TRY THESE MEMORY BOOSTERS
DO you struggle to recall your shopping list? Would you be lost without the numbers on your phone? Well memory expert Ed Cooke is here to help.
At 23, he became a Grand Master of Memory after taking on the world’s top minds in competitions. And now Ed is on a mission to boost yours too – in just five minutes a day.
Currently starring in Channel 4’s Can I Improve My Memory?, Ed says training your brain is easy.
“I have remembered 16 decks of shuffled cards in an hour, 2,300 ones and zeros in sequence in half an hour and thousands of lines of John Milton’s poetry,” he says.
“And I could train you to do almost that many too. Because it’s all a question of technique, attitude and imagination, not the hardware inside your brain.”
Londoner Ed, now 39, says we are born with a great memory.
“Everyone is good at remembering g something. And it’s ’s almost always something omething you’re interested sted in – football teams eams and results, for example. So memory techhniques often n focus on n translating the things you know or are naturally interested in, into things that you want to learn.”
Practice makes perfect, says Ed.
“As with all skills, practice is what counts with memory. And it is a case of little and often. The people who make the most progress are the ones who come back for five minutes every day. Over long periods of time this really adds up.”
And the good news? It’s never too late to start.
“Many of my pupils including Strictly’s Len Goodman, who I worked with on the show, are a in their 70s.” So w wherever and when whenever you find you yourself with time to spare, take five minutes to make some memory magic of your own.
How does it work?
“Every memory is a connection to other memories. If I meet you and see your face, the next time we meet it’s the connection between your face and your name that allows me to remember who you are. The way we create these associations is by the two pieces of information being in our minds at the same time and there being a meaningful join.
“So when we’re learning to remember things, all we’re really doing is connecting memories together in our minds.
“Does memory get worse with age? Not as much as you think. If you look at the speed at which children and adults acquire vocabulary given the same amount of time studying, it’s almost the same.
“The reason memory seems to worsen is because as we age we have more going on in our lives. Stress and feeling distracted can make us think we can’t remember things.”
Can I Improve My Memory? is on Channel 4, Thursday at 8pm
YOUR DAY’S TOP 10
One of the main things you can do to boost memory is to actively learn and repeat things. So make it a habit at the end of the day to go through the 10 most interesting things that happened that day. Just doing that makes your life feel bigger. You may think, why am I bothering to do this, I didn’t do anything today. But you’ll remember that you bumped into a friend. What was their name? What happened next? What can you recall?
Write down your top 10 from today.
THE STORY TECHNIQUE
Learn how to recall 10 or 20 objects by joining them together into a story.
Take for example, a pot of honey, a monkey, a pineapple and a rocket. There was a pot of honey, and then a monkey comes along and throws the pot at a pineapple, which falls off the table and bumps into a rocket, which fires off too early. By doing this, you’re bringing the objects to life, making sure your brain thinks about them, and weaving them into a narrative. It’s a very powerful technique.
Have a go at home with these 10 objects: banana; shoe; book; hairbrush; cat; telescope; door; pot plant; suncream; ring.
USE YOUR IMAGINATION
People remember what they’re interested in. So if you’re trying to remember something you’re not that into, you probably won’t recall it so well.
But as soon as you bring in a bit of play, fun and imagination, the memories going into your mind will be richer, more interesting and easier to hold onto.
Take these five random words – horse, baby, sink, leaf, nail varnish – and let your imagination run wild. Is the horse galloping through your garden in a cape?
MEMORY PALACE
Imagine what you’re trying to remember in places around your home. So, taking the earlier objects, imagine a pot of honey on your bed, a monkey in the wardrobe, a pineapple by the door and a rocket in the garden.
All humans have incredible spatial memory for different locations, so this is a great way of remembering long sequences of things.
You can come back to them in your mind. It works anywhere too, your walk to work, even the pub.
Have a go with these five words – globe, plane, tiger, slippers and tangerine.
FIND MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS Say I want to teach you that New York was originally called New Amsterdam, we would try to find some meaningful connection between the two.
When you think of Amsterdam what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Let’s say it’s tulips. Now the same for New
York. Let’s say it’s The Statue of Liberty. Put the two together – an image of The Statue of Liberty holding a bunch of tulips. Go with your own associations – you’re connecting them in your mind, not somebody else’s.
Link these three facts: Baby rabbits are called kits; Brazil is named after a tree (brazilwood); Finnish people consume the most coffee.