People who are unfamiliar with Memo often ask about the effect. How much does your memory improve?

The effect depends on what you are going to remember and what you are going to use it for. If you are trying to memorize words with Memo you will remember more, you will remember faster and make less mistakes or switch up words. But let us try to put a number on how much more you remember. In one of my courses the participants were to memorize 60 words (distributed into four tasks). The words were read by me with a new word every 2nd or 3rd second. A week later I asked how many words the participants remembered. Here are the answers:

I remembered all the words: 66 percent

I remembered almost all the words: 19,9 percent

I remembered between 60 and 90 percent of the words: 12,8 percent

I remembered between 40 and 60 percent of the words: 2,1 percent

I remembered between 40 and 20 percent of the words: 0

I remembered less than 20 percent of the words: 0

In classic psychological memorization tests, people are supposed to remember 16 words. These words will be read five times. Between every recital people will try to recall as many of the words as possible. I have been unable to find results from such tests, but those who work with memory at the Hospital in Oslo say it is very rare that anyone will remember all 16 words, even after five recitals.

In the courses where I did my surveys on how much the participants remembered, the words were not repeated five times. They were read between one and three times. The words were in my opinion more difficult than the words in the classic memorization tests. The preferred words used there are words such as chair, lamp, scooter and so on (concrete articles like furniture, means of transportation).

Could the good results be in connection with people having knowledge of Memo? To find out I conveyed another survey. A surprising number of the participants had read one or more Memo books and some had learned Memo from friends. Here are the results of those who reported to have “no previous knowledge of Memo” before the course.

I remembered all the words: 61,1 percent

I remembered almost all the words: 22,2 percent

I remembered between 60 and 90 percent of the words: 11,1 percent

I remembered between 40 and 60 percent of the words: 5,5 percent

I remembered between 40 and 60 percent of the words: 0

I remembered less than 20 percent of the words: 0

Conclusion: After a short Memo- course 66 percent were able to remember all 60 words, either with or without previous knowledge of Memo. New words were presented with an average of about 2.5 seconds. In classic memorization tests very few are able to remember all 16 words, even with more recitals. I am of the opinion that memory techniques gives a fantastic advantage as long as they are applied in a sensible way.

Method: I am aware that the survey has weaknesses. The participants themselves reported on how much they remembered instead of me testing them individually. Also, there should have been more than a hundred participants in the survey in order to get a better a basis for the figures. The results from this survey should not be seen as scientific facts, but rather as a survey.