Memory List – Free Energiser

Instructions for running this energiser can be downloaded from the link at the bottom of this page, or you can follow the notes below.

Instructions:

Explain that you are going to ask participants to remember a string of numbers. You will read out the numbers clearly with a two second interval between each one to give them a chance to remember the string.

Call out the following:

4 7

Now ask participants of they can remember those numbers.

Ask: How difficult was that?

Expect participants to tell you this was very easy.

Now call out the following:

3 9 7 2 5

Now ask participants if they can remember those numbers.

Ask: How difficult was that?

Expect participants to tell you that this was a bit harder but still relatively easy

Now call out the following:

4 2 3 7 9 1 4

Now ask participants if they can remember those numbers.

Ask: How difficult was that?

Some participants will start to find this difficult and may struggle to remember all 7 numbers.

Make the point that most of us can just about cope with remembering 7 pieces of information (plus or minus two) so this is getting towards the limit of what we can handle.

Now call out the following:

3 2 9 4 3 1 5 3 4 2 8 7 2 6

Now ask participants if they can remember those numbers.

Ask: How difficult was that?

Unless the participants have trained their memory it is unlikely that they will remember this string of 14 numbers.

With memory training it would be possible to cope with this and even longer strings. However, most people would not be able to do this.

Make the point that if we are giving a lot of information or receiving a lot of information we need to think about how we deal with it. Making notes certainly helps. It also helps to make sure that the most important information is given greater emphasis and that it is structured in a way to make it memorable.