Creating a peg list is a helpful strategy that's perfect for remembering lists of all kinds – shopping lists, to-do lists, vocabulary words, and so on. When you don’t have a pencil and paper handy, try this mnemonic device to keep you from forgetting those important items.
A mnemonic device is a simple memory trick that often involves using mental pictures or the arrangement of words and language. One of the most popular mnemonic devices is the peg list, which allows you to insert multiple lists of information into a pre-arranged format.
How to Create a Base Peg List
The first step in creating a peg list is to assign nouns to correspond with numbers. To make memorization easier, it might help to assign words that rhyme with the spoken number. For instance, a popular peg list might read, “one: gun, two: shoe, three: tree, four: door, five: hive,” and so on. You may continue this pattern to any number limit you choose.
An important thing to remember is to use nouns that are objects instead of nouns that are concepts. Objects are easier to visualize than concepts, and visualization is key in this process. Once you have done this, rehearse saying out loud the number list with your visualized words. But don’t just recite “one: gun, two: shoe, three: tree.” Mix it up. Say “six: sticks, four: door, nine: vine, two: shoe, ten: hen,” and so on.
How to Use a Peg List
The final step is to visually insert your list of information into your peg list, being as creative and bizarre as you can. For instance, if the first item on your list is “eggs,” you need to come up with a vivid mental picture involving a gun and eggs, thus when you’re at the grocery store trying to remember your list, all you have to do is say “one: gun” and the mental image will pop into your head.
There are two keys to this process the first is to keep each mental image relatively simple, using a single image rather than a scene of events. For example, it would be simpler to picture a gun shooting eggs as bullets than to picture yourself egging someone’s house and the owner running after you brandishing a shotgun. If you can, interconnect your number object (your gun, shoe, tree…) with your list item. The more closely they are connected, the easier time you will have remembering the image.
Also, it is beneficial to picture a complete random or bizarre image. Try to stay away from picturing everyday, common uses of objects. Instead, use your imagination to come up with wacky, funny, or morbid images. Mental pictures that are out of the ordinary will return to you more readily than those you see daily.
How to Re-Write a Peg List
There is no trick to inserting a new list of information once you have already used your peg lists; it’s as simple as just doing it. Your brain is designed to conjure the most recent images you have intentionally stored in it, so once you re-imagine a new list of information into your peg list, the new list will be what you remember.
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