’s Number Mnemonics.

It works by associating each number from 0-9 with a consontant sound. Like this:

• 0 = soft c, s or z
• 1 = d, t
• 2 = n
• 3 = m
• 4 = r
• 5 = l
• 6 = ch, j, soft g, sh
• 7 = g, k
• 8 = f, v
• 9 = b, p

Although this simple formula has to be learned before you can use it, it works because it allows you to form simple words.

For instance, you can insert a vowel in between 22 and imagine a nun (formed by combining n and n). You combine these words to visualize an animated sequence of activities, which makes it difficult for you to forget.

Or for a number like 235 you could imagine an “animal.” For 22235, you could imagine a nun in a martial arts battle with an animal as illustrated in the cartoon below:

The Major System can be used to memorize very long digits, multiplication tables, phone numbers, number-based passwords, and so on.

If you would like a particularly amazing example, check out how Akira Haraguchi used this technique to memorize 100,000 digits of pi.

How To Remember Things Through Lifestyle Changes

Your lifestyle and habits have a significant impact on your memory. These are not memory tricks. However, implementing these lifestyle changes will boost your overall ability to remember things.

8. Getting Adequate Sleep will Help you Remember Things

One of the biggest mistakes that students make is trying to study longer hours by skipping on sleep. What they forget is that sleep deprivation affects several cognitive abilities, including memory.

This should hardly be a surprise. In addition to affecting the mind, lack of sleep is also considered to be a risk factor for heart disease, cancer, diminished immunity, obesity, and several other complications.

Numerous studies have established that sleep helps in the second stage of memory – consolidation.

And there’s no doubt about it:

Sleep helps in recalling facts and information as well as in procedural memory formation – the aspect of memory involved in learning new skills faster (Diekelmann and Born, 2010)

And there’s more to it.

Sleep also contributes to reorganizing memories, by forming stronger connections between different memories. Sleep helps the brain to link newly absorbed information with previously acquired information, which spurs creativity (Diekelmann and Born, 2010)

Other studies have indicated that lack of sleep also makes us remember things incorrectly (Diekelmann 2008). Therefore, for several reasons, getting a good night’s sleep can significantly contribute to memory improvement.

9. Taking Naps will Improve Your Memory

What if you are unable to get adequate sleep? Try taking naps.

David Dinges (University of Pennsylvania) concluded from