Saturday, April 14, 2007

Feeds for practicing mnemonics

If you are new to the term “mnemonics”, in shorthand, mnemonic is a device, such as a formula or rhyme, used as an aid in remembering. You may have used this many times in school or college without even hearing the term, but the fact is that mnemonics is a good and reliable memory aid, people who have super-power memories they all have use of a kind of mnemonics. According to wikipedia “Mnemonics rely not only on repetition to remember facts, but also on associations between easy-to-remember information and to be remembered lists of data, based on the principle that the human mind much more easily remembers data attached to spatial, personal, or otherwise meaningful information than that occurring in meaningless sequences.”
If you are a newbie in mnemonics (like me) you need a lot of feeds everyday to get through. The best feed for practicing mnemonics in first levels is the random list of items. I searched on the net for these lists and navigated through several websites, but I was unable to find a becoming source; so I came up with a new way using Google Sets and Shuffler tool to generate unlimited lists of different items. Suppose that you want to generate a list, containing names of animals, vehicles, foods, clothes, countries, shapes and music instruments. First you need to go to Google Sets and create sets of items from animals, vehicles, foods, clothes, countries and shapes. Then just copy and paste sets from your browser window to shuffler tool and click the “Shuffle Items”. That’s it! You have the long list in less than two minutes. I strongly recommend that you do not try to make the lists just using your mind, because words coming from your mind are usually words that your mind considers several times everyday and they are very common words including objects around you and this is not a good challenge. That’s why it’s strongly recommended to always use an external source to make lists of items for practicing mnemonics.
Mnemonics are brain boosters, consider memorizing list of items as exercises to your brain and a good challenge. While physical exercises develop muscular strength and agility, mental exercises develop your brain performance. Don’t let neurons being idle! Strength and use up these workhorses in right way and continue smoking!
By the way, I’ve memorized two lists of fifty items today, who wants to challenge me?

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