Remember your ABCs

If you are a parent that has read your kid an ABCs book with pictures, you are a master of memory. You just don’t know it yet. 

In a recent article for 'The Shaker' I wrote about the connection between memory and gaming. All of you that have spent thousands of hours gaming are also memory masters. 

But back to your ABCs….

To take advantage of all the ABC books you have been reading your kids I would like to share with you a mnemonic device, or memory technique, similar to the Memory Peg System. It is where you bind an interesting image or rhyming word to each letter of the alphabet. For example, A might be Apple and B might be a bee. 

If you want to remember a list of items you would start with A and the image of the Apple. Then, in the most interesting way possible, bind the first item on your list to the image of the Apple. 

For example, if you needed to remember bacon and milk on your way home. Starting with the letter A, you might imagine a pig on a spit roast with an apple in its mouth. Then the letter B, you migh imagine a Bee stinging a bottle of milk. Then when you are at the shops, you just remember your ABCs. Starting with A and remembering a pig (bacon) with an apple in its mouth and B is a Bee stinging some milk.

There you have it, no phone list or piece of paper. You just remember what you have to get.

With this in mind, go to your kids' book collection and find the ABC book you once read. I recently started reading 'ABC Lift the Flap' by Heath McKenzie to my son, which is the reason I was inspired to write this article.

What I love is how the book gives you not only the first 26 letters and images for memory hooks, but a total of 52 images you can use.You start with the A for Apple.... 

Then boom! Hit with an alligator eating an apple.

Or an ice-cream for I...

And an iguana eating it. 

So as I read through this book with my son (about a million times) I will be locking each image in my mind, building a new alphabet memory peg system. It is my hope you do the same. 

If you find this stuff interesting, let me know and I’ll share more. Or DM me if you want to find out how I have used techniques like this to remember meeting outcomes, my calendar for the week or jobs to be done.