Memorize Your Go-To Numbers

Quick Win

Commit a few key numbers to memory for those times when you don’t have access to your phone’s contact list. A strategy called memory chunking makes it easy!

Try This Today

1. Make a list. Think about the people or organizations you would call in an emergency. Aim for no more than five. Write down these names and phone numbers, including the dashes between the numbers. 
2. Break it up. For every phone number, think of each group of digits — the area code, the next three numbers and the last four numbers — as a separate “chunk.” Experiment until you find a way to say each chunk that’s easy for you to remember. For “2255,” for example, you could say “twenty-two fifty-five” or “two two five five.” Then string the chunks together and say the whole number aloud.
3. Reinforce it. Read each number aloud a few times. Then tap out the phone number a few times on your phone, instead of searching for it in your contact list and hitting “call.”

Why

Memory chunking, the grouping of small bits of disparate information into larger “chunks,” is one way to remember information. A study published in 2019 in the  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition tested the benefits of chunking and whether the size of each “chunk” mattered in a series of four experiments, each with 20 to 32 participants in their 20s. The researchers found that memory chunking can reduce the load on working memory, freeing capacity for the brain to handle more information.