Association works as long as you follow some basic guidelines. The section on the Associate techniques describes these in detail, however here are a few pointers if you find your associations are not working as well as you would like.
When you are linking two items together in sequential order, try to link from the first item to the second item. Sometimes you might want to use some part of the second item to link to the first. This can cause problems. Later when you have the first item in mind and are trying to recall the second item, you can become stuck. You don’t yet have the second item in mind, so you can’t see the link to the first.
Let’s look at an example. Imagine one of your review items is to remember to take a camera with you. This item is number 90 in your review list. Therefore, you are trying to link a bus (the peg word for 90) and a camera.
You could visualize a big camera taking a photo of a bus, however this means you visualize the big camera first. When you are trying to recall what you “stored” with the peg word for 90, you first remember that “bus” is the peg word for 90. You may then find it difficult to recall the camera because the camera is the centerpiece of your original visualization, not the bus.
Instead, visualize the bus, and then something about the bus that makes you think of a camera. For example, imagine a bus standing on its rear wheels in a massive photographic studio. The bus is holding a camera (oversize as you may well expect), and it’s taking photos of another bus doing a modeling shoot. Squint each time the huge flash (from that camera) goes off. Imagine seeing the bright lights and flash reflect off the bus windscreen.
You more easily remember the association because the bus is the centerpiece. Your mind goes from 90, to bus, and then to the camera.
Creative associations are easier to remember. Keep in mind the features outlined in the section describing association, such as using the senses, exaggeration, combinations, and more. If you include more features of good association, your associations stay longer in your mind and they reappear faster when you need to recall them.
Using the bus example above, you often need to do more than just create the idea of a bus using a camera in a photo shoot. You need to close your eyes for a moment and see it in your mind’s eye. See the photographer-bus moving around, and hear it asking the modeling bus for various poses. Feel the heat from the bright lights, hear the camera clicking, and hear a bus-related song playing in the background.
Sometimes it’s easy to think you have done enough just to invent the association. It isn’t. Until you do the visualization, you haven’t locked it into your memory. Close your eyes for just a moment and see the visualization.