Mentat Wiki: "Link System"
The link system one of the simplest mnemonics. It is based on a general approach referred to as pegging, wherein you treat what you need to remember like a coat that you hang on a peg. Remembering where or what the peg is enables you to remember the coat itself. Because mnemonics can seem a bit intimidating at first, the link system is being introduced first because of its relative simplicity even though, technically, it is a subcategory of the peg system, which is discussed next.
The link system is one of the simplest of all memory techniques and since aspects of this technique are used by many other techniques it is a useful one to start with.
The Link Words System does what its name suggests: it links words together into a long chain by using a sequence of events or a story. To recall the items you only need to recall the first stage, or the 'anchor' in order to remember the whole list.
Take the example of a shopping list. Imagine that you need to go shopping for the following items: eggs, cat food, party balloons, wrapping string, bananas. First of all create your anchor; this should be a fixed location in your mental landscape and one which will bring to mind the whole list. In this case since you are shopping you could use a fixed location such as your kitchen fridge.
Now you create a story linking the items one by one to your anchor.
- (eggs) You open the fridge door and hundreds of eggs fall out, you see the eggs smash on and around your feet. You hear the eggs break on the floor and feel the egg shell break as you step on them and feel the egg yolks ooze between your toes.
- (cat food) Your pet cat hears the noise and comes to investigate, it has a great liking to eggs and wants feeding; you hear the cat purring and crunching on the eggs.
- (party balloons) As the cat eats it gets bigger and bigger it starts to float in the air like a balloon.
- (wrapping string) Rather than allow it to float away you wrap a string round and round its leg to hold it down, but it still seems like it will float away from you.
- (bananas) To further weigh down the floating balloon-cat you attach a large bunch of bananas to the other end of the string. You feel the cool smooth texture of the banana skin, you can smell them and can sense the weight of them and can see the yellow and brown speckled colour of the skins.
When you need to recall the list you simply imagine yourself in front of the fridge and the whole sequence comes back to mind. In principle this method can be used to remember a list of any length. It can also be used in conjunction with other memory systems such as the system of LociSystem, the MajorSystem or SemCubed to remember short lists of items.
One problem with this system is that to remember an item in a long list you have to mentally step through each stage of the story. (See the PegSystem for a solution to this.) For short lists however it is excellent.
Another possible problem is that if you forget an item in the list you have probably lost all the remaining items as well.