Creating an acronym helps you memorize a group of things. Each letter of the word should stand for a word needing to be memorized. For example, the names of the Great Lakes can be remembered by the acronym HOMES: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior.
Mentally visualizing a familiar place, such as parts of your home or corners in a room, and attaching an object needing to be memorized to it can help in the memory process. This is called the Method of Loci and began in ancient Rome where speeches were remembered by attaching key points to a mental map. For example, for a grocery list place items of the list in different parts of the house and make the images vivid: for example, spilled milk in the entrance, broken eggs on the couch and a strawberry shortcake in the bathroom for fruit.
Getting to know someone and influencing him goes much further when you remember his name. Business behavioral coaches recommend discretely analyzing the face of the person introduced and making notes of strong features to rhyme with her name. Someone named Shirley with curly hair could be remembered more easily as curly Shirley.
One of the most important tactics to remembering information is to systematically review and repeat mentally. The act of reviewing and repeating material helps you not only recall the actual material but analyze it and understand it in a broader and deeper sense. Researcher Peter Kennedy studied the effects of repetition and found that adults who use this tactic are more likely to recall material for a longer period of time while understanding the meaning.