Revision Time

[AgeGap]

If anybody has any upcoming study I can not recommend highly enough Derren Browns Tricks of the Mind. It has a chapter on memory that illustrates several 'tricks' on remembering.
For example learning this list.
Time, radiation, onset, character, aggravating factors, relieving factors, severity.
One of the techniques he gives is to go on a memory journey. Here is mine for the above list. The trick is to make the images vivid as you travel on your journey.
I open my door with my keys that have a clock keyring (time) and go into the front room and it has a very hot radiator (radiation). Through to the back room a train set(onset) is on the table. Going up the stairs I squeeze past somebody in a Mickey Mouse costume (character) and find my way to the bedroom blocked by someone who is aggravating (aggravating factors). Into the bedroom and the bed is comforting (relieving factors) but look out of the window to see a severed head (severity).

[Southwind17]

If anybody has any upcoming study I can not recommend highly enough Derren Browns Tricks of the Mind. It has a chapter on memory that illustrates several 'tricks' on remembering.
For example learning this list.
Time, radiation, onset, character, aggravating factors, relieving factors, severity.
One of the techniques he gives is to go on a memory journey. Here is mine for the above list. The trick is to make the images vivid as you travel on your journey.
I open my door with my keys that have a clock keyring (time) and go into the front room and it has a very hot radiator (radiation). Through to the back room a train set(onset) is on the table. Going up the stairs I squeeze past somebody in a Mickey Mouse costume (character) and find my way to the bedroom blocked by someone who is aggravating (aggravating factors). Into the bedroom and the bed is comforting (relieving factors) but look out of the window to see a severed head (severity).

This is all well and good for a relatively short list, and a relatively short number of lists, but once you get beyond that it becomes almost as hard to remember the memory journeys as the lists they contain. If it's shopping for a list of half-a-dozen grocery items you're into this can work fine, but for exams, limited value ;)

[AgeGap]

Other techniques show how to remember how to remember FA cup final results for the last 20 odd years. Lots of dry info there. Other techniques are shown as well.Also has other cool chapters and delves into a lot of bad thinking and debunking.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Is there a reason I can't simply write it down?

~~ Paul

[Southwind17]

Is there a reason I can't simply write it down?

~~ Paul

I think that might be classed as 'cheating'? Unless you're alluding to a simple groceries list, in which case I'm sure the humble shopkeeper will find foregiveness in her heart!

[tsg]

I had a great technique for remembering things, but I forgot what it was.

[rjh01]

This is an old technique. I remeber being told about it in the 1980s and I knew about it before then.

[AgeGap]

This is an old technique. I remeber being told about it in the 1980s and I knew about it before then.
Derren Brown admits that he did not invent any of the techniques. He gives a bit of history and describes how one technique was written about in 85 BC. I remember Dominic O'Brien on TV describing some of the techniques but seeing them wrote down and trying them out for yourself is a different matter.

[Soapy Sam]

It's all old stuff- the "memory palace", a variant on the "T for One" code and using visual links. Much the same as in Harry Lorayne's book and others. Brown makes no secret of that though and is not claiming any new methods.
"Tricks of the Mind" is an entertaining read as a window on the mentalist business and on Brown's thoughts on fakery in general. I enjoyed it. A decent Christmas gift for both sceptic and woo.

[bpesta22]

It's called the method of loci and it's been around since ancient greece. Them epic poets used it to memorize them epics.