This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Memory Book" by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Do you need to memorize information for school or work? Or, do you just wish you could remember people’s names and what’s on your shopping list?
The Memory Book by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas is a collection of strategies intended to teach anyone how to improve their memorization skills and recall nearly any kind of information. They provide three effective memorization techniques you can use to remember lists, abstract information, and more.
Keep reading to learn three of the book’s techniques that you can put to work for you.
Effective Memorization Techniques
We’ll explore three of Lorayne and Lucas’s effective memorization techniques in detail: how to remember sequences of items using image-based association, how to create stand-in words to make abstract items easier to remember, and how to apply those techniques to remember full ideas in sequence.
(Shortform note: Lorayne and Lucas’s instructions for memorization techniques follow a mostly linear progression: Each technique builds upon the last. We’ve broken each technique into specific steps to add additional clarity and logical flow.)
Technique #1: Remembering Sequences Through Image-Based Association
The first fundamental memorization technique involves remembering sequences of information using image-based association. According to Lorayne and Lucas, we always use association to commit things to memory, often subconsciously. In other words, we remember things in relation to each other, meaning we can recall anything if we link it to another piece of information we already know.
The following steps will show you how to use your brain’s natural affinity for associations to connect sequential pieces of information, enabling you to remember a full list of words in their original order.
Step 1: Start With a List of Words
To practice this technique, you’ll first need a list of words. These can be anything, but Lorayne and Lucas suggest that nouns and verbs work best because they’re the easiest to picture. Your list can be as long or as short as you want it to be. For example, we’ll start with five words: moon, pencil, coffee, running, and cloud.
Step 2: Create a Strange Mental Image Connecting the First Two Words
Once you have your list, Lorayne and Lucas instruct you to begin memorizing the list by connecting the first two words. Do this by creating a mental image that associates the two words, specifically an image that’s illogical, strange, or silly.
This association technique takes advantage of your brain’s visual-based memory and its tendency to remember unusual things. Coming up with a silly, illogical image also prompts you to consider the information closely, creating your foundational memory of it. The clearer you imagine your strange or silly association image, the more strongly you’ll commit it to memory.
Furthermore, Lorayne and Lucas suggest incorporating action into your mental image, as actions are easier to remember than static pictures. For instance, to create your association for the first two words on our example list from Step 1—moon and pencil—you might imagine that the moon has grown arms and is waving around a giant pencil.
Step 3: Form Connections Between All of the Words
After creating your association image between the first two words in the list, repeat Step 2 with the rest of the words. The authors state that the second word must be associated with the third, the third with the fourth, and so on.
For example, returning to our example list of words, your next task would be to create a silly mental image associating pencil with coffee. You might picture brewing a cup of coffee with pencil shavings instead of coffee grounds. Then, you’d associate coffee with running. Maybe you’d imagine a cup of coffee with legs running away from you when you try to drink it. Finally, you’d imagine something that connects running with cloud. This could be a runner who’s made out of clouds or someone running in the sky on a path of clouds.
You can repeat this step for a list of any length, as long as you take the time to form a clear, strange, and dynamic mental image between each pair of items on the list.
Step 4: Practice Frequently
Use the above steps to remember items in any list in their correct order by simply following your image associations down the list. According to Lorayne and Lucas, the best way to become better at this technique is to practice it frequently.
Try creating your own list of words and developing original associations between them. Practice recalling the list in the correct order. As you exercise your imagination over time, it’ll become easier to create silly mental pictures, and your recall will require less effort.
Technique #2: Using Stand-In Words to Remember Abstract Information
Lorayne and Lucas assert that you can also apply the skill of creating associations using silly images to remember abstract information: information you can’t readily picture in your mind. However, as we mentioned previously, the less tangible information is, the harder it is to recall. Therefore, you must add a step to associate the abstract information with neighboring words in a list.
In the following steps, you’ll learn how to picture an abstract piece of information concretely using similar-sounding words as a stand-in.
Step 1: Create a Stand-In Word or Phrase
First, the authors instruct you to create a word or phrase that you can picture to act as a stand-in for abstract information. The word or phrase doesn’t have to match the original word exactly, but it should sound similar enough that it makes you automatically think of the original word.
For example, say you’re trying to remember these street names in sequential order: Brosius Street, Courtney Street, and Durango Street. You’ll likely have trouble picturing anything specific for Brosius, Courtney, and Durango on their own, but you can use the sounds in the street names to come up with alternatives that are easier to visualize.
For Brosius Street, your stand-in phrase might be, “Bro, see us!” Picture a group of young men yelling the phrase while trying to get the attention of their friend. For Courtney Street, picture someone falling on a tennis court and hitting their knee. For Durango Street, imagine someone looking up at the sky and asking, “Where’d the rain go?”
Step 2: Connect the Stand-In Words or Phrases Through Silly Image Associations
Once you have a stand-in word or phrase for each item in the sequence you wish to remember, create associations between the list items as you did with Lorayne and Lucas’s first memorization technique. Associate each pair of list items by developing silly mental images that connect their stand-in words or phrases.
For example, to remember the sequence of the three street names, start by associating your stand-in for Brosius Street (“Bro, see us!”) with your stand-in for Courtney Street (court knee). To connect these two phrases in a memorable, silly way, you might imagine that the group of young men is yelling “Bro, see us” to their friend because the friend doesn’t realize he’s about to be crushed by a giant knee on a tennis court.
Then, associate “court knee” with “Where’d the rain go?” Maybe you imagine the person asking this question is standing on the tennis court, and the answer is that a giant knee is blocking the rain.
Technique #3: Remembering Sequences of Ideas Through Association
According to Lorayne and Lucas, you can apply the skills of creating image-based associations and using stand-in words or phrases to remember ideas in sequence. This could be useful when memorizing a speech, learning new concepts from a textbook, or memorizing a script for a presentation.
There are three steps to this technique:
Step 1: Write Down the Text You Need to Memorize
The authors assert that the first thing to do when memorizing a sequence of ideas is to write down everything you want to remember. Incorporate all your key points in the right order. For example, if you’re writing a speech or preparing for a presentation, write your script. Reading this will give you a general sense of the points you need to remember and how they fit together.
Step 2: Choose a Core Word or Phrase for Each Idea
After you write down your sequence of ideas in a script or some other form, choose a core word or phrase from each idea that’ll remind you of its main point. By recalling ideas with a single word or phrase, you don’t have to memorize sentences and paragraphs word for word.
Lorayne and Lucas state that when you memorize longer pieces of text word for word, you risk appearing too stiff and formulaic when you deliver the ideas. Likewise, trying to recall text word for word (instead of memorizing general ideas) may make you stumble if you can’t remember the exact right phrasing.
No matter what your subject is, if you’ve studied and practiced enough, you should be able to talk about it using just your core word or phrase as a reminder—without needing to explain it using the same words every time. Repeat this step for every distinct idea or point in your text.
For example, say you’re preparing a talk about fungi and you need to memorize the following idea: “The largest living organism in the world is a fungus called Armillaria solidipes, otherwise known as honey fungus.”
Instead of memorizing the exact words of the sentence, pick one word or phrase (such as “honey fungus”) to remind you of its content. “Honey” is a good option as a core word for this idea because it’ll remind you of the specific fungus that’s the subject of the unusual and interesting fact.
Step 3: Create a Sequence of Associations Between the Core Words and Phrases
Once you’ve chosen a core word or phrase for each idea, Lorayne and Lucas describe how to use the skills outlined in the first two techniques to create associations between the ideas in your text. These associations help you remember the sequence of your ideas in the correct order.
As we did with the list of words in Technique #1, create associations between the core words or phrases you chose using strange, silly images. If your core word or phrase of an idea can’t be pictured easily on its own, add the extra step of creating a stand-in word or phrase that you can create a mental picture for.
Shortform Example: Discussing the Honey Fungus
Consider our previous example about the honey fungus—you know your first idea’s core word is honey. Now, memorize the next two ideas:
Idea 2: “This fungus’s network includes mushrooms that are visible aboveground and mycelia that branch underground.” Your core word for this idea is network to remind you of the interconnectedness of the aboveground and underground portions of the fungus.
Idea 3: “It spans an area of over three square miles.” For this idea, your core word is area to remind you to discuss the size of the fungus.
Before you create associations between your three core words, decide if you need any stand-in words or phrases to make your mental pictures. You can picture honey on its own, and you picture a fisherman working by throwing a net to remember network. Area, however, is too abstract to imagine on its own. Therefore, you use the similar-sounding word “aria” as a stand-in and create a mental picture by imagining an opera singer singing a solo.
Finally, you create your image-based associations for honey, network, and aria, connecting them in that order. First, you construct a silly image to connect honey and network by imagining a fisherman casting a net into an ocean filled with honey instead of water. Then, you connect network and aria by imagining a fisherman casting a net to capture fish that are singing opera music.
Exercise: Apply Memorization Techniques to a Situation in Your Life
You can apply Lorayne and Lucas’s techniques to help you remember many different kinds of information. Consider how to use them to memorize something in your life.
- Describe something you need to memorize soon. When is your deadline for memorizing this information? (For example, maybe you need to remember a list of names by your meeting next week, or you have to memorize a script for a conference presentation next month.)
- Which of Lorayne and Lucas’s techniques would work best for the information you need to memorize? (For example, for the list of names, you might use image-based associations and stand-in words. For the presentation, you might use image-based associations, stand-in words, and core words and phrases for the ideas in the script.)
- Write a plan for completing and practicing each step of your chosen memorization techniques before the deadline. (For example, for the list of names, maybe you plan to spend one day coming up with stand-in words for all the names, two days making up the images for your associations between them, and the last few days practicing your associations.)
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Here's what you'll find in our full The Memory Book summary:
- How to improve your memorization skills and recall any kind of information
- Techniques for remembering sequences of information
- How to picture and remember abstract information
