Finally Memorize that Social Security Number

A long series of numbers, whether your social security number, your credit card number that you have to enter repeatedly when you shop online, or that critical piece of data you need to hold in your brain to impress your boss, can be difficult for most of us to hold onto. Here is a memory method you can use to finally memorize that number and be able to recall it perfectly over and over again.

First off, please keep in mind that this is for perfect recall of the number – not for instant memorization. We won’t be learning a trick to scan columns of numbers and spit them out again. This is for that one number you need to recall over and over.

The first part of the process is a little slow, but you only need to do it once.

Ready?

First write down your number. As an example, we will use 582 – 32 – 2710. Don’t worry, no one else will be seeing it, so write it down.

Now check out this list

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

A B C D E F G H I J

Above each digit in your number, put the corresponding letter. In our example we have E H B C B B G A J, but your letters will of course be different.

We will replace each letter with a corresponding word to make a memorable sentence, but let’s approach this slowly to make sure that it is memorable.

To make it a little easier, think of a person or object significant to the number you are tying to remember that also fits the first couple of letters. We could go with Edith Head, Hollywood fashion designer, but if that name doesn’t mean anything to you, then don’t use it. How about “Every Husband” or “Elegant Hippos” or “Englebert Humperdinck”? The better it fits, the easier it will be to remember.

For the sake of the example, we will use “Ethan Hawke”.

Why use a name? The strongest, easiest to remember sentences in the English language are structured as Subject who does an action, then Verb defining the action, then Object that is affected by the action. Bob hits Carl, for instance. We need more digits than that, so we add some adjectives, adverbs, and clauses to give the right number of words, but we still keep the Subject/Verb/Object order.

So for our example we can make a memorable and logical sentence “Ethan Hawke Bit and Chewed Baked Bagels with Globs of Apricot Jam” or perhaps “Ernest Hemingway was Broken and Crushed by Broncos who Bucked and Galloped as they Avoided the Jaguar”.

The more appropriate, the more logical, and the more vivid you make your sentence, the easier it will be to remember.

Learn your sentence. It’s a lot easier than remembering the number, but you still have a little bit of memorizing to do.

Once you have your sentence down, then you decode it every time you need to recall the number.

If the sentence is Ethan Hawke Bit and Chewed Baked Bagels with Globs of Apricot Jam, start with the first couple of words -- Ethan Hawke. E.H. A is 1, B is 2, C is 3, D is 4, E is 5. Five! That’s the first digit

You might need to use your fingers to remember that H is 8, so now you have 5-8. What did he do? Oh yeah, he bit and chewed baked bagels. B-C-B-B. Uh… that’s 2-3-2-2. So far we have 5-8-2-3-2-2…

What was the rest of the sentence? “Globs of Apricot Jam”. G-A-J. That’s 7-1-0

Our final number is 582-32-2710.

It gets a little smoother in practice, but the idea is that you will remember the sentence and decode, so it isn’t instantaneous in the decoding.

Now, want to learn 1000 digits of Pi? I have you covered with my book How to Memorize 1000 Digits of Pi. It means learning 100 sentences and getting them in the right order, but I cover all the tools you need to get the job done! Find it at Barnes and Nobel or click here to get my book!