
Ask HN: Any good tools or techniques for memorising lists of information? - playpause
I’m interested by the idea of being able to efficiently memorise long lists or tables of useful information, and being able to ‘look up’ items reliably with little effort.<p>I’ve read of ‘memory palaces’, and other similar tricks, like hooking pieces of information to points along a real-life route you know well so you can recall things by mentally walking the route. But I’ve never found the will to persist with any of these techniques for more than five minutes, even though the immediate results are often good – you can memorise a surprisingly long list of things perfectly in just a few minutes (with a bit of concentration). I would’ve imagined the experience of quickly and manifestly surpassing one’s normal ability to capture and recall information would be self-motivating, but in practice I find it arduous and boring.<p>Has anyone here had any success with these kind of techniques, and how? Any particular books, apps, or tools that work well for you?
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itamarst
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition)
is supposedly very effective. Used in things like Duolingo for language
learning.

[https://apps.ankiweb.net/](https://apps.ankiweb.net/) is a tool that
implements it generically. Or, you can also do this with paper:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system)

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cimmanom
How long? And how random-access does it have to be? Setting lists to music is
a pretty good way to never forget them even if you wanted to.

