photo by Matito

Carefully Chosen Words

Remember those 10 items you linked together? They were not randomly chosen: each one translates into the number of its position in the list according to the phonetic alphabet code.

1. Hat
2. Hen
3. Ham
4. Hare
5. Hill
6. Shoe
7. Cow
8. Hive
9. Ape
10. Woods

haT -> 1
heN -> 2
haM -> 3
etc.

What this allows you to do is remember each item in the list by number. If you have your list of ten items solidly memorized by linking then you should be able to work backwards and recall the word when given the number. So if you think of a 7, you should be able to figure out that it’s cow without starting at hat and counting through the list until you get to 7.

RAM

What we’ve built here is 10, random access pegs upon which we can hang things. If you need to remember a list of up to ten items by number, you can now do it by associating the first item with hat, the second with hen, the third with ham, and so on. To recall the list in order you can simply work through your ten pegs and remember the associated items. Or if you want to recall a specific item by number, access the peg by reversing the phonetic code and then remember what the associated item is.

An Example

If I wanted to remember each of the ten commandments by number, I would first build a list of ten key words that would represent the commandments:

1. gods
2. idol
3. name
4. church
5. parents
6. kill
7. adultery
8. rob
9. lie
10. covet

Then I would link each of these keywords to the corresponding peg. I’ll let you come up with your own associations, but when I want to recall the 5th commandment I see my parents rolling down a hill. When I want to recall the 9th commandment, I see an ape with a nose like Pinoccio’s, growing longer and longer. Notice I’m not linking the commandments to each other; I’m linking them to my pegs. And since I can recall any peg by number, now I can access any of the ten commandments by number.

Memory Month Introduction & Table of Contents

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Related posts

• Memory Month, Day 9: 100 Pegs
• Memory Month, Day 7: The Peg
• Memory Month, Day 6: The Phonetic Alphabet
• Memory Month, Day 4: The Link
• Memory Month, Day 3: Association

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