This technique uses the 1-100 number list created earlier in this section. The procedure is as follows:
1. Create an image for the person or company to whom the number belongs.
2. Create an image (or a series of images) for the telephone number.
3. Link the image of the person or company to the first image for the phone number.
4. Then link the first image of the phone number to the rest.
Examples (note that the numbers below are not real for obvious reasons):
555-3495 – Flower shop
Flower shop is simple to visualise, so proceed with breaking down the number into images: Lily, Lamb, Rib and Lee. Proceed by picturing a flower shop where the shop assistant is a gigantic Lily.
Next visualise a lamb whose wool is made out of Lilies. Then picture a lamb sitting at a table and eating human ribs; next visualise a rib practising the nunchakus whilst yelling menacing warrior’s cries.
+44-666-6219 - Nigel
Say you would like to memorise the phone number that belongs to a friend who lives in the UK. If you know that the UK country code is 44 then there is no need to add it on to your picture, simply proceed with the rest. The aim should be to only memorise all that is unknown. Therefore, in this example, you can proceed to 666-here we can make use of a simple association that uniquely identifies the number 666 with an image- namely the devil. So picture the devil smearing Nike Gel (to represent Nigel) over himself before
entering the hot climates of hell. Then picture a devil appearing on the shoulder of a chain and whispering in its ear, advising it to do an evil deed. Continue by picturing toilet paper roll that is made out of large metallic chains rather than paper (feel the discomfort).
Note that, if the reader chooses to use the higher dimensional approach (for example adding 2 dimensions), the images would be as follows: Nike gel to Devil and Devil to a Red Chain that is exploding (using the convention VWYZ). Therefore here, one could picture a red chain that is made out of devils and it increases in size until it explodes.
Whatever approach taken, be consistent- for example if the high dimensional approach is taken, it is important to decide which dimensional convention is being used for which portion of the number, and to continue to use this approach without exceptions or changes.
The reader is advised to practise with phone numbers as encountered during the day. Practise by attempting to recall mentally, before accessing the number from the cellular device or rolodex. With practise you will gain confidence and mastery.
Cards
To memorise cards, we require a systematic conversion of each element in a pack of cards into a visual object. The simplest approach is to use our list of 1-100 numbers with the following rules:
This approach assigns a unique image to each card in the deck. The convention used is that 1 is equal to Ace, the numbers 2-10 as they are, 11 is Jack, 12 is Queen and 13 is King. For example Jack of Clubs would be number 51 and would be represented by “Latte”. 5
of Diamonds would be number 65 and would be represented by
“Jail”.
Memorising a deck of cards is now a simple matter; we use the loci method to allow us to capture the sequence with the order in which it was memorised. For example, let us use an example of a journey that has the following monuments along the way:
Bar, Church, Gym, Bridge, Shoe shop
Say the sequence in the pack is as follows:
10 of Diamonds, Jack of Clubs, Queen of diamonds, King of clubs, Ace of spades
This sequence would be represented by the numbers 70, 51, 72, 53, 1 and the corresponding images would be: Case, Latte, Coin, Lamb, and Tie.
To memorise the sequence, peg Case to Bar, for example picture a gigantic Briefcase walking through the swinging door of the bar, everyone in the bar stops what they are doing, the music pauses as the Briefcase slowly walks to the bar.
Next peg Latte to Church, visualise a hot Latte standing in the entrance to the Church, dressed in preacher clothes urging you to come in and repent your sins.
Continue by pegging Coin to Gym, Lamb to Bridge and Tie to Shoe shop. Walk through the journey a few times vividly seeing the pegs created along the way. In order to recall the sequence, all that is required is to walk again through the journey and the pegs will provide the details of the card sequence memorised.
In order to memorise a longer sequence of cards (hundreds or thousands), the practitioner would need a journey that contains as many items. It is simple to create such sequences and it is useful to always have at least 2 sequences with at least 100 items in each.
However, for memory championships, one would require journeys that consist of large portions of towns or cities to allow for pegging of thousands of images.
To reduce the need for longer lists, it is always possible to use higher dimensional images taking in the information of 2 or more
cards at a time. For example we could use the “VWYZ” convention (VW=number from the list of 1-100 numbers, Y=colour dimension, Z=action dimension) to capture two cards in each image by making two cards represent one number. From the example above, this would mean taking the 10 of diamonds and the Jack of clubs together to stand for 7051, and the image to represent this number is an “orange briefcase that is having a shower”- so we would peg this image to the bar, which is the first point on our journey-perhaps you walk into a bar and see that there is an “orange briefcase that is having a shower” in the middle of the room.
Using higher dimensions reduces the required length of the journey since more information is being attached to each point on the journey. This is very powerful and with practise it can give the practitioner a serious edge over other competitors. The obvious extension would be to expand the number list from 100 to 1-9,999 and then add 4 dimensions which would provide the ability to put 4 cards on each point in the journey.
The reader should note that practise is required to make the process of translating the cards into numbers, then into images and then to quickly peg these images to the journey, in very short periods of time. When adding dimensions it is usually the speed of translating into numbers that tends to suffer- but with practise it can be made almost automatic.