Secret to remembering your PIN number

I’M GOING to give you a way of remembering numbers that’s hugely useful.

It does involve a bit more work, though: you need to learn ten simple sounds, each one of which will represent a number.

OK, here are the ten pairs. Memorise them until you can recite them out of order; you’ll never regret it. Let me just stress what should be obvious to you now. The Phonetic Alphabet enables you to make numbers meaningful by making them visual in your mind.

How on earth would you ordinarily visualise, say, the number 147? It’s all but impossible.

Now, however, if you want to remember 147, you can just think of a truck.

Why? Because number 1 is ‘t’, number 4 is ‘r’ and number 7 is ‘k’. Put them all together and the word most people come up with is ‘truck’.

Of course, you might instead make the words: trick, track, drake, drag, dark, derrick or turkey. The beauty is that none of these words could mean anything but number 147.

Moving on — how about remembering a six-digit number? Couldn’t be simpler.

Let’s say the first three digits are 147, for which we already have ‘truck’. The next three are 952. Using the Phonetic Alphabet, you’ll translate those numbers to ‘pln’ or ‘bln’.

Bln makes me think of balloon. Good, now I have a truck and a balloon.

I’m going to link them by visualising a lot of balloons pouring out of a truck — or a balloon driving a truck.

Like magic, isn’t it? Next time you think of

the balloon driving a truck, you’ll instantly come up with the number 147952. IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

YOU’RE driving to somewhere you’ve never been before and stop to ask a pedestrian for directions.

The trouble is, by the time he’s talked you through two rights, two lefts, another right and three forks in the road, you can’t remember any of it!

With a little practice, however, you’ll be able to memorise the lot. Here’s how you do it. Make up an image for yourself for ‘right’ and ‘left’. I visualise a boxer throwing a right jab, for right, and a red Communist flag for left. And get used to substituting an image of smiles for the word ‘miles’.

You’re told to go to the third light. Now, 3 in the Phonetic Alphabet is the sound ‘m’. So make the shortest possible word with ‘m’ — let’s say ‘Ma’.

Then visualise yourself giving Ma a right-jab punch. That’s it: your brain has now registered that you’ll be turning right at the third light.

Go about two (‘n’) miles. (Visualise the figure of Noah, who smiles). You’ll come to a fork in the road. (A gigantic fork is smiling). Take the left fork. (A gigantic fork waves a red flag). And so on.

With a little practice, you can do this instantaneously. In the example, all you’d need to remember is to give Ma a punch, see a smiling Noah, then a smiling fork and another fork waving a red flag.