Jonathan

CaspianHancock
Woods
Your memory
can be better.

brilliant Memory Training

Here’s how.

Memory
Imagine if you had a brilliant memory. Think of how much it would improve
your life – whether it’s gaining confidence in social situations, getting
more creative at work, enjoying the power of instant recall, or effortlessly
remembering day-to-day things. All this can happen, so stop imagining and
start getting your memory under control right now with Brilliant Memory
Training.

This step-by-step guide shows you how to build and boost your memory so

Training
you can get the most out of everything you do – and want to do – to reach your
full potential.

BRILLIANT OUTCOMES
• Increase your memory and your power of recall
• Boost your confidence and stretch your creativity
• Learn invaluable new skills and improve old ones
• Remember dates, names and faces – in fact,
anything you want to!
Hancock

Stop worrying about

£12.99
personal development

your memory and start

Visit us on the web
www.pearson-books.com using it – to the full!
CVR_HANC5815_01_SE_CVR.indd 1 07/04/2011 12:14
 brilliant

memory
training

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A01_HANC5815_01_SE_FM.indd 2 07/04/2011 15:39
 brilliant

memory
training
Stop worrying about your memory
and start using it – to the full!

Jonathan Hancock

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 Pearson Education Limited

Edinburgh Gate
Harlow CM20 2JE
Tel: 144 (0)1279 623623
Fax: 144 (0)1279 431059
Website: www.pearsoned.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2011

© Pearson Education Limited 2011

The right of Jonathan Hancock to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.

Pearson Education is not responsible for the content of third party internet
sites.

ISBN: 978-0-273-74581-5

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hancock, Jonathan, 1972-
   Brilliant memory training : stop worrying about your memory and start using
it - to the full! / Jonathan Hancock.
p. cm.
   Includes bibliographical references and index.
   ISBN 978-0-273-74581-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1.  Memory. 2.  Mnemonics. 3. 
Recollection (Psychology) I. Title.
   BF385.H2747 2011
   153.1’4--dc22 2011009435

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without either the prior
written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying in
the United Kingdom issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron
House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. This book may not be lent,
resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior
consent of the Publishers.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
15 14 13 12 11

Typeset in 10pt Plantin by 3

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Henry Ling

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 For Lucy, Noah, Evie and Nate

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A01_HANC5815_01_SE_FM.indd 6 07/04/2011 15:39
 Contents

About the author ix

Author’s acknowledgements x
Introduction xi

part 1 Foundations 1

  1 Switching on 3
  2 Memory building 23
  3 Memory boosting 45
  4 Taking control 69
  5 Global learning 87

part 2 Applications 109

  6 Learning lists 111

  7 Words and ideas 133
  8 Numbers and names 159
  9 Under pressure 185
10 Self-improvement 209

Conclusion 235
Further reading 237
Index 239

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A01_HANC5815_01_SE_FM.indd 8 07/04/2011 15:39
 About the author

Jonathan Hancock taught himself to have a brilliant memory

when he was still at school – to win a bet, and then to break
two Guinness World Records. He was one of the first people to
achieve the rank of Grandmaster of Memory and became World
Memory Champion at the age of 22. He has since shown off his
remarkable memory on TV and radio programmes around the
world.

A graduate of Oxford University and former BBC radio presenter,

Jonathan has published ten books on thinking and learning, acted
as a memory consultant for broadcasting and telecoms compa-
nies and led training courses in business and education.

Alongside his job as a teacher in a busy city primary school,

every year Jonathan works with The Learning Skills Foundation
to run the national Junior Memory Championship.

A keen marathon-runner, he lives with his wife and three chil-

dren in Brighton.

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 Author’s acknowledgements

I’d like to thank Samantha Jackson, Rachel Hayter and the

whole team at Pearson for their enthusiasm and support for this
book from the start.

Thanks are also due to my agent, Caroline Shott, and to all the
members of The Learning Skills Foundation.

And to my family: endless gratitude for the patience and con-

sideration they’ve shown me during the writing of this book.
They’re a constant reminder of the fun, excitement and joy
involved in laying down lasting memories, and my life with Lucy,
Noah, Evie and Nate has given me so many rich experiences to
remember and cherish.

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 Introduction

We used to believe that memories were made in our hearts. Then

we discovered the brilliant brain, and the last few centuries have
been spent trying to understand what’s going on between our
ears. But memory’s on the move again. The more we try to pin
it down, the more elusive it becomes. And I don’t know about
you but a great deal of my memory is now definitely in my back
pocket.

Inside my mobile phone I have all the numbers I use regularly,

plus access to online directories that let me track down anyone
else I might need to call. The internet provides me with more
information than I will ever have time to use, accessible wherever
I am in the world. My phone itself holds lists of jobs to do, calen-
dars full of important birthdays, daily schedules, email address
lists, maps . . . The alarm reminds me to wake up in the morning,
the voice-recorder allows me to gather information on the move
and retrieve it at my leisure, and the camera helps me to record
and relive any moment I choose in phenomenal detail.

And yet . . . I’m so glad I learnt to use my own memory power.
It’s changed my life, and I want this book to change yours.

There’s never been a time when memory was more important.

Thanks to the speed the world turns, the sheer amount of infor-
mation hitting us from every angle, the increased demands on
our time and energy, and the high standards we set ourselves for
what we can do in a lifetime, memory is now a more valuable

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 xii Introduction

commodity than ever before. There may be more tools to

support it, but there’s so much more going on to challenge it,
and there’s no escaping the fact that your memory is still crucial
to your success in everything you do. But it’s not just about
coping, forgetting less, stopping the rot. It’s about making very
conscious decisions to use memory to be brilliant. Your confi-
dence with memory goes to the very heart of who you are and
what you can achieve.

I’ve had some wonderful adventures with memory. I taught

myself to memorise playing cards to break world records, then
learnt how to remember anything to win memory awards and
competitions . . . and suddenly discovered a growing community
of people fascinated by the latent power of the human brain. I
found out about memory techniques that had been around since
ancient times and which still worked today. In fact they were
perfect for the modern world because they made it possible to
remember at speed, under pressure, creatively, efficiently, enjoy-
ably; and rather than simply remembering more, they revealed
the importance of remembering better. Because these days it’s
not how much you can remember, but what you choose to do
with your memory that really counts.

Anyone can have a better memory. It’s an active skill that you
learn and practise. Ancient civilisations were much more aware
of the best systems and strategies, but there’s no reason why you
can’t start using some powerful techniques immediately and get
so much more out of your memory, however old you are and
whatever your experiences of learning have been like so far.

You’ll remember more – and do it faster, find it easier, be more

accurate. You’ll get more out of everything you learn, engaging
with it on a whole new level. You’ll see the advantages of putting
your learning skills to work in areas you never thought of before,
and enjoy benefits you didn’t even connect with memory: better
communication, improved relationships, stronger imagination,

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 Introduction xiii

sharper decision making, more confidence all round. You’ll

feel good about the future, know how to make other people
remember you, and redefine your own opinion about what you
can achieve – when you put your mind to it.

My pocket memory’s good, and I use it every day, but the

memory I’ve built for myself is what makes the real difference to
what I achieve and how I feel.

I’ve written this book to get you started on your own memory
adventure. I want you to see just what a difference it makes when
you know what memory is really about, and how to use yours,
brilliantly.

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A01_HANC5815_01_SE_FM.indd 14 07/04/2011 15:39
 CHAPTER 3

Memory
boosting
The difference between false
memories and true ones is the
same as for jewels: it is always the
false ones that look the most real,
the most brilliant.

Salvador Dali

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M03_HANC5815_01_SE_C03.indd 46 07/04/2011 15:40
 In this chapter you will learn:
●● how to train the thinking skills that will maximise your
memory
●● what we know, and what we don’t, about the human brain
●● the life-spans of different types of memory
●● why you remember and why you forget
●● new ways to start forgetting less and remembering
everything

It’s time to start using your brain better, to create artificially

brilliant memories of everything. As you discovered in the last
chapter, some of your current memory methods are paying off,
so keep doing anything that helps. But you also need to try out
new ideas – and you’re about to take a very different approach to
a whole range of learning challenges, examining what your brain
does when it works best and starting to change your approach to
match. Give everything a go, develop strategies and systems that
suit your brain and your life, and prepare to feel your memory
doing some new and exciting things.

Change your mind

There’s a famous saying that goes like this: if you always do what
you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got. Albert
Einstein once said that the best definition of insanity is doing

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 48 brilliant memory training

the same thing over and over again, but expecting the results to
be different . . .

Chapter 2 identified the six key areas of thinking that contribute

to having a brilliant memory. You’re about to start using them
all as you change the way you learn for ever; and so, to give you
the very best chance of success, here’s a mini training session
for each one.

Concentration
To start training your concentration, why not try counting back-
wards at the same time as counting forwards? Out loud, count
‘one, two, three . . .’ up to ten, and at the same time visualise the
numbers from ten down to one. So as you say ‘one’ you picture
ten, on ‘two’ you see nine, and so on. Can you do it up to and
down from 20, 50, 100? What happens when you carry out the
two counts at different speeds?

You can also train your brain to concentrate with words. See
if you can make up some meaningful sentences in which every
word starts with the last letter of the previous one.

‘I’m making good decisions.’

‘After reading, get testing – go on, now!’
‘How will Lisa and Diane enjoy your recollections?

It’s a brilliant boost for your concentration, especially as you

have to think of several things at the same time: the sentence so
far, the last word, the last letter, the next word . . . And how easy
do you find it to concentrate on something logical while you’re
also trying to be creative? To have a brilliant memory you’ll need
to be able to operate many different bits of your brain at once.

Organisation
You can easily start to train your ‘organised thinking’ skills.
When you create memory sentences, for example, using the

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 Memory boosting 49

initial letters of words in a list, get into the habit of reorganising

them to make remembering easier.

Here’s a list of different types of energy:

gravitational  electrical  heat  light  chemical  kinetic

For once the order of the items isn’t important, so why not
organise them in a way that helps your memory? My wife’s
called Lucy, so I might decide it’s useful to have her at the start
of the sentence: light (L for Lucy). I could put electrical and
kinetic next, to give me ‘electric kettle’; and then what about
reordering the last three words as heat, chemical and gravitational:
‘. . . heats cold gravy’.

Lucy’s electric kettle heats cold gravy. It’s a very memorable image.
I can see it, touch it, hear it, smell it, taste it . . . and now I have
a much better chance of remembering those six ideas, thanks to
some careful organisation at the start.

Often, the act of organising information (focusing on it, exploring

it, doing something with it) is enough to make it memorable.
That’s particularly true when you categorise rather than just
rearrange, and it doesn’t seem to matter what categories you use
– even ones you invent.

Try it yourself. Read this list of Christmas presents and group

the items into categories of your choice, real or imaginary.
For example, there’s a group of foods in this list and a set of
round things; but maybe there are also ‘the three things that
Neil Armstrong tried to smuggle to the moon’, or ‘items in the
President’s pocket’ . . .

ham  robot  watch  vase  torch  perfume  remote-

controlled car  aftershave  wine  tie  bowl  camera  mug
necklace  cheese

Now cover up the list and see how much of it stuck in your
memory. If your organising and categorising has worked, one

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 50 brilliant memory training

word should quickly trigger several more, and the categories

themselves should be easy to remember because each one has
several words to act as triggers. Which categories worked par-
ticularly well? If anything slipped your mind, how might you
have connected it more memorably to the other items in the set?

Visualisation
As well as strengthening your visualisation skills, this exercise
will provide you with a useful piece of memory ‘equipment’.
You’re going to build yourself an item of mental furniture to
hold your memories.

Visualise . . . a beautiful oak cabinet. It has two doors at the front
which open to reveal three drawers on the left, three on the right,
and two open shelves in between. See this piece of furniture as
clearly as you can in your mind’s eye. Walk around it, look at it
from close up and from far away and build a very clear picture
of it in your mind. Imagine opening the doors and checking that
each drawer on the left is empty, then the top and bottom shelf,
and finally the three drawers on the right.

Now you can put in some memories. Here’s a list of eight coun-
tries that you want to talk about at a meeting, in this precise
order:

France  China  Australia  India  USA  Italy  England 

Egypt

For each country, imagine you’ve been given an intricate little

model of one of its famous buildings or landmarks. Then, gently
and carefully, put the models into your cabinet: one in each of
the three drawers on the left, one on each shelf, and then the
remaining three models in the drawers on the right.

You might see yourself putting a model of the Eiffel Tower in the
first drawer; then part of the Great Wall of China in the drawer
below, followed by Sydney Opera House in the one beneath.

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 Memory boosting 51

Carry on until you’ve visualised a model for each of the coun-

tries, and all eight models are safely inside. Practise seeing them
in their individual spaces and as part of a whole collection of
information.

And when you cover the printed list and open the doors of the
cabinet in your mind, what can you see . . . ?

Imagination
More than just seeing images vividly, you need to be able to
transform them memorably in your mind. Imagination is at the
heart of artificial memory; and the good news is that you can
train it to be brilliant.

You can practise by changing dull, lifeless, forgettable infor-

mation into something so rich and real that it already has a
good chance of being remembered. You use your imaginative
skills consciously and strategically to manipulate information,
bringing it to life in your mind in unusual and ambitious ways.

Your next challenge is to change each of the following words

into something that will excite your interest and activate your
memory.

book  coat  tree  car  plate  apple

As words on a page they’re pretty flat and uninteresting – but

your imagination will soon see to that.

First, play around with the size and shape of each object. The
book could be the biggest in the world. The coat might be only
just big enough for an ant to wear. Perhaps the car is the longest
stretch limo in history; the plate octagonal; the apple flat enough
to post under a door. Picture all the images in your mind’s eye
and get used to using imagination to make them special.

Next, add one unusual detail to each picture. Use all the five
senses imaginatively. What’s odd about the way the book looks?

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 52 brilliant memory training

What strange noise does the coat make? Does the tree feel funny,
or smell of something, or even have a memorable taste if you
imagine biting into its bark . . . ?

Now use your imagination to make each item do something

memorable. You could pick a theme: for example, how would
they all fly, or dance, or talk? If you focused on flying, the car
might use its doors as wings, the plate could be fitted with
helicopter blades, and perhaps the apple would burst high into
the sky like a rocket? Or, forget about a theme and make all the
actions different, creating five very memorable items with their
own individual skills.

After all of that, it shouldn’t be hard to remember the five items

– and not just the original words, but all the rich, imagina-
tive layers of detail you added. Holding them in your mind in
this heightened form boosts your memory, but it also gets you
engaging more closely with the information, so that remembering
it is just the beginning of what you can do.

Creativity
Brilliant memory involves creativity on a number of different levels.
You pick and choose from a range of strategies. You find creative
ways to organise, visualise and re-imagine information. You invent
clever images to remind you of complex or abstract ideas. And, as a
result, you start using your memory to boost your creativity. You’re
motivated and alert, thinking in pictures and patterns, and able to
bring together knowledge, experience and a wealth of new observa-
tions and ideas to produce some truly creative results.

brilliant exercise
Practise your creative thinking skills by finding images to represent the
following bits of information: random words picked from a dictionary. Use
the way the words look, how they sound, any associations that come to

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 Memory boosting 53

mind, and every other possibility that opens up when you inject creativity
into your learning.

velocity  total  happy  eighteen  torque  permission

What image ‘says’ velocity to you? A cheetah, a jet plane, Usain Bolt?
And what about this particular word, which could be easily confused with
‘speed’ or ‘fast’? Maybe the plane is jetting over Velo City, home to the
fastest animals and humans on earth?

Total is another abstract idea, so perhaps you make it as bright and exciting
as a telethon ‘totaliser’, getting huge cheers at it’s used to announce the
latest total; or just break it down into a cute little boy: ‘tot Al’.

You might picture a happy hippie . . . ‘a teen’ becoming eighteen . . .
whatever combination of real meanings, creative associations and clever
word-play produces the image clues that your memory loves.

And what about some names? Here are five Roman goddesses. If you
wanted to learn them, for a talk, a test, or just to strengthen your historical
knowledge, you’d need to turn them into images – and you’d have to think
very creatively to come up with the pictures to use.

Vesta  Terra  Ceres  Minerva  Venus

Is Vesta only wearing a vest? Is Terra acting like a terror? Maybe Ceres
cares, Minerva works down a mine, Venus loves exotic venues . . . ?

This creative interpretation of the material gets you well on the way to
remembering it brilliantly. And when you’ve got your five images, why
not spend a moment trying to organise them creatively, connecting them
together somehow to keep them in your mind. Is there a clever way you
could order them, categorise them, combine them into a single scene or
link them into a story?

Humour
It’s probably not possible to train your sense of humour
(although you could explore some different types of comedy,

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 54 brilliant memory training

mix with funnier people and find more opportunities to relax

and laugh), but you can definitely practise using comedy to
activate your memory.

brilliant exercise
Here are two ideas to try. First, take the following famous names and put
them into a funny story involving every kind of visual comedy you can
imagine. Steal ideas from all the comedy films you’ve seen. Use slapstick,
surprise, practical jokes, farce, coincidence, misunderstanding . . . anything
you can think of to raise a smile.

Mickey Mouse  Elvis  Napoleon  Madonna  Harry Potter  Dumbo

Arnold Schwarzenegger  Oprah Winfrey  Dracula  Pelé

Maybe Mickey Mouse slips on a banana skin and lands on top of Elvis in
the middle of a song – and he jumps into a cupboard where Napoleon has
accidentally covered Madonna and Harry Potter in custard . . .

Visualise the events being played out in front of a packed audience, and
exaggerate the sound of their laughter at each moment of madness.

And as a second exercise, what would happen if your favourite comedian

became your teacher? Choose a famous comedy star, past or present, and
then imagine them giving you the following information (the directions
your friend’s just given you to the party tomorrow night). How would Bill
Cosby, Charlie Chaplin, Joan Rivers or Laurel and Hardy tell you to go . . .

. . . up the hill as far as the church, then right on to the main road for 12
miles. When you get to the garage, take the next left, go past the factory,
under the railway bridge and then right at the school. The house you want
is number 88, with a blue door.

A key component of comedy is exaggeration, so make sure your chosen

comedian supplies you with extreme examples of their distinctive style.
Imagine them pulling out all the stops to find humour even in some dull
driving instructions. How would they make them funny – and make you
remember them?

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 Memory boosting 55

brilliant impact
British comedy star Al Murray says he finds it hard to remember new
people he meets at parties. But when he’s on stage, even working at
speed and under great pressure to perform, he’s able to interact with the
audience and remember many of their names. He turns them into new
characters for his act, finds comedy in their names, jobs, hobbies, opinions
. . . and he can remember them all with ease. Making things funny simply
makes them more memorable.

Your brilliant brain

You’ll be getting many more opportunities to stretch these
skills as your memory training continues. Your new approach
to remembering relies on them. You’ll be constantly exer-
cising the core aspects of your thinking – and you’ll need to,
because memory is a complex process. We’ve been struggling
to understand it for millennia, and exploring a little of the
history now will tell you a lot about what you have to do to
be brilliant.

Did you know?

Your brain is not only the most complex organ in your body, it
is the most intricate object in the universe. It’s not much to look
at: grey in colour, wrinkled like a walnut and with the texture
of a wet sponge. Around 75 per cent water, your brain weighs
around 1.5 kilograms; and, although that’s only about 2 per cent
of your bodyweight, it uses 20 per cent of the oxygen in your
blood – carried in 100,000 miles of blood vessels. If you could
harness its electrical power, the human brain could light up a
10-watt bulb.

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 56 brilliant memory training

Lose it, and still use it

People have lost large chunks of their brain and still been able
to function, their mental systems shifting and sharing tasks and
finding new ways to operate. Head injuries can have remarkably
specific effects on thinking, showing that certain mental abilities
are controlled by certain parts of the brain; but neuroscientists
have found different bits of the same ‘memory’ in very different
places, and modern imaging techniques reveal the complex
interconnections involved in the simplest of tasks.

We’ve learnt much more about how the brain does specific
things, but we’re still at the very edge of understanding how its
tangle of systems becomes memory – and, especially, where the
memories are made and kept.

Mapping the memory

We think that memories are processed and stored all over the
cerebral cortex, the brain’s wrinkled outer layer. The four lobes
specialise in particular aspects of memory: the frontal lobes,
for example, play an important role in short-term learning and
co-ordinating memories, drawing on the past and planning
the future; and the temporal lobes major in autobiographical
memory. And beneath the cortex, key parts of the brain appear
to have their own roles to play.

●● The hippocampus is heavily involved in transferring

memories from short- to long-term storage and specialises
in ‘declarative’ learning, the things you can talk about, and
memory for shape and space. In a disease like Alzheimer’s,
the hippocampus is often the first area to be damaged,
leading to confusion about details, spatial disorientation and
a general inability to form new memories.
●● The cerebellum is located at the back of the brain, near the
spinal cord. This area is important for storing procedural

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 Memory boosting 57

memories and motor learning: skills involving good co-

ordination and delicate control. These memories do tend
to feel like they’re stored in a different way from the rest:
accessible without much conscious thought – and built to last.
●● The amygdala has been shown to work with emotional
memory, so if it’s not operating properly you’ll struggle
to understand and process feelings. And emotions have a
major impact on how memories are made and retrieved.

Memory is an extremely complex system. A lot has to happen for

an experience to become a memory.

Short term/long term

Your brain is good at taking in information, but what happens
next is less straightforward. We now think of ‘short-term’ memory
as very short indeed. Your sense organs detect details, get them
inside your head, and then the information is held on a very tem-
porary basis in what’s called ‘working memory’. After that, some
of it gets transferred to more lasting storage, ‘long-term’ memory
– so training your memory involves learning to do four things well:

●● gathering: using strong senses, concentrating and showing

good attention to detail
●● holding: having strategies for retaining information long
enough to do something with it
●● storing: taking ownership of the material, filing it effectively
●● retrieving: knowing how to recover key bits of information,
individually or in combination, for a variety of different
needs

The vast amount of sense information you take in stays in your

working memory just long enough to stand a chance of being
remembered, thanks to some instinctive activities in the brain.
Memory systems get to work to grasp hold of new material,

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 58 brilliant memory training

beginning the process that will lead to some of it being stored for
longer than the passing moment . . . .

Holding sounds
Consider what happens when someone calls out their phone
number to you. As you look for a pen and paper or your own
phone, you’re probably repeating the digits to yourself, either
under your breath or in your imagination, keeping the fast-
decaying information in your head for long enough to record
it somewhere else. You’re making use of your phonological loop.

Holding images
When you see a diagram or watch something moving you retain
it as a picture in your head – for a while. This is your visuo-
spatial sketchpad in action, and it also plays a role in planning
movements. As someone gives you directions (‘over the bridge,
right at the traffic light, past the pub. . .’) you’re likely to create a
mental picture and focus on it intently, trying to keep this imagi-
nary map in front of your mind’s eye.

Holding sequences
Your brain can integrate different sorts of information to form
memorable sequences and structures, as words form into sen-
tences, for example, or sights and sounds make up movie scenes.
There’s a limit, after which the sequence itself isn’t enough, but
up to that point you can remember ‘the story so far’ thanks to
the natural power of the brain’s episodic buffer.

All three of these systems are co-ordinated by the central execu-

tive, and together they provide you with the working memory
that holds on to information in the short term. But there are
some other important factors in play. Some things are simply
easier for you to hold on to, and understanding why is a key early
step towards boosting your brain.

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brilliant exercise
Throughout the history of memory testing, word lists have been used to
investigate individuals’ particular abilities, as well as to highlight common
experiences and effects. To make the most of the following powerful
experiment, try your best to switch off any active memory strategies and then
ask someone to read the word list to you out loud. Just listen to the words
and see which ones your brain retains without any conscious effort from you.

box  coat  oven  key  shark  pan  Elvis Presley  car  hole  whale 
laugh  pencil  sharpener  modern  octopus  hat  trophy  grey
murder  rose  pin  starfish  book  firework  toast  seahorse  barrel
fast  apple

If a computer was working properly, it wouldn’t have any problem

remembering these words. It could give them back to you forwards,
backwards or in any other arrangement with 100 per cent accuracy, for
ever. It wouldn’t be put off by someone talking, get confused by previous
word lists, be distracted between learning and recalling, lose energy or
interest half way through . . . Of course it might not find it so easy to tell
you what it was doing on the day Elvis was shot, list its favourite makes
of car or describe the wonders of the smell of toast, but it could be relied
upon to return whatever you put in, efficiently and reliably.

Human memory is different, as you can demonstrate now by trying to

write down all the words from the list that stuck in your mind – and then
spending a moment thinking about what happened in your head during
and after the test.

You may lose in a contest of simple recall, but you’re instinct­

ively doing more than just regurgitating the data as you spot
subtle patterns, prioritise particular words, make connections,
form images, personalise the information . . . Your experience
will be different from everyone else’s, but there are also things
in common that reflect some very important principles at work.

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 60 brilliant memory training

First and last

You’re likely to remember words from the start of the list, like
box, coat and oven. Your short-term memory had space, your
brain was alert and you were interested in what was going
to happen next. First impressions really do count: informa-
tion gathered at the start of any learning exercise has a good
chance of being recalled, thanks to what’s called the primacy
effect.

It’s also easier to hold on to words from the end of the list. There
may be ‘interference’ from the information that’s come before,
but there are no new words to overload your memory and not
long to wait before you get the chance to answer. Your spirits
tend to pick up towards the end of a learning session, adding to
the power of the recency effect.

Surprise!
Information sticks more easily when it stands out in some way.
It’s another simple but incredibly powerful point. In this list,
you were much more likely to remember the words Elvis and
Presley: the only person – and a pretty outstanding one at that
– amongst many mundane ideas. The next time you compose a
shopping list, pick the two most important items, write them in
larger letters using a different colour and style, and see if they’re
easier to remember. The Von Restorff effect says they will be. You
could even add a completely inappropriate word somewhere in
the list – astronaut, banshee, Constantinople – and see how quickly
it comes to mind later on.

Sometimes, unusual information takes our attention from the

other stuff and makes us remember less overall; but mostly, as
advertisers, artists, comedians and the owners of brilliant memo-
ries know very well, details that stick out like a sore thumb stay
in the mind longer than everything else.

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 Memory boosting 61

Joined-up thinking
Connections are also incredibly powerful. In the list you saw,
pencil and sharpener were clearly linked, as were all the sealife
words: shark, whale, octopus, starfish, seahorse. Spotting patterns
triggers memory and allows your brain to cluster the individual
bits together, and ‘chunking’ is a well-known memory tactic:
grouping information into more manageable bundles. So 12, 24,
10, 16 isn’t really any harder to hold in the mind than 2, 4, 0, 6,
and shoe, cake, banana, tree, elephant is as easy at s, c, b, t, e. Your
brain does it naturally all the time, but you can also start to do
it consciously: learning guest-list names in pairs, for example,
or organising your Christmas buying list into ‘themed’ groups
of gifts.

Think about the other words you remembered. Some will prob-
ably be easy to picture, like trophy or firework. Others will evoke
senses – toast – inspire an emotional reaction – murder – or
simply catch your attention in some other way, perhaps con-
necting to something you’re doing today or prompting you to
notice an item nearby.

Eminently forgettable
And the words you’re least likely to remember? They’re the ones
in the middle of the list, with nothing to make them stand out,
no connections with other words, hard to picture, uninspiring,
abstract . . . And how well that describes so much of the informa-
tion you struggle to remember in real life! No wonder so many
things never get any further than your short-term memory.

There were other tricky aspects of this learning task, more

factors that a computer wouldn’t have to worry about – like
anxiety about failing, having little real motivation to succeed,
only hearing the information once . . . And, once again, how
often are these things true of your day-to-day memory attempts?

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 62 brilliant memory training

Left to its own devices, your memory will remember some

things, forget others, follow typical patterns, behave inconsist-
ently and inefficiently, surprise you, frustrate you . . . but it doesn’t
have to be that way. Now that you’ve spotted the key things that
help and hinder memory, you can start putting the right condi-
tions in place to achieve a much better level of success. This is
your chance to make the most of your brain’s complex charac-
teristics, its connectedness and creativity. This is where you start
to outperform the computer, using memory skills to explore
information imaginatively and to apply it in ingenious ways. And
all the while you’re developing core aspects of your thinking that
will help you do everything better.

This is where you start to take control.

Get organised
Far too often we struggle to remember information in its most
forgettable form. A computer can either cope with a particular
format or it can’t, and tells you so; but most of the time we
just push on and try to make material stick, however badly it’s
presented. Our brain does its best to break the task into manage-
able chunks and to find useable patterns – but having a brilliant
memory involves a much more conscious approach. Like the
ancient masters of the art of memory, you find a new design for
your data: one that matches the way your brain works best.

Matchmaking
Even simple attempts at organisation can make a big difference.
Suddenly the puzzle has fewer pieces, and it can even start to
feel like it’s solving itself, giving clues about what goes where.
You can see this in action by re-reading the word list as a set
of fifteen pairs rather than thirty individual ideas. Spend a few
moments now looking through the information – basically, the

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 Memory boosting 63

same list – in this new form, thinking about each pair as a single
item. Even without much effort you’ll find that your brain is
picturing the two words combined in some way or spotting
something that links them.

box, coat  oven, key  shark, pan  Elvis, Presley  car, hole
whale, laugh  pencil, sharpener  modern, octopus 
hat, trophy  grey, murder  rose, pin  starfish, book 
firework, toast  seahorse, barrel  fast, apple

It should already feel easier. You’ve instantly halved the items

and given your brain some much more memorable ideas: a ‘car
hole’, a ‘whale laugh’, some ‘firework toast’ . . . Combining con-
cepts like this also stops them being mundane and kick-starts
your imagination, giving these fifteen items a much greater
chance of staying put.

True, you’ve now looked through the list a second time – but in
real life, re-reading information doesn’t always make much of a
difference. This time, see whether it’s had any impact on your
learning. How many of the thirty words can you remember now?

And to get a feel for the ‘glue’ your brain can use to hold the
pieces together, see if you can remember what came after each
of the words below.

box __________ fast __________ modern __________

whale __________ oven __________ grey __________
rose __________ firework __________ Elvis __________
shark __________ starfish __________ pencil __________
car __________ hat __________ seahorse __________

There’s an active approach at work here, since you’ve carefully

reorganised the original list; but it’s also about allowing your
brain to do what comes naturally. We’re wired to ask questions,
look for patterns, try to survive by working out what’s going on
– so throwing together unconnected items wakes up the brain

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 64 brilliant memory training

and challenges it to make meaning. Normally you might not

concentrate much on words like pan, toast or laugh, but now it’s
hard not to imagine what a ‘shark pan’ might look like, a ‘whale
laugh’ sound like, or what smell might emerge from some ‘fire-
work toast’.

Storytelling
When you give it a chance, your brain loves to tell stories, finding
some sort of logic to structure separate pieces of information.
There’s a natural instinct to ‘put two and two together’ – and,
in memory terms, when it does make five, that’s even better!
Unusual outcomes are the ones that stick in the mind, as long as
there’s some degree of method in the madness.

Oral storytelling helped us to keep hold of our shared history

long before anything was written down. These days we have
countless storytelling formats: poems, songs, novels, movies,
adverts, anecdotes, instructions, video-games . . .

Throughout this book you’ll see the power of stories to make

anything memorable.

So, if you’re sitting comfortably, here’s a story about . . .

. . . a huge box packed with expensive fur coats. In the pocket of one
of the coats you find an oven key, and when you use it to unlock
a secret compartment in your oven you discover something unusual
inside: a shark pan, full of great white sharks. One of the sharks is
chasing Elvis Presley, but he manages to crawl through a car hole
and escape, dodging all the cars that are also coming in and out
through the hole. Just when Elvis thinks he’s free, he hears the deep,
booming sound of a whale laugh, so he hides behind a giant pencil
sharpener – where he meets a very modern octopus who’s also in
hiding. In each one of the octopus’ eight tentacles is a hat trophy, its
prizes for winning a hat-making competition. Elvis looks carefully
at one of the hat-shaped trophies and sees a strange image on it: a

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 Memory boosting 65

grey photograph of a gruesome crime scene. He peels off this ‘grey

murder’ and uses a rose-shaped pin to fix it to the starfish book
he’s carrying, pressing the flowery pin right through one of the
beautiful starfish illustrations. But this makes the book explode,
shooting fireworks made out of toast into the night sky, each firework
showering the crowds below with toast crumbs. Someone decides to
catch the crumbs in a seahorse barrel, and the seahorses inside start
to eat them noisily, until a fast apple starts darting around the barrel
and getting to the crumbs first . . .

It’s a strange story. There’s no logic involved in firework toast

falling into seahorse barrels and being snatched by fast apples
. . . but there is a clear set of connections at work, an explicable if
decidedly odd chain of events, reminiscent of dreams. And if the
images and ideas are strong and memorable enough, you should
be able to follow them from start to finish – and rediscover the
original thirty words along the way.

Remembering . . .
Put it to the test. Start by looking into the huge box, see what
you find – and where the story takes you. How many of the thirty
words do you know now, and how well can you remember the
order?

See what happens when you try to recall the list backwards. The
apple was fast in the barrel full of seahorses, catching toast from
. . . what? Can you make it all the way back to the start of the
story?

And what about answering specific questions about the details

in between?

●● What came after sharpener?

●● What was the eighth word on the list?
●● Which word came before toast?

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 66 brilliant memory training

●● Which of these words was not on the original list: hat, oven,
candle, modern?
●● How many of the words ended in a vowel?

Remembering like this may seem silly to start with, but it works,
allowing you to perform precise, controlled feats of recall.
Suddenly, instead of just being thankful for whatever your brain
happens to hold on to, you’re taking active control – and reaping
the rewards. You strengthen your concentration, kick-start your
creativity, and develop a range of key thinking skills that will
serve you well in many different tasks. And, above all, you get a
glimpse of what it might feel like to be able to remember any-
thing. If you can learn a list of thirty random words, backwards,
forwards and inside out, what else might you be able to do?

. . . and forgetting

So would you remember the list tomorrow, next week, in ten
years from now? Unlike a computer, your brain can perform
brilliantly in a task like this one minute, then really struggle the
next. While you’re focused and motivated, and the memorable
images and links are fresh in your mind, an amazing feat of recall
is possible, and there’s no reason why you couldn’t practise
every day, repeat the same learning activity regularly and keep
remembering this list for decades to come. But if you didn’t, the
memories would almost certainly fade. Sometimes life can feel
like a constant battle to hold on to information as it slips away
like sand through your fingers.

And yet . . . some memories are there for the long haul. Some
information goes through the whole memory process, starting as
sensory inputs, being held in working memory and short-term
storage, then getting filed in a much more long-lasting way, with
no further need for repetition and rehearsal. Enough has been
done to it to achieve something close to permanence.

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 Memory boosting 67

I’ll always remember . . .

A sound or a smell takes you back thirty years to a memory
that’s still as clear as if it happened yesterday. Your daughter’s
name is on your lips without a second’s pause for thought. At the
pub quiz, some bits of information pop out of nowhere, learnt
long ago and just waiting for the right moment. And you know
what they say about learning to ride a bike . . .

Of course, illness or accident can still cause problems, and

everyone makes the odd mistake. Health and mood, time and
place, distractions and diversions: there are many factors that
can play havoc with even the most secure memories. But what’s
clear is that your brain can take some information and make it
truly memorable. And when you understand how, you’re another
step closer to putting your memory under your control.

It’s a simple idea, but a life-changing one. When you know

what’s involved in making lasting memories – and you’re about
to – you can start doing it whenever you want.

brilliant recap
●● Training your core thinking skills is a vital part of boosting your
memory.
●● Memory is a complex set of systems involving many parts of
the brain.
●● There are clear patterns to remembering and forgetting in
practice.
●● Short-term memory is very short, but the crucial first step to
learning anything.
●● Memory techniques make the most of the way your brain
works best.

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M03_HANC5815_01_SE_C03.indd 68 07/04/2011 15:40
 Index

active reading 145–7 connections 28–9, 61, 75

Ad Herrenium 115–16 conscious creativity 73
Aeschylus 25 context 174
ageing, effects of 212–16 control of memories 225–7
aids to memory see memory aids creativity 41, 52–3, 73
alcohol 222–3
amino acids 218 decathlon disciplines 129–30
amygdala 57 deciding 79, 118, 137, 175
Aristotle 37 dehydration 223
artificial memory 25–6 diet 217–18
attitude 11–12, 18, 214–16 amino acids 218
autobiographical memory 56, 78 choline 218–19
Omega fatty acids 218
brain 55–7, 58, 91–6, 213 pantothenic acid 219
damaged 56, 91–2 substances with negative
uniqueness 6–7 impact 222–3
brain fuel 221–2 sugar 221–2
Broca, Pierre Paul 91–2 supplements 221
vitamins and minerals 219–20
caffeine 222 difference (as form of
calm, feeling 188–90 significance) 76
Camillo, Giulio 38 documents 140–4
central executive 58 dreams 232–3
cerebellum 56–7
change 47–8, 215–16 emergency situations 204–6
children’s memories 95–6 episodic buffer 58
choline 218–19 episodic memory 78
‘chunking’ 61 exaggeration 75–6, 80, 138,
Cicero 25, 26, 114 177–8
comedy see humour exams and tests
concentration 39, 48 boosting interest 190–2
confidence 201–2 revision 192–4

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 240 Index

exams and tests (continued) imagination 7, 40–1, 51–2, 90, 96

subject strategies exercises in 81–3, 97–106,
geography 196 118–19
history 194–6 imagining success 227–8
literacy 199–200 impact 202–3
maths 198–9
science 197–8 job interviews 203–4
exercise, physical 223–4 joined-up thinking 61
exercises for memory, advice for Journey System
approaching 21–2, 126–7, ancient origins 114
191–3 home journey 122–7
expectation, impact of 14, 174–5 impact of 127–8
eye movements 30 lists and sequences 121–2
loci definition 114
features and fashions 180 practical rules 115–16
flexibility 202 rooms and routes 114–15
foreign vocabulary 14, 152–6 steps to memorising 118–20
forgetting 61–2, 66, 205 visualising house 116–18
expectation of 174–5 work journey 128–30
foundation skills 19 Juvenal 216
French vocabulary 154
Fuller, Thomas 90 language learning 147–8, 152–6
Lashley, Karl 92
German vocabulary 153–4 lasting memories 67, 71
ginkgo biloba 221 left versus right side of brain
ginseng 221 91–2, 94, 96
life planning exercises 97–106,
happiness, impact of 14 173
head injuries 56 lists and sequences 58–66, 165–6
health, physical 216–33 steps to memorising 79–81,
Herigone, Pierre 168 121–2
hippocampus 56 location 180
history of memory skills 8–9, loci 114–18, 120
25–6, 37–8, 114 long-term memory 57–8
holograms 93 lookalikes 179–80
hormonal effects 213
humour 42, 53–5 Major System 168–71
matchmaking 62–4
images 31, 58 memorable information 67, 76,
bridging 156, 196 152, 203
for learning lists 121–7 memories
for learning numbers 171–3 ever-changing 72–3
for remembering names 178 good 231–2
trigger 80–1, 156, 230 lasting 67, 71

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 Index 241

memory Major System 168–71

applications of 15–16, 19 number rhymes 163–4
barriers to building 12–13, 19 passwords 173
benefits of xii–xiii, 19, 201–3 personal 174
determining attitude to 11–12, shapes 171–3
18
determining reasons for better Omega fatty acids 218
17, 20 order 90
essential steps for process organising 39–40, 48–50, 62,
79–81, 118–20 80–1, 138, 178–80
gaining control of 225–7
historical aspects 8–9, 25–6, pantothenic acid 219
37–8, 114 passwords 157, 173
short and long term 57–8 Penfield, Wilder 92
types of 77–9, 95 performance 202
memory aids 18 personalising information 35–6,
feeling your way through 34–5 80, 138, 176
following connections 28–9 perspicuity 90
going back 28 phobias 227
hearing rhythms 33–4 phonological loop 58
leaving reminders 29–30 physical health 216–33
making it personal 35–6 pictures see images
reliance on technological places 28, 113–14, 180
235–6 see also Journey System
striking a pose 30–1 posing 30–1
take a break 36–7 positive thinking 14, 188–90
telling stories 32–3 practising 72–3, 81, 138, 180–1
using pictures 31 pressure see stressful situations
using the alphabet 27 Pribram, Karl 92
minerals 220 primacy effect 60, 193–4, 203
Mnemosyne 236 procedural memory 77
‘muscle memory’ 34–5 prospective memory 77

names 161–3, 174 Quintilian 26, 113

linking with numbers 182–3
remembering 175–82 reading see active reading
negative thoughts 11, 21 recency effect 60, 193–4, 203
neurons 6, 213 regularity 90–1
neuroscience 28–9, 91–2 relaxation 224
neurotransmitters 217–18 remembering 65–6
numbers 161–3 names 175–82
learning 166–8 numbers 163–75
linking with names 182–3 reminders 29–30
for list learning 165–6 reminder rooms 229–31

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 242 Index

Renaissance 38 sugar 221–2

repetition 71–2 surprise, element of 60
rhymes and rhythms 33–4, 163–4 survival skills 74
right versus left side of brain
91–2, 94, 96 target setting 18–19, 229
taste 101–3
salt 222 tests see exams and tests
self-improvement 211–12 thinking
semantic memory 77–8 joined-up 61
senile dementia 215 positive 14, 188–90
senses, use of 97–106 split 93
sequences see lists and sequences thinking skills 38–42
short-term memory 57–8 total recall 106
sight 97–9 touch 103–4
significance 75–6
SIM (Subscriber Identity visibility 75
Module) 8, 236 visualisation 31, 40, 50–1, 80,
Simonides 8–9, 37 118, 176–7
skills, foundation 19 visuospatial sketchpad 58
sleep 225 vitamins 219–20
smell 104–6 vocabulary 151–2
sound 58, 100–1 foreign 152–6
Spanish vocabulary 155 Von Restorff effect 29, 60
speaking from memory 200–4
spelling 148–51 water 223
Sperry, Roger 93 Wernicke, Carl 91–2
split thinking 93 whole-brain memory 95
stories, use of 32–3, 64–5, 81–4 words 135–6
strategising 79, 118, 138, 175–6 active reading 145–7
stressful situations documents 140–4
emergencies 204–6 exercises in remembering
feeling calm 188–90 136–40
impact of 187–8 language learning 147–8
job interviews 203–4 passwords 157
speaking from memory 200–4 spelling 148–51
tests and exams 190–200 vocabulary 151–6

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