The Link System (A Memory Technique)
This technique is useful for remembering lists. For example, you can use the link system to remember your grocery shopping list or your daily to-do list. There are also less mundane uses for the link system that mentalists are fond of. Famous mentalists like Simon Winthrop enjoy using the link system to mystify and baffle their audiences with amazing memory feats. They can ask the audience to randomly call out words, and then recite the words back to them in order. So, are you interested in learning about this link system?
Let’s start out with a list of items we want to remember. Say that you want to buy these items at the grocery store: Eggs, Milk, Bread, Cheese, Bacon, Broccoli.
First, you have to remember the first item on the list. That’s all. Just remember that you need to buy eggs. Now, visualize the eggs in your mind. Visualize the next item on the list, milk. Connect the two items in an image in your mind, making it as ridiculous and outlandish as possible. Things that stand out are more memorable than ordinary things; we all know this.
In my mind, I am picturing the egg and the milk having an argument with each other. Milk is accusing the egg of not being a true dairy product. They’re getting into a fight- and the egg just rolled over onto the milk carton, crushing it and spilling the milk. However, the egg has cracked itself in the process. These two items are now linked in your mind. Once you think of eggs, you’ll think of milk too.
Next, you have to match up milk with bread. You could picture a piece of bread ambling up to the spilled milk carton and asking worriedly if the milk is okay. “I’ll wipe you up, dear,” the bread offers. The bread then proceeds to faceplant itself onto the floor to absorb the milk. You have now linked milk with bread.
Bread now has to link with cheese. The bread is still flattened on the floor in a puddle of milk. A slice of cheddar cheese is soaring through the air, drifting along leisurely. It looks down and spots the mess of milk, bread, and egg on the ground. It decides to float down and see what’s up. It kicks the bread, checking to see if it’s still alive.
To link cheese with bacon, we can have a pig running and getting splattered with cheese. The cheese blinds the pig and so it ends up running right into a bunch of slicing and dicing knives. The pig enters, but bacon emerges from the other side. Harsh, but it’s how you make things memorable.
Finally, we can link bacon to broccoli by seeing all that greasy bacon lying around on the ground after it’s been sliced up by the knives. Broccoli is hopping along, looking for fellow broccoli pieces, but all it sees are trees. It thinks the trees are pieces of broccoli, but they’re actually really far away trees. The broccoli keeps hopping, trying to get closer and closer, but never gets there. Finally, it stops at a pile of greasy bacon and decides to jump onto a piece and skateboard.
You’ve now linked your items to each other. Picturing the first item- eggs- will lead you to picture the rest of the items. You can do this with any items, not just grocery lists.
