Mind Performance Hacks

Hack #2. Use the Number-Shape System

Associate numbers with shapes and use the hunting and gathering faculties of your primitive ancestors to remember 21st-century data.

If you've learned how to remember 10 things to bring when you leave the house [Hack #1], you've already learned the number-rhyme system: associating numbers like 1 and 2 with words that rhyme with them, like gun and shoe, and using those associations as pegs on which to hang items you wish to remember.

The traditional number-shape system works in a similar way. Instead of visualizing images whose names rhyme with the names of numbers, however, you visualize shapes that look like the numerals in question. For example, the numeral 2 looks like a swan to many people, so you can use the image of a swan as a mnemonic peg.¹

In Action

Table 1-1 lists 10 digits, along with some shapes you can use to remember them. The Shape column illustrates the italic words in the Words column, to show how the associations arose.

Table 1-1. Corresponding numbers, words, and shapes

Number	Words	Shape
0	Black hole, donut, tire
1	Candle, pencil
2	Swan
3	Butterfly, heart
4	Sailboat
5	Hook, pulley
6	Golf club, lasso, pipe
7	Axe, boomerang, scythe
8	Hourglass, snowman
9	Flag, tadpole

Feel free to pick and choose, or devise your own shapes. It's most important to be consistent so that when you want to remember what you associated with the number 6, you don't waste time trying to remember whether your mnemonic shape is a pipe, a lasso, a golf club, or something totally different.

How It Works

Like the brains of all animals, the human brain has a lot more experience with concrete shapes than with abstract numbers. For example, the decimal digit 0 was not even discovered until about 300 BC.² Our ancestors used their senses to learn more about the world, find food, escape predators, and perform many other essential tasks. These tasks were vital to our survival in an evolutionary sense, so the faculties involved in processing sensory information were well developed, and today our brains still process this kind of information thoroughly and efficiently.

Thus, by turning numbers into concrete shapes and making them even more imaginably vivid with motion, humor, sex, aggression, color, smell, touch, taste, and all the other features of the real world that our primate brains evolved to process, we're in effect wrapping the numbers with mental friction tape so that we can grasp them better.

Of course, it's possible to become intimately familiar with numbers in their own right [Hack #36], and doing so will help you not only to remember them, but also to get better at math.

In Real Life

Here is how you might use the number shape system to remember a list of five items to pick up at an office supply store. As is often the case with image-based memory systems, the more vivid the mental image you can conjure, the easier it will be for you to remember.

1 :: candle :: a spindle of DVD-Rs

Imagine a silvery DVD being played by a gramophone with an upside-down candle for a needle, dripping hot wax onto the disc.

2 :: swan :: index cards

Imagine a white swan whose wing feathers are 3×5-inch index cards.

3 :: butterfly :: printer paper

Imagine a multicolored butterfly getting stuck to a piece of white printer paper and going through your printer. When it emerges in the output tray, it peels away from the paper and flaps into the distance.

4 :: sailboat :: four-color pens

Imagine a sailboat whose mast is a gigantic four-color ballpoint pen. As the sailboat tacks with the wind, the pen clicks and different colors emerge.

5 :: pulley :: manila envelopes

Imagine a huge pulley in the warehouse at the back of the office supply store, swinging an enormous bundle of manila envelopes, bound together with manila twine.

I often use the number shape system to make a quick shopping list when I have to grab some groceries on the way home. If you learn this system, you'll probably develop many applications of your own, such as taking notes on the points you need to address when it's your turn to speak in a meeting.

End Notes

1. Mentat Wiki. "Number Shape System." http://www.ludism.org/mentat/NumberShapeSystem.

2. Wikipedia. "0 (number)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_%28number%29.

See Also

• The number shape system is also useful when remembering numbers with the Dominic System [Hack #6]. For example, you can remember a five-digit number the usual way you remember a four-digit number, but incorporate a shape for the fifth digit into the image.