Champion Level Memorization Technique

For 16 years there has been an annual contest to determine who in the USA has the best memory.  There are seven events, including a poetry event, and 53 mental athletes registered to compete in 2013. The contest is taking place today!

The BrainWorld blog has a good  post about the 2012 champion who provides insights into his success.  While none of the general advice will surprise readers of the Next Brain Blog (exercise, nutrition, social well-being and mental engagement), the specific technique for memorizing long lists of items is useful.

To use the technique you convert each item in the list into a picture that is meaningful and then place the pictures in order along a path or location that is familiar. For example, if memorizing a list of numbers you could translate each number into the jersey number of your favorite football player and then visualize each player in a specific room in your house.  You can then recall the numbers by doing a mental walk through of your house and look at each player’s jersey.

I am interested to hear from readers that use specific memorization techniques.