This system is a classic from Ancient Greece. It is based on mentally positioning things-to-remember in a well-known room. An obvious application would be a speech, provided that the location is familiar. Suppose, there is a good-bye party for a colleague and you have been asked to say a few words. You want to include at least the following points.

       How you remember his first day at work, when there was the incredible

         heat wave [oven]

       How he was dressed in a suit while you were all wearing shorts and

         T-shirts [shorts]

       Commemorate his soccer skills [soccer ball]

       Tell funny story about how he kicked the ball exactly through a small

         kitchen window of the building next door [kitchen sink]

       Relate this to his working skills: how he sometimes comes up with very

         short programs that nevertheless do the job [paper from line printer to

         symbolize program]

Suppose the dinner takes place in a side room of a Mexican restaurant that you know well. Working from left to right you position the key words above at various places in the room.

       Mentally place a large oven on the far left, near some colorful pictures,

         which you imagine are about to burst out in flames, because of the heat

       Imagine the large cactus 'dressed' in shorts

       Put the soccer ball on the small shelve above the door, so that it could

         fall down on someone’s head at any moment

       Imagine the bottles to the right to be leaking down into a big kitchen sink below

       Finally, wrap the big black pot on the far right in printer paper.

Now, you have positioned your ideas in the room. If you have done this well, you can 'let go' of them and concentrate on the contents of your speech.