You use the Journey Method by associating information with landmarks on a journey that you know well. This could, for example, be your journey to work in the morning; the route you use to get to the front door when you get up; the route to visit your parents; or a tour around a holiday destination. Once you are familiar with the technique you may be able to create imaginary journeys that fix in your mind, and apply these.
To use this technique most effectively, it is often best to prepare the journey beforehand. In this way the landmarks are clear in your mind before you try to commit information to them. One of the ways of doing this is to write down all the landmarks that you can recall in order on a piece of paper. This allows you to fix these landmarks as the significant ones to be used in your mnemonic, separating them from others that you may notice as you get to know the route even better.
To remember a list of items, whether these are people, experiments, events or objects, all you need do is associate these things with the landmarks or stops on your journey.
This is an extremely effective method of remembering long lists of information. With a sufficiently long journey you could, for example, remember elements on the periodic table, lists of Kings and Presidents, geographical information, or the order of cards in a shuffled pack.
The system is extremely flexible: all you need do to remember many items is to remember a longer journey with more landmarks. To remember a short list, only use part of the route!
One advantage of this technique is that you can use it to work both backwards and forwards, and start anywhere within the route to retrieve information.
You can use the technique well with other mnemonics. This can be done either by building complex coding images at the stops on a journey, or by linking to other mnemonics at each stop. You could start other journeys at each landmark. Alternatively, you may use a peg system to organise lists of journeys, etc.
Information on how to enhance the images used for this technique.
Example:
You may, as a simple example, want to remember something mundane like this shopping list:
Coffee, salad, vegetables, bread, kitchen paper, fish, chicken breasts, pork chops, soup, fruit, bath tub cleaner.
You could associate this list with a journey to a supermarket. Mnemonic images could be:
Front door: spilt coffee grains on the doormat
Rose bush in front garden: growing lettuce leaves and tomatoes around the roses
Car: with potatoes, onions and cauliflower on the driver's seat
End of the road: an arch of French bread over the road
Past garage: with its sign wrapped in kitchen roll
Under railway bridge: from which haddock and cod are dangling by their tails
Traffic lights: chickens squawking and flapping on top of lights
Past church: in front of which a pig is doing karate, breaking boards
Under office block: with a soup slick underneath: my car tires send up jets of tomato soup as I drive through it
Past car park: with apples and oranges tumbling from the top level
Supermarket car park: a filthy bath tub is parked in the space next to my car!
