Openmindagile

How to Get a Photographic Memory: 6 Tips to Become a Better Visual Learner
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If you’ve ever met someone with a so-called “photographic memory,” then you know what a superpower this skill can be. Whether it’s remembering phone numbers, grocery lists, or to turn off the lights, a photographic or “eidetic” memory can help in all aspects of your life. In fact, every single memory champion in the world uses a variant of visual memory techniques.

In this article, I will show you how anyone can gain a photographic memory just by practicing a few minutes a day. No brain exercises required!

1. Discover your innate photographic memory
When I tell people I teach memory and learning courses, their first response is always the same. “OMG! I need that. I’ve always wished I had a photographic memory.”

Well, I have good news for you: you do! You just don’t know how to use it (yet). As I teach in my SuperLearner program, it turns out that we are all wired for visual memory. Research shows that pictures are much more memorable than other forms of memory. This is thanks to millions of years of evolution, during which visual memory gave us the greatest survival advantage – at least, after smell and taste. This, incidentally, is why we always remember smells and tastes so well!

If you think about it, you don’t remember the exact words you heard on the news during a historical event like September 11th; but, you will never forget the shocking pictures. You will also remember where you were, and what your surroundings looked like.

This is why the first step to developing your visual memory is to acknowledge that you already have one!

2. Improve your memory by visualizing what you want to remember
Now that we know why visual memory is superior, it’s time to put this knowledge to good use. Many students are surprised to find out that my SuperLearner course is almost 70% about improving your memory. Long before diving into speed reading, brain exercises, or brain health, we build a solid foundation by developing short-term memory and the ability to recall. This all starts with improving the way you memorize new information.

Here’s the idea. For anything you want to remember, imprint in your mind’s eye a vivid picture describing that piece of information. At first, this will be tricky. You won’t have the creativity or the techniques to convert many types of information to pictures. Start small. Memorize your grocery list by picturing each of the items. We can all visualize apples, milk, and cereal, right? Now imprint in your mind’s eye exactly how that picture looks. What color? What shape? What size?

Once you’ve become proficient in visualizing these creative, bizarre pictures, it’s time to apply them to a wider range of memory challenges.

4. Expand your skills by converting everything to pictures
I know what you’re thinking. This is all well and good for grocery lists, but what about things like numbers? What about abstract or complex concepts?

5. Take it to the next level with the memory palace technique
If you’re a fan of Sherlock Holmes, you may have already heard of “the memory palace” technique, or “the method of loci.” But guess what? It’s not just fiction! Every single memory athlete and champion has used this one powerful eidetic memory technique for decades. In fact, it’s even believed that the ancient Greeks used it to memorize tomes like The Iliad and The Odyssey.

The basic idea is this. Take the visual mnemonics or “markers” you’ve created, and place them throughout a building you know. This could be your office, your home, or a store you frequent. This serves an additional benefit beyond just organization. These places are already stored in our memory, so adding connections to them strengthens your memory of new information.

You’ll be surprised to discover that your brain is loaded with the layouts of hundreds of different buildings you’ve visited over the years. Our brains do this for the same reason they remember pictures: evolutionary advantage. If you’re a paleolithic caveman or cavewoman, it’s a great idea to remember where you put things, or how to navigate your environment from memory. For this reason, our brains store locations and their layouts automatically; we don’t even have to try. I bet you remember the layout of your parents’ room growing up – even if you haven’t been there in decades. This information is sitting dormant in your brain, waiting to be used. The memory palace technique piggybacks on that infrastructure, using it to enhance and organize your photographic memory.

For this, you’ll want to learn more advanced techniques for “converting” information into pictures. Then, you can actually use your eidetic memory to memorize anything. These techniques include The Major Method or the “Person Action Object” (PAO) system used by memory competitors. Tools like these, combined with a photographic memory, allow you to memorize dates, phone numbers, credit card numbers – you name it.
Over time, you will develop this skill to the point that you’ll be able to do it without thinking. I remember a friend telling me he was learning Portuguese, and a visual of a map of Brazil popped into my head.

But in order for these mind photos to be memorable, they’re going to have to be unique and creative, which leads me to my third tip.

3. Create novel, unique, outrageous, and connected visualizations
Across my courses, one of the most important things I teach is the idea of making your visualizations memorable. After all, if you begin visualizing everything you want to remember, you’re going to have thousands of pictures floating around in your mind. How do you keep them all straight and remember them all? By making them unique.

Most memory athletes agree that the best way to do this is to make them bizarre. Violent, sexual, or just strange imagery tends to work particularly well. Don’t worry. These visualizations are just for you, so you can feel free to make them as weird as you want.

While you’re at it, try to make these visualizations connect to things you already know. Our brains rank information based on how well it relates to the things we already know and care about. By using images of people, places, or things we already know in our visualizations, we can then increase our likelihood of remembering them. We can “trick” our brains into thinking that these visualizations are important by association.

Exercise Adds Sparks To Your Thinking Patterns

"Children who are physically fit absorb and retain new information more effectively than children who are out of shape, a new study finds.." an article in the New York times explains. Although this study is mainly targeted at trying to bring back phys ed classes to schools, it can also be true for people our age.

A study done by American College of Sports Medicine found that a children who exercised for ten minutes before a test scored better than those who didn't. Studies have shown that children should be exercising for at least an hour each day, which most children aren't. The same goes for us. Although we are all busy, we should take at least a half hour to and hour a day engaging in some form of physical activity.

We’d also like to suggest the following that you can do whether in
school, at the office, in the restaurant, in the parking lot, etc.

Exercise 1: In School


If your school cafeteria has a signboard describing the menu for that day, make an effort to read it in full and try to memorize the items on the menu.

We tend to stare absent-mindedly at bulletin boards and not really absorb anything because the information is either irrelevant or unimportant. Make it a daily habit to read the menu and try to think of ways to remember what you read. For instance, if the menu has a list:

Quiche Lorraine
Clam Chowder Soup
Fish and Chips
Vanilla Pudding, Chocolate Chip Cookies

Herbal Tea

As you read each item, imagine yourself eating these and identifying what each item tastes like. And try this: take the first letters of each item and keep repeating them to yourself. So you have QCFVH. Repeat: QCFVH. One more time: QCFVH. It’s no harder than memorizing the acronym of your favorite radio station, isn’t it?

If a fellow student ever asks, “hey, does anyone know what the cafeteria is serving today? I’m starving mad.” Be the first to tell him.

Exercise 2: At the Office


This should be a fun exercise if you’re into languages. You know the saying, it’s better to have two brains than one! Most bilingual people have an edge over their uni-lingual friends and associates. They stretch their brains and make them work harder as they find the equivalent word in a foreign language.

In the US, Spanish is becoming the second most frequently used language while in Canada, it is French.

Throughout the day, as you meet people and see objects in the company, think of the Spanish or French equivalent. For instance, you take a break and get up from your desk. You head for the washrooms. You see the following on your way:

English
Spanish
French
water fountain “bebedor”
“fontaine”

boss “patron”
“patron” flowers “flor”
“fleurs” computer
“ordenador” “ordinateur”

carpet “alfombra”
“tapis”

Continue this exercise and watch your bilingual vocabulary grow.
By putting the words into objects and persons you meet along your way, you are making a conscious effort to work your brain more.


Exercise 3: In the Restaurant (or any public place)


You can take a good look at your waiter (or waitress) and take in his features, any special moles, hand or eye movements, or if he’s got a ring on his finger. This is like practicing a bit of detective work, although it may not be a good exercise to do if you are dining with your spouse. Another exercise would be to look around the restaurant and make a guess as to how many customers
there are. An alternative would be to spot unusual objects in the restaurant and pretend you’ve got a photographic mind and memorize their place. This way you sharpen your sense of vision and hearing.

Making a conscious effort to know what is around you helps you define your place in relation to all the persons and objects that share the same space.

Exercise 4: In the Parking Lot


You may have complained a few times about forgetting where you
parked the car or getting the feeling that your car had been stolen.

This happens frequently in a large shopping mall where the parking lots are located in different quadrants of the building. When you park your car, make a mental note of all possible “aid locators”: you’re in row #, facing a building (or highway or a large sign), the make and color of the car to your left and right, etc. This way,
when you’re done with your shopping and ready to leave, you’ll know exactly where to go and what to look for. Instead of looking for your car in particular, you’ll be locating the signposts, buildings, and other cars that will help you pinpoint the location of your car.

By doing this exercise regularly, we’ll doubt you’ll be complaining about the same thing again!

A writer who shared a few mental exercises on a web site said that “any routine of exercises which causes you to think is of value. You will be amazed to find how quickly the mind will respond, and in a very short time you'll notice marked improvement in your ability to think quickly, logically and creatively.”[11]

This writer also suggested this exercise. While driving, concentrate on the license plate of the car ahead of you. Take the license number and reduce it to a single digit by adding all the digits together. If the result you obtain has


more than one digit, add them. Continue the addition until you arrive at one digit. The writer provides the example below.[12]

978 = 9+7+8 = 24 = 2+4 = 6; 164 = 1+6+4 = 11 = 1+1 = 2;
899 = 8+9+9 = 26 = 2+6 = 8

If you come across quizzes in newspapers and magazines, do them as well. After some time, you’ll discover how much faster your brain handles information.