Mind Performance Hacks

Hack #10. Tune In to Your Memory

Turn that song stuck in your head into a powerful tool to help you remember what you learn! This hack works especially well if you have a list of things to memorize.

It's common for people to hear a particularly catchy tune and hum it in their head for hours, or sometimes days. While this phenomenon can be annoying, it can also be used as a great tool for memorizing information. Making up a song or poem about a topic can be an extremely effective way to remember dates, lists of items, events and stories, and many other things.

This hack works in three ways to stick information in your mind. First, hanging information on a melody or rhyme scheme that you already know helps piggyback new information on information that you've already acquired. Second, remembering the rhythm of a tune or one or two rhyming lines can help bootstrap your memory; bringing one to mind will often bring up the rest of the associated information. Third, the active process of fitting the information into the tune causes you to concentrate on the information and turn it over in your mind, which also helps it to stick there.

There are a few different types of learning songs, and some may work better than others, depending on your own mental makeup or the information you're trying to memorize.

A parody is a song written using an existing song's tune, often satirizing or making fun of something. The parody might or might not play on the theme of the original song, but the new words ...