Creating acronyms customizes complex pieces of information, making them easier to recall. Most commonly used for lengthy names, acronyms can become words in their own right and most people use them everyday in conversation. Two examples are the NFL, for National Football League, and SCUBA, for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Elementary school students often use an acronym to remember the planets of the solar system in order: Mr. VEM J SUN (and his dog, Pluto) creates an effective way to recall Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, which has been demoted and is now considered a "dwarf planet." Create your own acronyms by using the first letter of each word in a phrase or name you need to remember.
Using rhymes and melody to recall information guides human memorization from the earliest stages. The alphabet song, for example, begins toddlers' entrance into the world of learning. Creating your own lyrics to favorite tunes using items you need to memorize uses this technique effectively.
The memorization technique called chunking provides a convenient way to remember numbers and other collections of information. Chunking stems from the idea that human short-term memory retains about seven items for about 30 seconds, according to a Palomar College's web pages on memory techniques. To remember a string of numbers using this technique, break the string into smaller chunks, such as pairs or trios. Chunk the numbers according to any pattern that works for you.