Often, I will have a few unrelated ideas/thoughts/questions that I need to keep in mind until I have chance to write them down (or otherwise save them, as by dictating them to my phone). A common memory technique is to create an absurd image combining all the idea. For example, the other day I had eight such items:
- Organize episodes of the television show Archer for my media server.
- Clean my Waterpik.
- Plan to not eat Mexican food for a week (to avoid the temptation to eat carbs).
- Look up the difference between ‘crevice’ and ‘crevasse.’
- Write up this memory technique.
- Order an extra lightning cable for my work laptop.
- Write up an idea for another hobby of mine (an idea that uses the name ‘Mercury’).
- Research a muscular/nerve condition whose acronym is ACNES.
Thus, to remember all of this, I imagined (1) Archer was in a restaurant with a bad case of (8) acne and so he was trying to hide his identity by wearing a (3) sombrero; meanwhile, a (5) crow with a (2) toothbrush was sitting on his shoulder trying to clean Archer’s teeth (but couldn’t because Archer had a (7) thermometer in his mouth); at the same time, (6) lightning was striking the restaurant, causing it to slide into a (4) crevasse/crevice.
The important thing in creating such images is to make them connected (spatially and functionally) and absurd, all of which makes the overall image more memorable. In the above example, each item is literally touching one or more other items and, in most cases, is connected to at least one other item by some kind of action.
I would finally note that you don’t have to have great mental visualization in order to use this technique. My mental imagery is not vivid at all, but this works well for me.
One Idea 