If you have trouble remembering long numbers — like phone numbers — Redditor Fealiks shares a simple way to keep everything straight. All you need to do is assign the numbers to letters, and create a phrase that’s easy to remember — just like you did to learn the planets or order of operations in primary school.
Photo by Leo (Shutterstock).
You can assign whatever numbers you want to letters, though Fealiks derived his own system:
Think of each digit as a letter. For example, I use: 1(l) 2(n) 3(m) 4(r) 5(f) 6(b) 7(T) 8(h) 9(g) 0(s). You can use whatever you prefer. 2 could be “u” because it rhymes. It doesn’t matter. Just memorize your decided letters and keep them the same.
Then, when you need to remember a long number, you remember your letters and think of a word/phrase from those letters.
So if you wanted to remember 392,836, using the letters I posed above you’d have the letters “mgnhmb,” from which you could create a mnemonic such as “my grandma’s neck hemorrhages multicoloured blood”.
If that sounds a little creepy to you, there’s a reason: Fealiks notes that the weirder the image invoked by the phrase, the more likely you are to remember it — of course, we take no responsibility for any insanity caused by constant morbid mnemonics.
Note that coming up with a phrase will take you a minute or two (at least until you get used to your number assignments), but if done right, you’ll remember it well after that. This isn’t really useful for remembering a phone number that you need to dial in 30 seconds; it’s more of a device for remembering a number you’ll need a few days from now — or memorising a number you’ll need to use frequently — like your brother’s new mobile phone number, your new licence plate, or even Pi to a certain number of digits (for you maths students out there). Hit the link for more details and strategies, and if you have any of your own, share them in the comments below.
LPT: Remember any number, no matter how big, with ease [Reddit]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.