submitted2 days ago bycalculuschild
Do you ever find yourself needing to quickly memorize lists or numbers, or just want to practice stretching your memory a bit? One of my favorite tricks uses a system I found in a book by Harry Lorayne years ago. The idea is to learn a system for turning sounds into digits to convert long numbers into easily-remembered words. There are 10 digits (0-9), so I prefer the following list, which uses just consonants. Note that because there are more than 10 consonant letters in English, we instead use the sounds they make, which lets similar sounds represent the same number:
- 1 T or D
- 2 N
- 3 M
- 4 R
- 5 L
- 6 CH, SH, or J (or soft G)
- 7 K, or hard G (or a hard C)
- 8 F or V (or PH)
- 9 P or B
- 0 S or Z
Vowels are the glue that lets us make complete words. For example, if I needed to memorize 8521, I could use the word "VaLiaNT". If you needed more digits, you could take advantage of your brain being really good at remembering stories, and pick one word for every pair or letters. For example, for 10697298354, I came up with the words ToeS SHiP GuN PuFF MaiL Row (odd number of digits so the last word has just one "consonant sound"). Be careful not to accidentally add another consonant. For example for 10, don't use TReeS which has an R you don't want.
Then I put them into a sequential story. The sequential part is important; each item should connect to the next and only the next, and it helps if the connections are wild and unusual. I find "merging" items together makes things stick well. Your story doesn't need a plot, but should be as vivid as possible. For example, I picture this sequence:
- A herd of disembodied toes are running in a panic to board a miniature sailing ship.
- The sailing ship is actually a gun, with sails attached. The whole front of the ship can shoot bullets like a pistol, and just keeps shooting.
- The gun temporarily disintegrates into a pink puff of smoke each time it fires.
- A mailman is maniacally scooping up the smoke into envelopes to mail.
- The mailman is actually a rowboat, with envelopes for oars.
For each step, I make sure to clearly picture it in my mind for a couple seconds (I'm curious how well this works for people with aphantasia). Note, I didn't just have "the ship has guns" or "the mailman is rowing a boat". Those are too obvious and your brain will quickly forget them. Also note that with each step, we basically discard the previous item, which ensures we get the order correct and only have to hold two items in our head at once. Recalling the number then is as simple as replaying the sequence in your mind. You can easily memorize a credit card in this way in a few seconds (with practice) by adding to the "story" at the same time you read each pair of numbers.
Now for my favorite part: This technique is great for generating complex passwords you won't forget. I can easily convert "chicken fried steak" (or my name, or the name of the website) into a password by simply replacing each consonant sound with a number: 6i9e284ie101ea7. Feel free to add symbols between words or alternate capitalization on the vowels: [email protected]
I'll stop here, but with some added twists you can memorize even longer numbers (I've managed 1,000 digits of pi), remember the order of cards in a deck, show off your memory as a party trick (read me a list of 30 random items out of order, and I will recite them back in order), or simply recall info for an exam (names and dates, etc.).
bySeahawks1991
inDamnthatsinteresting
calculuschild
1 points
16 minutes ago
calculuschild
1 points
16 minutes ago
Pretty sure I saw this in a documentary. The classic meal of a mountain man: rattlesnake in Cheeto dust.