Memory Tips - Pegging

Pegging can be used to remember items in a specific order or associated with certain numbers. Basically, it is where you form vivid mental associations between a preset known object (the peg) and what you want to memorize. You are putting the item you want to memorize on the peg. So if you can remember the preset list, then the associated objects follow easily.

Let's start small. Let's say you have to memorize a grocery list in order: Butter, Celery, Ground beef, Cheerios, Campbell's soup, Bread, Frozen Peas and Bananas.

Now we want to peg these items on something with which we are already familiar: our body. Hey, why not? We all know our bodies quite well. (Too well in some cases.) Let's use our head, mouth, neck, elbows, hands, bum, knees and feet. This is just going from top to bottom. You could add more body parts, but there are only 8 items on the list.

Now to go through the items and our body parts:

Butter. What's the first peg? Head. OK, now you need to create a strong image that assocates the two objects. Imagine smearng the butter into your hair and moving it all around. It's so thick, you could even make a little mohawk with it. This is a lot of butter. The fatty butter is even starting to melt a little and is slowly dripping down your ears. Gross.

The key is to make the image really vivid and incorporate emotion into it. The stronger the better. Either positive or negative, it doesn't matter, but don't go too crazy. And you really have to visualize it or this won't work. Try this for the butter one, I can wait....

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Good. Next, mouth with celery. Easy. Imagine eating the celery. Don't just stop there! The celery is so crunchy and crisp. With every bite, water just explodes out of every cell. Crrrrrrrrrrunch! Oh man, now you have one of those celery stringy pieces stuck in your teeth, like thick green dental floss. It even hurts to pull it out, better leave it in.

Third is the neck with ground beef. Let's keep this relatively clean. Imagine rubbing the ice-cold ground beef on your neck. You can feel that fatty residue being left all over the front and back of your neck. Then unexpectedly, the beef starts frying on your neck. You can now smell the delicious beef cooking on your neck.

You don't have to confine yourself to the realm of reality. What's the point of having an imagination?

Now, elbows and cheerios. Crush those little wheaty O's unto chunks. But those cheerios won't go without a fight. They start cutting your elbows deeply. It burns as you contunue to grind your elbows in the cheerios as the powder enters your wounds.

Hands and Campbell's soup. You pour boiling Chicken à la King all over your hands. Ouch! Darn! Fiddlesticks! It's so creamy so it sticks really well - like a thick, white, chicken-flavoured paste. Oh Campbell, why did you make such a delicious yet adhesive soup?

Sorry about that.

Bum and Bread. This is going to get a little funny, just stick with me. So your bum is really hot (temperature, not appealing). What can cool it off? A nice refreshing loaf of Wonder bread. Just take a seat on the whole loaf. Feel the squishy loaf compress under your bum, while nestling it and creating a bum-shaped impression. This is the coolest most comfortable seat cushion ever! In fact, you go to the grocery store to sit on their whole stock of fluffy, fluffy bread. That's nice.

Knees and frozen peas. If that rhyme doesn't help, then we can imagine pressing those frozen peas against your knee. Ooh! Cold. They start easing your knee joint. Feel yourself relax. These frozen peas start thawing a bit, and the water drips down your leg. It tickles a little. Are you still visualizing? Concentrate!

Feet and bananas. You and your new dance partner are performing the Tango de la Meurte (Tango of Death) on a floor covered in bananas. You aren't even wearing shoes because that's how intense you are about dancing. You can feel the bananas squish between your toes as you step on them, feel them ooze between your toes. As you dance more furiously, the banana paste and peels begin to fly into the air, the smell fills the room. Suddenly, you slip on one of the peels, and after 7 mid-air summersaults you land in your partners arms with a banana peel between your teeth. Amazing.

Now that we've done the whole list, let's just make sure we know the body parts first: Head, mouth, neck, elbows, hands, bum, knees and feet.

Now try to remember all the items on the list without cheating. Actually minimize this page. (for Windows users: Alt + Space, n; for Apple users: Open Apple + M). Or you could click the minimize button. Go and think about it now! I'll wait here....


Did you do it? If not, try it.

I'm going to bet that if you did it, you were able to remember all of the items (or at least all but 1-2).

This sort of thinking isn't just limited to grocery lists. And it doesn't have to just be lists. You can link any two items with this sort of imagery as well. I'll give you an example I used for anatomy. (Sorry if you don't get this example.)

Just so you can vaguely visualize this, you'll have to know that the adrenal glands are on top the kidneys (one on each), and they look like flat, stumpy pyramids.

I couldn't remember what the outermost layer of the adrenal cortex did - the outer layer is called the zona glomerulosa. I know the adrenal gland is responsible for hormone production, but specifically which ones? The outer layer is responsible for making mineralcorticoids - they basically regulate the salt (mineral) levels in the body.

So, I imagined someone pouring salt on my adrenal glands, so much salt that they started shriveling up.

Now, I can't forget that the outer layer of the adrenal cortex (the zona glomerulosa) produces mineralcorticoids.

I hope you are starting to see that power that pegging can have.

There is another form that involves number associations, but I'll save that for later.