Or as I like to say, my “easel’s broken”, because it helps me remember how to pronounce it. Which is funny because ezelsbruggen, in dutch (and German too, I think), translates into “donkey bridges” (according to the Internet and my wife). A donkey bridge is a memory technique for creating visual bridges between disparate words. In English, the translation is “memory aid”, or “mnemonic”.

Whether you have a rat in separate, your princiPAL is your PAL, or your committee does nothing but mutter mutter, talk talk, and eat eat, donkey bridges are quite handy. They help you remember little bits and pieces of information, like the form instantiation order in FoxPro (the lovely Lisa G.). Oftentimes donkey bridges are illogical, arbitrary, and downright silly — but they always seem to work. Who is this Lisa G. anyway?

So, here is a list of some of the mnemonics — Ezelsbruggen — that I have learned over the years. If you have any fun or interesting ones, please share!

• LISA G.
  Load, Init, Show, Activate, GotFocus
• Lucky Cows Drink Milk
  The order of Roman numerals (ascending): LCDM
• Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally
  Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction.
• My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos
  There are only eight planets now! Sad… but true.
• Better Be Right Or Your Great Big Van Goes West
  Ohms value for the color bands of resistors (Black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, gray, white).
• Silly People Drive Fast
  Spectroscopic notation, after F, the rest is alphabetic

So here I am in a canoe in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, drinking the salt water out of a coffee filter. Smoke from my hibachi is getting in my eyes as my veggie burgers begin to burn. Although I’m ankle deep in plums, I manage to toss Ben and Jerry overboard so they can fix the motor, which is nothing more than a dust buster turned from suck to blow.

That, my friends, was yesterday’s shopping list. Poland Springs, coffee filters, veggie burgers, plums, ice cream, and a new hand vacuum. If I don’t create an absolutely absurd story, I’m liable to forget something without a list.

Method of Loki

Another great way to remember sequences and lists is employing the Method of Loki. In its most basic form, you simply find a location you are familiar with in your head (your bedroom, office, kitchen, etc), and begin placing things inside the room. It’s a method many use for giving paperless speeches or for remembering meeting agendas. For example, in my office, I may see the head of the research department typing away at my computer, a spinning globe just off to her right, and a bowing shelf of paper documents within arm’s reach. This will remind me to discuss the new research project, segue into our International strategy, and finally end by discussing a much needed content management solution.

These and other such techniques for remembering items, spellings, sequences, etc, have been a big help for me. In the health care industry, I’m often required to remember many acronyms, processes, and procedures that are quite foreign (I have no medical background whatsoever — unless you count years of watching ER). The same might be true for you as well.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to see the quill from behind the tall man who’s sitting on a beanbag chair fiddling with a rubix cube.

Tags: Productivity