Memory is a basic thinking skill. It’s the ability to hold information in your head. It works in the long term and the short term. In the long term, if you can remember different ideas (over months and years) you can build on them and refine them. In the short term, if you can hold a lot of ideas in your head at once you can process more. You can see links between two different ideas where you haven’t before. Heightened mental bandwidth means stronger thinking. This is true for philosophical thinking but practical thinking as well: you will be a better problem solver if you have a better memory.

I’m going to tell you about a mental exercise that will help increase your memory. Not only does this improve your memory, but it’s also a really useful way of taking notes if you don’t have any paper to hand. It uses your brain’s natural abilities, which means you’re working with your brain and not against it.

You recall images much better and for much longer than anything else — words and numbers especially. So, to remember lists, for each number, get an image that you associate with that number. The more natural the association the better since you’ll recall it more easily. These images will become “hooks” on which you can hang the things you want to remember. My list is below. Notice how the image is logically linked to the number it represents. I’ve also made the images as emotionally striking as possible: either funny, or scary, or pleasant. The more striking it is, the better you remember.

1. The sun (there’s only one sun)
2. A pair of eyes
3. Buses (you wait for ages and then three come along at once)
4. Picnic blanket (four corners)
5. A hand (five fingers)
6. A dice (the 6 face, obviously)
7. A calender (7 days in a week)
8. Spider
9. The month of September (Visualise as going back to school)
10. Two hands

It’s best to choose your own images. The process of choosing means it’s a) customised to you and b) you have thought more about each image so you’re more likely to remember it. Concentration is the key to this method.

Use the same image for the number each time you use this method. This helps to cement things in your brain. The beauty of this method is that you can expand it as necessary for lists of more than ten, using whatever images you need for the extra numbers.

The next step is to associate the items on the list with your number images. This is done by somehow combining the two images. Again, the funnier or more emotionally striking the better. Also, you need to really concentrate as you make the image. Using your imagination, look at the detail, and focus. The concentration makes you remember it better.

Let’s take an example. If you had a shopping list of bacon, onions, eggs and apples you might remember it this way:

1. Bacon frying on the sun
2. Eyes crying because you’re chopping onions
3. Three buses full of eggs (or three giant “egg buses”)
4. A picnic where everyone has giant apples instead of heads.

To recall the list, you picture the sun — and you immediately remember the bacon. Think of eyes, and you remember onions. This method takes a bit of concentration, but you’ll find that it’s very powerful. You’ll be able to remember lists for days or even weeks.

If you use this method regularly, you will improve your memory to the extent that you don’t need to consciously visualise everything. Your brain will have learnt how to memorise things much more efficiently. When this is the case, you’ve increased your mental “bandwidth”. You’ll also have exercised your imagination, which makes life so much more fun. And you’ll be able to add things up more easily in your head. So many benefits!