Last week I had a conversation with Harry Lorayne. If you don’t know who he is, in a nutshell he’s the foremost expert in memory enhancement techniques or “mnemonics“.

I’ve read some of his books and found his methods of memory retrieval quite effective. One in particular that I like is called the Link System and I got to thinking about how this fits in with tagging. I asked Harry for permission to quote reference to it here and he graciously gave me the thumbs up.

We usually file our email categorically with things like Project Number, City, Customer, etc. Often though, we need to do something related to a message. Since the former categories do not really trigger graphic images to spur us into action, why not use the Link System in conjunction with other tags? Since there’s no limit to the number of tags that you can apply to a message, adding one more may help you remember a task associated with a message.

Here’s an example:

• Let’s say we’re working together in a company that manages many big construction projects.
• You send me an email related to Project XYZ in City A.
• With SideFinder (SF) I can tag the email with “Project XYZ” and “City A”. These tags however are pretty mundane – not easy to remember, and they don’t attach any kind of emotion to the email.
• Now let’s say I had to do something with that email like submit some permits to an environmental division of the government, but I don’t have time right now. I’ll need to remember to do that later.
• One of the principles of any mnemonic is if you want to remember something you have to create an association that’s very graphic or emotive. Why not use a tag to do this? With SF, I can add as many of them as I please.
• Because I need to submit something to an environmental agency in the government, I could tag that email with “tree hugger”. I’ve just tied that email to a graphic, emotive word.
• Now every time I see that email or one of the other tags I will also see “tree hugger” to help trigger my memory to perform the task. I can also use the image of tree hugger to link to another task from another message in a long To Do list.

I’ve been practicing this with our alpha version of SF and it seems to work. I’m interested in hearing if anyone else has put together a similar life hack using categories or tags.

Mark