How To Remember Numbers, Codes And Passwords More Easily
Everyone today wants you to memorize something. Here's how:
In almost everything we deal with today, we have to remember a set of letters, symbols, and numbers to go with them. Aside from zip codes, social security numbers, bank account numbers, we are constantly being asked to form passwords to help secure most of our everyday transactions. What makes it worse, is that we are always advised not to have these pass codes in writing, lest they fall into the wrong hands. So, with everything we do being associated with some number combination or another, how do we keep track of all of the passwords we need to get hold of when dealing with ordinary things such as paying your bills, saying hello to a friend, or even reading up what's new your field of work?
Remember, the bottom line in trying to remember passwords is that you have to give meaning to them the moment they are created. Consider the following ways by which you can probably more easily recall even that 16-digit credit card number issued to you by your bank.
Create Associations
Try to look for groups of letters and/or numbers that have unique meaning to you. If you're issued a new account number by your financial broker, try to identify sets of birthdays, anniversaries, parts of your license plate number that are also found in the account number just issued. Create a short story that you can tell yourself each time you need to enter the new account number from memory. You don't have to insist on giving meaning to all the digits of the new account number, but you have to be able to relate a significant portion of it to things that are of great importance in your life
Break It Up Into Small Pieces
Most people can only easily remember up to seven random digits. But with new area codes coming up all over the country almost every month, most people now have to deal with ten digits when giving out their phone numbers. By breaking that phone number into three parts, then in effect you reduce the number of items you have to recall by more than two-thirds every time you have to dial a particular phone number. Say, for example, the phone number 312-814-5050 may be broken down into you're your best friend's birthday (3/12), the ages of your kids when you first moved to a new place (8 and 14), and the numbers we associate with being completely uncertain of something (50-50).
Are there patterns?
Maybe the numbers themselves are related to each other. The account number 563912468, for example, has 2468 in its last part. That should be very easy to remember as being the first four even numbers aside from zero. The 63912 portion of it may easily be seen as being all numbers that can exactly be divided by three (6-3-9-12) with a slight variation in the order. Or maybe you may want to check the first few digits of an account number add up to give the remaining portion of it.
Get into it
Sometimes there's really no choice left but to say that number to yourself several times (while others cannot hear you, of course).
Visualization
Can you see a pattern in the direction your fingers go as you press the different keypad buttons? An X or pressing the four corner numbers in a numeric keypad clockwise starting from 9 (gives us 9713) might help.
Look for Combinations to work with instead of numbers
For example, the number combination 3279 spells the word "EASY" if you use the predictive function of your ceil phone. That's definitely a more convenient to to keep in mind than four numbers in some seemingly random sequence
Of course, after you have made up your mind how you are going to recall those passwords, keep the hints to yourself, too.