The human brain is fascinating for so many reasons. One of these reasons can be seen in the expression of its preference for different styles of memory. The brain generally has a preference for remembering stories as opposed to random lists of information, even though there are many more words in a story to remember than there are in a list. It can be demonstrated though that this preference for stories can in fact be used to help bolster the memory for lists of items.
Individuals generally encounter lists of items in areas of daily life related to shopping, school, work, and other like activities. You may have a list of items that you need to buy at a supermarket. Your boss may ask you to pick up a list of items from the stockroom to place on shelves. A teacher may ask you to bring in certain items for a class project. Although it is of course advisable to write down or record in some manner any such list of items, you may not always have a pen and paper or other recording device available. If you take such a list of items and turn it into a brief story though, you might be surprised by how much easier it becomes to remember.
Let’s say you have three items to remember to buy at the store: milk, cookies and napkins. You can use to your advantage the brain’s natural preference for having these items organized as components of a story over simply having them listed one after the other. It takes little effort to come up with a brief, one-line story that uses these words. For example, the story in this instance could be “I like to dip my cookies and milk and then wipe my mouth with napkins.” Most people will find it easier to remember this short story than to remember those same three words in list form. A similar scenario could be encountered working at a large store like Wal-Mart or Target. Your boss may ask you to bring out light bulbs, toilet paper and paper cups. This is a pretty random list of items which may be difficult to remember in its current form. Turning this list into a short story may be beneficial. For instance, the story here could be “There is no light bulb in the bathroom so he tripped over the toilet paper and knocked over the paper cups.” Again, by putting the list of words into a brief story, the brain will find it easier to remember the information.
There are a few handy pointers to keep in mind when turning a list of items into a story. First, the story should be relatively brief. If you are trying to remember three or four words, the story should not be much longer than a single complex sentence. Five or six items may require a story to be two to three lines long. A story cannot be so long that it becomes itself difficult to remember. The story should also create a visual image in your mind. If you can “see” the story in your mind, then chances are that you’ve succeeded in creating a story useful in achieving the objective of bolstering memory in this way. Using one of the previous examples, you may be able to imagine someone in a dark room tripping over toilet paper and knocking over cups sitting by the sink. If you can see this happening in your mind, then the story worked for you. It is very important that the story be one that is functional for you. You should not concern yourself about whether others would like your story or find your story odd. Too often, brain injury survivors using this method will self-censor their stories because they feel that others might not like those stories as they initially occur to the survivors. These stories exist only to aid our memories. The opinions others might hold of them therefore are not truly relevant.
This method of improving memory takes practice but once you get comfortable with the method, it can be very useful! Please leave me a comment below with any questions, thoughts or ideas!
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