In the Link System, positional ordering is achieved by associating the things-to-be-remembered with each other. They are simply chained, starting with the first item, which is associated with the second, the second with the third, etc. The very first item can be associated with the goal or the reason for the list that must be remembered.

A good application of this technique is a short list of things to do. One often thinks of different things to do, at times when it is not possible to write them down on a piece of paper, for example, while jogging, traveling, about to go to sleep, etc. A typical list could be:

       Buying cold medicine

       Writing a letter to a friend who lives in Australia

       Giving the dog a bath

       Mending a flat bicycle tire

       Making sure there is enough dry wood for the hearth

To apply the Link System, we first pick a single word to represent each task, for example iceberg, kangaroo, dog, bicycle, fire. If you want to start doing them after finishing work, then that would be the starting point of the association, for example, the moment you step into your car. For a possible list of links imagine the following:

       A big iceberg sitting inside your car

       A kangaroo jumping around on the iceberg, throwing snow balls at you

       Your dog, climbing out of the the kangaroo's pouch

       Your dog then proceeding to ride on a little bicycle

       The little bicycle growing until it explodes into flames

The link system is very straightforward and can be applied immediately. It is most effective for short lists, in which each word is linked to the next.

Using the story technique, things-to-be-remembered are woven together in a coherent narrative. This has one advantage over simple linking, where if one link is broken, the items on the list after that may be lost completely. In the Story System there is a higher chance that the flow of the story will allow most of the remainder of the list to be retrieved.

Let us take the words used in the to-do list in the Link System example and use them in a story: car, iceberg, kangaroo, dog, bicycle, fire.

My car drove into a big iceberg on the road home. The collision caused a kangaroo to tumble down. When it hopped away, our dog jumped out of its pouch and hit a man on a bicycle, who nearly rode into a big fire meant to melt the freak iceberg.

A disadvantage of this system is that it is often difficult to come up with coherent stories. Its success is thus somewhat dependent on the specific words and their ordering.