How to remember complicated things in a simple way

Ed Cooke is a Grandmaster of Memory, a title he shares with just 153 other memory athletes worldwide. Here, he introduces five memory techniques that can be used by just about anyone who needs to remember something, whether it's a shopping list or a symphony.

1. Turn information into images

Humans have a very good memory for images, so turning things into pictures in your mind is an extremely reliable way of remembering them.

It doesn’t matter if you think you’re not a “visual person”: the imagination is multi-sensory, coming with a sense of sight, sound, touch and of physical engagement with an environment. People may have a preference for one sense over the others, but in general there is a bias towards the visual.

2. Create a story for your memories

With any kind of sequence of information, it’s important to have a narrative that can bind memorised items together. You can either make up a story where you interact with your images one by one, or arrange them around an imagined space. This is sometimes called the “memory palace” technique.

You can have as many rooms in your memory palace as you need, so you don’t need to worry about getting things mixed up as long as you keep your memories in their own different places. After all, you don’t get confused between your toothbrush and your carving knife and where they live in real life.

3. Repeat, repeat, repeat

Repetition is at the heart of memory, and the key to repeating stuff effectively is to do what's called spaced repetition. This is where you don’t repeat the information all at once, over and over again – but instead you might repeat it once after ten seconds, and the next time after a minute, and the next time after five minutes. Spacing the repetition helps us to learn things into memory.

4. Test yourself

Repetition is important, but testing is also a very key part of memory. When we actively recall memories, we tend to strengthen them much more than just repeating them while, say, looking at a screen. Try repeating something, then closing your eyes and actively recalling it.

5. Use your imagination

There's a concept in psychology called "deep processing": this is when you make an effort to really cognitively engage with something. There are various ways of doing this – the simplest is to just pay attention. But another way is to try and associate information with things you already know.

For example, it’s really easy to read a piece of information and for nothing to actively happen in your brain. Whereas if you read the information and then ask yourself what it makes you think of, that act of association is very powerful for stringing together memories in the mind.

On 13 October Ed Cooke will join forces with Aurora Orchestra, an ensemble famous for truly brain-boggling feats of musical memorisation. The aim? To give listeners a taste of what it’s like to memorise an entire symphony.

Ed and the musicians will be using tried-and-tested memory techniques to help the audience in the concert hall – and people listening at home – learn the opening of Mozart’s Symphony No 40, all in the space of a few minutes. Join them in the Musical Memory Palace.