Answer: Here is a collection of tips that other people have said work for them:

from How to Memorize Anything You Want

Aaron says:

For remembering names, my favorite technique is to match the name to a defining characteristic of the person with the same name. Some of the ones I’ve used:“Matt is massive” (he was like 6 foot 4, 275 lbs)“Kevin is kind” (he really was a nice guy, and it stood out.) When you look at the person it’s fairly easy to recall an attribute, harder to recall a name.

Michael says:

I had similar problems when I first started out many moons ago in the anatomy lab. I used the anagram technique for big lists and created a rolling story out of those acronyms. Started at the feet and as the story progressed I moved up the body.

For neural pathways I adopted coloured pins. If we were in the labs and were identifying segments of cadavers I would use a certain coloured pin. When studying from textbooks i would use the same coloured felt tipped marker and underline words with that. I use repitition for lists as an independant check and write them out over and over until I can remember them off the top of my head, in the same colour as the pins used on the cadavers.

I also learned some tools from Psych elements of my degree. One was taste recognition. I attempted to study using this technique, and one example the Prof. used was alcohol as it is very easy to remember the taste of certain liquors just by thinking about them. My room mate was a bartender so I used the alcohol example to study for his exam. Everytime I wrote a list in a coloured pen, I had a sip of a certain alcohol with the same colour. Blue pen – blue curaco, black pen – black sambucca, green pen – midori. Had to be careful not to get drunk, but after two nights of study (cram sessions as Psych was the least of my priorities for the degree) I ended up topping the class of 130. I told the Prof about the study technique – he was happy that I used Psychology to study his course, but wasn’t too impressed that I was drinking to remember his work.

Blake says:

One good trick I’ve learned is using colored flashcards and colored pens. The visualization of color helps me out a lot. Another good method is teaching others. If you have a study group, teaching other people the material actually helps you out to because you memorize it even further.

Mike says:

[Ron White (memory master)] uses people to represent numbers so I’ve assigned numbers to friends and when I have to remember a new number, I picture my friends in the appropriate order.

Bruce says:

I rely on a pocket notebook and my Blackberry to write down things for accuracy rather than rely on memory although I am not sure if I would be better off relying on my mental abilities alone.

In her book Now You See It Kathy Davidson says:

A friend of mine has cultivated the habit of always putting her watch on the wrong wrist when she wants to remind herself later to remember something. She says when she gets home from the office and goes to take off the watch, that moment of awareness that the watch is on the wrong wrist forces her to think, “What was it that was so important today that I was sure I would forget it later and changed my watch to remind me?” (p 17)

Everyday challenges:

1.  remembering bank account number and other passwords and numbers

2.  telephone numbers

3.  key points of something you’ve read

4.  people’s names

5. names of  hard-to-pronounce places, people and things