Try This Simple Hack to Remember Dates and Times

Quick Win

Creating visualizations to recall birthdays, anniversaries and other important dates and times may improve thinking and memory.

Try This Today

• To remember important dates or times, create images. For example, link the picture of a person about to have a birthday with a calendar date or a decorated cake with his or her birth date on top.
• To recall anniversaries, picture a date. Imagine your first wedding anniversary and recall the invitation with the date on it.
• Let your imagination go a bit wild. Visualize a party with streamers and confetti forming the name, date and time of your upcoming event.

Why

Since we rely on our memory in our day-to-day lives, visual imagery can help improve memory and support our everyday tasks. One example is using this imagery to remember important information like dates and times. Creating nicknames using images or rhyming is one example of a mnemonic, a strategy used for improving recall. Mnemonics that involve visual imagery can improve some aspects of memory, suggests research, including a study of 91 adults ages 61 to 88 published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry in 2020.