3: Game On

One of the best ways to make new social contacts and keep your mind sharp is to play games. Regardless of your interests, skill level or physical ability, there's a game out there to suit your needs.

Even games that are usually played by one person can provide an opportunity for socialization. There are clubs for fans of crossword puzzles, Sudoku (number puzzles) and nearly every other game out there. The New York Times crossword puzzle provides a perfect excuse to join a friend or neighbor at home or in a café -- two heads are better than one, after all.

Most communities have enough bridge clubs to provide a daily dose of camaraderie. Computer-based games, such as "bowling" using an interactive Nintendo Wii video game, are gaining in popularity among seniors. Some senior centers even have tournaments.

If you'd rather get out of town, travel agencies often offer bus tours for seniors to casinos with packages that include meals and lodging, not to mention the chance to see a different part of the country with fun-minded peers.

There are plenty of physical sporting activities that you can get involved in, such as bowling, over-50 baseball and tennis. Golfing is a great way to spend an afternoon with friends, and so is disc golf, a game that uses a Frisbee-like disc instead of a golf ball .

Most game players love sharing their activity with newcomers, so don't worry if you're not quite up to snuff to start. Soon enough you'll be teaching some other newbie the tricks of the game.

4: Learn

Studies show again and again that an active mind is more often a happy mind -- and a mind less susceptible to age-related loss of cognitive ability. If you're looking for new social outlets and the means to better yourself, there are a number of educational opportunities available that can reward you with new friends, new community contacts and new knowledge.

Many universities, community colleges and organizations offer educational opportunities for older adults. Most colleges allow you to audit classes, meaning that you attend classes with other students for a fee but you don't have to turn in assignments or take tests (you'll be the envy of the lecture hall).

There are lots of adult continuing education opportunities available, many of them free of charge -- so if you always wanted to know more about nutrition or learn Portuguese, now's a good time to do it. There are continuing education programs available for homebound seniors, too, through the aid of other seniors who attend classes on site and later share what they've learned.

Nonprofits such as SeniorNet help seniors learn to use the latest computer and communications technologies. In the course of learning important skills, you'll be able to connect -- and stay connected -- with other like-minded seniors who are also learning how to produce digital photographs, use e-mail, write blogs and find old (and new) friends on social networking Web sites.

5: Join a Senior Center

Ground zero for anyone wishing to find new activities and to make new connections with people is the local community senior center. There are nearly 15,000 senior centers in the United States, and around 10 million seniors use their services each year [source: Dal Santo].

Senior centers are essentially social clubs for older adults that offer free (or at least inexpensive) classes, activities and day trips. The centers are usually operated on a nonprofit basis, sometimes by a religious organization or a municipality, and offer a wide variety of services, including lunches (and sometimes breakfast and dinner). Some centers offer transportation to and from the center from seniors' homes, ensuring that people who are homebound still have the opportunity to socialize with their peers.

Many of these are large multipurpose facilities, though some are smaller nutrition sites that focus on providing meals and basic health information. Whether the center is large or small, it plays a big part in providing social contact for seniors: More than six out of 10 seniors who regularly visit their local senior centers say it's the only source of daily interaction they have (with blacks and Hispanics reporting even higher numbers) [source: Dal Santo].

And that's not all -- you might also be able to find job training, exercise classes and volunteer positions at your local facility.

What is boredom?

Although references to the idea of boredom stretch back to the Greek philosophers, the word did not enter the written English language until 1766. Afterward, literature exploded with musing on it, including works by Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, who called boredom "the desire for desires." [source: Martin et al].

Everyone knows what boredom feels like, but even after hundreds of years of identifying boredom as a plague upon life, no scientific consensus exists of what exactly it is [source: Martin et al]. One reason lies in rooting out the source of boredom, akin to the clichéd "chicken or the egg" question. As mentioned earlier, boredom can arise from both external and internal stimuli, muddying the answer to that question.

Scientists do know something about brain activity in high-risk, boredom-prone people. When we experience joy and excitement in a new situation, a chemical messenger, or neurotransmitter, called dopamine, triggers that response in our brains. It appears that high-risk, boredom-prone people may have naturally lower levels of dopamine, meaning that they require a heightened sense of novelty to stimulate their brains [source: Schneider et al]. In this light, boredom may serve as the lackluster yin to our yang of excitement and pleasure.

Although the part of our brain controlling the boredom response remains unclear, patients with damage to their frontal cortex experience greater risk-taking urges along with boredom proneness [source: Gosline]. Interestingly, the frontal cortex also controls our perception of time, which could be linked to the sensation of time passing more slowly when we're bored [source: Gosline].

How can we combat this elusive pest? A study found that people who reported feelings of boredom more frequently tried to alleviate it with brief distractions including work breaks or doing laundry. But these boredom Band-Aids soon failed [source: Martin et al]. On the other hand, people who meditated, engaged with other people or accepted the boredom were more successful.

Likewise, finding new interests or hobbies, physical exercise and mindfulness have all been shown to reduce boredom [source: Gosline]. One study of teenagers found that those with strong interests had significantly higher self-esteem and overall well-being than bored ones [source: Hunter and Csikszentmihalyi].

When searching for an activity, psychologists recommend finding an optimal amount of ease and challenge, called flow [source: Friedman]. In essence, flow means getting into a groove, like a runner's high or hitting a tennis ball back and forth. It demands more skill and agility than tedious tasks, but at a low enough intensity that you reap the mental reward of accomplishment.

Health Benefits of Caffeine

Caffeine has long been on the list of don'ts for people hoping to lead a healthy lifestyle. Doctors pointed to caffeine's negative effects on the nervous system and how it can increase anxiety, stress and food cravings, in addition to inhibiting sleep. Recent studies, however, have shown that coffee and caffeine may actually have some significant medical benefits.

There have been more than 19,000 studies on caffeine and coffee in the past 30 years in an attempt to determine its exact effects on the human body. One of the most thorough and exhaustive studies was done by Harvard University, in which they examined 126,000 people over an 18-year period. The findings indicate that people who drink one to three cups of coffee a day are up to 9 percent less likely to contract diabetes. What's interesting is what happened to those who drank six or more cups of coffee per day - men slashed their chances of contracting diabetes by 54 percent, and women by 30 percent [source: Kirchheimer].

Other studies have shown similar results in many facets of human health:

* Regular coffee drinkers are 80 percent less likely to develop Parkinson's disease.
* Two cups a day gives you 20 percent less risk of colon cancer.
* Two cups a day causes an 80 percent drop in cirrhosis.
* Two cups a day prevents gallstone development by 50 percent.
* It has also shown to be beneficial in asthma, stopping headaches, boosting mood and even preventing cavities [source: Kirchheimer].

Some of these findings may have something to do with other healthful properties of the coffee bean, but most can be directly linked to caffeine. Researchers are even developing drugs for Parkinson's disease containing caffeine derivatives.

*Another interesting study by The Byrd Alzheimer's Institute in Tampa, Fla., showed that lab mice injected with caffeine were protected against developing Alzheimer's disease. The injections even helped reduce symptoms in those that had the disease. The findings lead doctors to believe that up to five cups of coffee a day could have the same positive effect on humans [source: Arendash].

Rutgers University carried out a study in July 2007 that showed regular exercise combined with daily doses of caffeine can increase the destruction of pre-cancerous skin cells in mice. Once again, the findings have not yet been tested on humans, but the indication is that it will have similar effects [source: Lu].

One thing is clear -- despite the recent findings, most doctors still recommend moderation in regard to caffeine intake. While these recent studies give hope to those who are hooked on their morning cup of joe, there is still a long way to go to determine the long- term effects of caffeine use.

Caffeine and Dopamine

Caffeine also increases dopamine levels in the same way that amphetamines do. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that activates pleasure centers in certain parts of the brain. Heroin and cocaine also manipulate dopamine levels by slowing down the rate of dopamine reabsorption. Obviously, caffeine's effect is much lower than heroin's, but it is the same mechanism. It is suspected that the dopamine connection contributes to caffeine addiction.

You can see why your body might like caffeine in the short term, especially if you are low on sleep and need to remain active. Caffeine blocks adenosine reception so you feel alert. It injects adrenaline into the system to give you a boost. And it manipulates dopamine production to make you feel good.

The problem with caffeine is the longer-term effects, which tend to spiral. For example, once the adrenaline wears off, you face fatigue and depression. So what are you going to do? You consume more caffeine to get the adrenaline going again. As you might imagine, having your body in a state of emergency all day long isn't very healthy, and it also makes you jumpy and irritable.

The most important long-term problem is the effect that caffeine has on sleep. Adenosine reception is important to sleep, and especially to deep sleep. The half-life of caffeine in your body is about six hours. That means that if you consume a big cup of coffee with 200 mg of caffeine in it at 3:00 p.m., by 9:00 p.m. about 100 mg of that caffeine is still in your system. You may be able to fall asleep, but your body will probably miss out on the benefits of deep sleep. That deficit adds up fast. The next day you feel worse, so you need caffeine as soon as you get out of bed. The cycle continues day after day.

This is why 90 percent of Americans consume caffeine every day. Once you get in the cycle, you have to keep consuming the drug. Even worse, if you try to stop consuming caffeine, you get very tired and depressed, and you get a terrible, splitting headache as blood vessels in the brain dilate. These negative effects force you to run back to caffeine even if you want to stop.

If you are interested in breaking the caffeine cycle in your own life, the book Caffeine Blues (especially Chapter 10) can be very helpful.

In addition to the dangers we just discussed, there are some surprising benefits we'll learn about in the next section.

Caffeine and Adenosine

Why do so many people consume so much caffeine? Why does caffeine wake you up? By understanding the drug's actions inside the body you can see why people use it so much.

In the HowStuffWorks article How Sleep Works, the action of adenosine is discussed in detail. While it sounds like advanced science, it's really pretty simple. As adenosine is created in the brain, it binds to adenosine receptors. The binding of adenosine causes drowsiness by slowing down nerve cell activity. In the brain, adenosine binding also causes blood vessels to dilate, most likely to let more oxygen in during sleep.

To a nerve cell, caffeine looks like adenosine. Caffeine therefore binds to the adenosine receptor. However, it doesn't slow down the cell's activity like adenosine would. As a result, the cell can no longer identify adenosine because caffeine is taking up all the receptors that adenosine would normally bind to. Instead of slowing down because of the adenosine's effect, the nerve cells speed up. Caffeine also causes the brain's blood vessels to constrict, because it blocks adenosine's ability to open them up. This effect is why some headache medicines like Anacin contain caffeine -- if you have a vascular headache, the caffeine will close down the blood vessels and relieve it.
coffee

So, now you have increased neuron firing in the brain. The pituitary gland sees all of this activity and thinks some sort of emergency must be occurring, so it releases hormones that tell the adrenal glands to produce adrenaline (epinephrine). Adrenaline is the "fight or flight" hormone, and it has a number of effects on your body:

* Your pupils dilate.
* Your breathing tubes open up (this is why people suffering from severe asthma attacks are sometimes injected with epinephrine).
* Your heart beats faster.
* Blood vessels on the surface constrict to slow blood flow from cuts and also to increase blood flow to muscles.
* Blood pressure rises.
* Blood flow to the stomach slows.
* The liver releases sugar into the bloodstream for extra energy.
* Muscles tighten up, ready for action.

This explains why, after consuming a big cup of coffee, your hands get cold, your muscles tense up, you feel excited and you can feel your heart beat increasing.

In the next section, we'll go into detail about caffeine's long term effects on the body.

Here are the most common sources of caffeine for Americans:

* Typical drip-brewed coffee contains about 100 mg per 8-ounce cup [source: MayoClinic.com]. If you are buying your coffee at Starbucks or a convenience store or drinking it at home or the office out of a mug, you are consuming it in 12-, 14- or 20-ounce containers. You can calculate the number of milligrams based on your normal serving size.
* Typical brewed black tea contains 50 mg per 8-ounce cup.
* Typical caffeinated sodas (Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, etc.) contain 40-50 mg per 12-ounce can.
* Super-caffeinated colas like Jolt contain 70 mg per 12-ounce can [source: Center for Science in the Public Interest].
* Typical milk chocolate contains 6 mg per ounce [source: March of Dimes].
* Maximum Strength Anacin contains 32 mg per tablet. NoDoz and Vivarin each contain 200 mg per tablet. Extra Strength Excedrin contains 65 mg per tablet [source: Center for Science in the Public Interest].
* Energy drinks like Red Bull (8.3 oz-sized can) and Rock Star (8.4 oz-sized can) contain about 80 mg per can.

By looking at these numbers and by knowing how widespread coffee, chocolate, tea, cola and energy drinks are in our society, you can see why half of all American adults consume more than 300 mg of caffeine per day. Two mugs of coffee or a mug of coffee and a couple of Cokes during the day are all you need to get there. If you sit down and calculate your caffeine consumption during a typical day, you may be surprised. Many people consume a gram or more every single day and don't even realize it.

Caffeine Intoxication and Overdose

Anyone who’s ever had too much coffee can tell you that caffeine intoxication is no fun. Medical experts agree that ingesting more than 250 mg of caffeine in a short period of time can cause restlessness, insomnia, muscle twitching, gastrointestinal disturbance, cardiac arrhythmia and a host of other problems. These symptoms can cause significant social and occupational disturbances [source: Johns Hopkins University -- Bayview Medical Center]. Caffeine intoxication is rarely fatal, although 5,000-10,000 mg of caffeine can actually kill you [source: Dance]. Fortunately, most people won’t ever ingest this much caffeine accidentally - it would take between 30 and 60 cups of coffee in one morning.

Caffeine in the Diet

Caffeine occurs naturally in many plants, including coffee beans, tea leaves and cocoa beans, so it’s found in a wide range of food products. What most people don’t know is that caffeine is added artificially to many others, including a variety of beverages like colas. Coca-Cola was originally made with kola nut extract, which naturally contains caffeine and was mostly responsible for the flavor and buzz that early fans of the beverage craved (although the cocaine contained in early formulas of the drink certainly helped increase that craving). Now, colas are made with artificial flavors, and caffeine from another source is added in the production process. Energy drinks are a new trend in caffeinated beverages. They contain an abundance of sugar and other chemicals that help provide that sought-after boost. Caffeine can also be found in many weight loss pills and some over-the-counter pain medicines.

What is Caffeine?

Caffeine is known medically as trimethylxanthine, and the chemical formula is C8H10N4O2 (see Erowid: Caffeine Chemistry for an image of the molecular structure). When isolated in pure form, caffeine is a white crystalline powder that tastes very bitter. The chief source of pure caffeine is the end result of the process of decaffeinating coffee and tea.

Medically, caffeine is useful as a cardiac stimulant and also as a mild diuretic - it increases urine production. Recreationally, it is used to provide a "boost of energy" or a feeling of heightened alertness. College students often use it to stay awake while cramming for finals and drivers use it to push through to their destination. Many people feel as though they "cannot function" in the morning without a cup of coffee to provide caffeine and the boost it gives them.

It's important to know that caffeine is an addictive drug. Among its many actions, it operates using the same mechanisms that amphetamines, cocaine, and heroin use to stimulate the brain. Relatively speaking, caffeine's effects are milder than amphetamines, cocaine and heroin, but it is manipulating the same channels in the brain, and that is one of the things that gives caffeine its addictive qualities. If you feel like you cannot function without it and must consume it every day, then you may be addicted to caffeine.

Curious about how much caffeine you're really consuming in a day? Read on to find out where - and just how much - caffeine is lurking in your diet.

1: Digital Timers

Undercooking or overcooking a dish can ruin an entire meal. This happens all too often in the kitchen, since cooking usually requires juggling several tasks at the same time. As many cooks know, it's easy to lose track of time when you're preparing food, and simply watching the hands on the clock isn't the best way to judge precise cooking times.

Placing a digital timer near you in the kitchen can solve this problem and help you balance a number of jobs that require different cook times. Timers can be simple or relatively complex. Simple timers offer an adjustable countdown to help you keep one item from burning. But many digital timers offer the option of setting multiple timers, letting you keeping track of a number of cooking jobs.

2: Cast Iron Skillets and Pans

Many cooks prefer cast iron skillets to non-stick cookware since they cook more evenly.

*Skillets and pans are a necessary tool for cooking food over a flame, and they're a must in any kitchen. Although non-stick cookware is popular today, many professional chefs prefer to use cast-iron skillets and pans to cook food -- they don't have chemical coatings like nonstick hardware, they cook food more evenly and if properly mai*ntained, they can last for several generations.

If you treat new or refurbished cast-iron cookware correctly, it can have the same properties of non-stick cookware. This requires seasoning and reseasoning the tool, which is a simple process of cleaning and coating your skillets and pans with oils or fats before use. To do this, remove the cookware from any packaging, clean the cookware with soap and water and preheat the oven to anywhere between 250 and 350 degrees Fahrenheit (121.1 to 176.7 degrees Celsius). Coat the insides of the cookware with cooking oil, shortening, bacon grease or lard and place the skillet or pan upside down in the oven. To make sure nothing drips onto the bottom of your oven, it's a good idea to place an ovenproof tray below the cookware. After about an hour, turn off the heat and remove the cookware from the oven. The oil or fat will actually cook into the pores of the cast iron cookware, making it more difficult for food to stick. You can repeat this process, and will probably have to, several times. The skillet or pan should look black and charred once it's seasoned properly.

3: Mixing Bowls

Of course, if you're using measuring cups to add a variety of ingredients tog*ether into one big group, it helps to have something in which to place them before you start cooking or baking. A good set of mixing bowls, possibly one with a few different sizes, allows you to properly prepare any number of meals easily without making too much of a mess. If you have lots of leftovers, they're also a good tool for storing food after you wash the bowls.

Depending on your preference, you can choose between stainless steel, ceramic or glass bowls. When mixing ingredients in these types of bowls, especially stainless steel, it's a good idea to use plastic mixing spoons or spatulas instead of metal ones, since plastic won't leave unsightly marks and scratches.

4: Measuring Cups and Spoons

Most recipes call for you to add a certain amounts of ingredients, so measuring cups are essential for getting those numbers right.

*If you're interested in baking or trying out new dishes that require spices and other interesting ingredients, measuring cups and spoons are a big help. Following a recipe correctly and putting in just the right amount can give you the best results, but you can also experiment with different measurements of each ingredient. A lot of chefs -- professional and at-home -- enjoy trying out several different combinations and making notes to create one-of-a-kind versions of their favorite dishes.

Many measuring cups are made to stack for easy storage and typically come in sets of four or five, with measurements typically for 1/4 cup, 1/3 cup, 1/2 cup, 2/3 cup and 1 cup. Depending on your budget and how nice you want your cups to look, types can range from hi-tech metal to simple plastic.* It's also a good idea to have a clear measuring cup to use for liquids so you can easily judge how much you're adding to the mix.

5: Knives and Cutting Boards

Unless you want to tear things apart with your bare hands and make a mess, knives are essential tools.

*Picking up an onion and simply tossing it into a frying pan won't really get you anywhere if you truly want to put it to good use. A*n onion that's cut properly, however, can distribute its flavor across an entire dish. This is, of course, why we have knives. And onions aren't the only things that need to be cut -- almost anything that can be cooked has to be cut in some way, whether it's chopped or minced in a casual way or finely diced to specific dimensions.

A general collection of chef's knives of different sizes and purposes is a good start, but knives aren't the only tools you need. You'll find that a wooden or plastic cutting board is necessary, too, since you don't want to make cuts on an open table and damage both the knife and the table surface.

1. McAfrica

In its efforts to cater to people with expanding cultural palates in the U.S., and to appeal to an international audience, McDonald's has released some themed sandwiches throughout the world. Take the McArabia -- a flatbread sandwich with chicken, salad and garlic sauce -- released in Arab countries and in Egypt to help stop a boycott of American products in respon*se to the Iraq War [source: Reuters].

But the company made a major faux pas with a different sandwich. This one was released in Norway in 2002 and called the McAfrica. It consisted of beef and veggies in pita bread. It wasn't that it tasted bad -- but it was in bad taste, according to critics. That's because McDonald's happened to release this sandwich at a time when massive famine was occurring in Africa. The irony was too glaring for people to ignore. After being attacked as insensitive, the company agreed to roll back on its plans for the sandwich and kept donation boxes for hunger-relief charities at the restaurants that did offer it.

2. McLean Deluxe

More than a decade before the "Super Size Me" documentary, nutritionists were attacking McDonald's for what they considered an unhealthy menu. To appease these critics and lure the health-conscious crowd into its restaurants, McDonald's unveiled the McLean Deluxe in 1991. It advertised the burger as 91 percent fat free; it had 10 grams of fat compared to the Big Mac's 26 [source: McCullough].

The secret was in the seaweed. To make the burger so lowfat, the company replaced the fat content with water. The recipe called for carrageenan -- a seaweed extract -- to bind the water to the beef. Beef made up only 90 percent of the patty, and water and carrageenan made up the remaining 10 percent [source: Riley]. Despite the addition of "natural" beef flavor additives, the result was a dry failure of a burger that was later called "the McFlopper" [source: Collins].
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3. Arch Deluxe

*In 1996, McDonald's wanted to broaden its image, so it launched a special advertising campaign. Instead of seeing a fun-loving Ronald McDonald dancing around with kids, TV viewers saw commercials of kids grimacing in disgust at the latest McDonald's burger. This new burger, dubbed the Arch Deluxe, was supposed to appeal to adult tastes with a secret mustard-mayonnaise sauce. That's right: McDonald's -- the symbol of fast, low-priced American food -- was seeking the sophisticated, urban demographic.

As you may have guessed, it didn't work. It seems adults didn't find a child's sheer disgust at a sandwich very appetizing. The company tried another approach -- this time with commercials featuring Ronald McDonald at clubs, golfing and playing pool. This failed because it contradicted the family-friendly atmosphere that McDonald's had cultivated for so long.

Mickey D's spent more money on the Arch Deluxe advertising campaign than it had on any other -- $100 million -- making the sandwich a pricey mistake [source: Collins].

4. McPizza

You can have an Egg McMuffin for breakfast and a Big Mac for lunch, but what are die-hard McDonald's fans supposed to do for dinner? McDonald's tried to solve dilemma in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the McPizza. To build the dinner menu, it even tried adding similar options like lasagna and spaghetti [source: Kidd]. Theoretically, McDonald's could've been your one-stop shop -- forget Dominos and Pizza Hut!*

Unfortunately, McDonald's customers didn't forget. On top of that, McDonald's customers who were used to fast service were irritated by the long wait times for made-to-order pizza. Although the effort failed, some franchises kept the McPizza on the menu for a while. It wasn't that the McPizza fared doing better in those markets; the franchises were stuck with pizza ovens they paid fifty grand for [source: Berss].

5. The Hula Burger

McDonald's founder, Ray Kroc, was a brilliant businessman -- when he kept out of the kitchen. After buying the business's rights from the McDonald brothers, he expanded into new geographic markets but soon discovered a problem with the sales in regions with large Catholic populations.

In the early 1960s, it was still popular for American Catholics to abstain from meat every Friday. Kroc had high hopes for his nonmeat option called "The Hula Burger" -- grilled pineapple with cheese on a bun. He positioned his burger to compete against the Filet-o-Fish sandwich, which was invented by a Catholic franchisee. The Filet-o-Fish won hands down while the Hula tanked.

Since then, American Catholics have relaxed their traditional Friday custom. It's still popular to abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent, however, and McDonald's typically discounts the Filet-o-Fish sandwich during that time to boost sales.

1. Practice Makes Perfect

Maybe you're thinking that some of the tips in this article sound a bit too easy. And that's the beauty of them -- but to get the full benefit, you're going to have to practice. Not everyone immediately begins creating helpful visualizations or using the method of loci to remember things, but when your brain becomes trained to think that way, it will become easier.

You can look at almost anything as a chance to practice these memory tips. If you're out to eat at a restaurant, randomly assign the people around you a name. Introduce yourself to them in your head and give them identifying features. Enjoy your appetizer, then look back around to see how many names you remember. It can also make the time fly by when you're standing in line at the bank or waiting in a doctor's office. You can do the same things with people in newspapers or magazines.

Speaking of newspapers and magazines, you can practice your ability to pay attention by reading an article and then explaining the article to someone else. Do you have all the details down, or do you need to pay better attention when you're reading? After enjoying your favorite television program, see if you can remember the outfits that various characters wore throughout the show. If you can remember the small details, then your memory is getting good exercise.

One of the simplest ways to practice these methods is to teach them to someone else. By explaining with examples, you'll be reinforcing them in your brain.

2. Use Your Environment

Tying a string around your finger to remember something has become a bit of punchline, but the reasoning for it makes sense. By putting something in your environment slightly askew, you create a visual reminder for yourself. The key, as with other methods, is to take the time to create a strong visualization for why there's a string around your finger before you mindlessly tie it on.

You can use other things in your environment as well. If you don't want to invest in string just yet, you could switch a ring, bracelet or watch from one hand to the other as needed to remember things. For example, if you needed to remember a doctor's appointment, you could visualize a large wristwatch wrapped around your doctor. If it bothers you too much to switch hands, try just turning the watch upside down or switching a ring so the stone points downward.

There are other things you can manipulate in your environment as well. If you wake up in the middle of the night with a thought you don't want to forget, make an association with something on your nightstand, like an alarm clock or a book. Then place the object on the floor. The next morning, when you trip over the item on your floor, you can bring up the visualization. You can also move furniture slightly if that helps. If you have trouble remembering to take morning medications, place your toaster on its side. When you stand it back up again, you can take your medications, enjoy some toaster waffles and then return the appliance back to its sideways position in preparation for the next morning. Move your telephone from one side of the desk to the other, depending on whether you have phone calls to return.

You could also place things that need to leave the house on the floor in front of the door to serve as an obvious reminder, or you could make use of the doorknob itself by hanging things on it. For example, if you return from home day after day without the dry cleaning you meant to pick up, place an empty hanger on the door. Put it on the front seat of the car, and it will serve as a daylong reminder of an errand you need to run.

3. Method of Loci

The earliest recorded mnemonic device comes from Ancient Greece. One night, a poet named Simonides was called upon to recite a poem at a banquet. By some stroke of luck, Simonides briefly left the banquet hall, right when the entire building collapsed. Because the bodies of those that remained inside were so badly mangled, Simonides identified the dead for their families by recalling where people were sitting at the time of the accident. This memory device of associating things with a place or location became known as the method of loci, and it was all the rage for teaching in Ancient Greece. If you've ever said, "in the first place" or "in the second place" when rattling off a list, then you're using a modern derivative of the method of loci.

In using the method of loci, you're essentially piggybacking the information you need to remember on top of information that would be near impossible for you to forget. For example, it would be hard for you to forget a bus or subway route you use every day, or the setup of your own house. If you select between five to seven locations on these routes or in these places, you can use the landmarks to remember a list of errands by using the visualization methods we discussed earlier.

For example, let's say that you've selected places you pass daily on your commute to the office. You drive by a large yellow house, a fast food chicken restaurant and a tire shop. You need to remember to stop by the store to get detergent, bread and orange juice. For each familiar place, visualize an association with an item on the list. You could envision the detergent dripping down the sides of the yellow house, making the yellow even brighter. You picture the chickens eating pieces of bread thrown to them in their chicken coops, and you could imagine tires trying to move through a rising river of orange juice. You can expand the list with more landmarks as needed, and then when you arrive at the store, you just pull up this route information and think of your visualizations.

4. Chunking

Maybe you have no problems remembering your grocery list or names and faces but you repeatedly stumble over your PIN number, Social Security Number or license plate number. Chunking may be just the memory method for you. You've used chunking if you've ever read off a phone number as three sets of numbers as opposed to one long 10-digit number. Chunking puts a large amount of information into more manageable chunks so that you have less to remember.

Let's tease out the phone number example even further. Say you use this phone number every day but can never remember it: 404-760-4729 . First, the area code -- do you love golf? Picture hitting a golf ball twice; you might yell, "Fore! Oh! Fore!" Then let's say you have seven children and you were born in 1960. By great coincidence, your soccer jersey number was 47, and you'll never be able to forget that the Great Depression started in 1929. " Make a fun story out of it: Golfing with the kids in the year I was born while wearing my soccer jersey was more fun than the Great Depression. You'll never forget how to call us again.

OK, maybe that's not the handiest way to remember our phone number. The associations made with certain numbers will be different for everyone. What's important is to look for patterns and numbers associated with memorable things for you. Then you can break a long list into more manageable chunks.

Chunking's not limited to remembering numbers, though. Anything can be reduced to smaller chunks. Say that you need to send an e-mail to George, William, Greg, Jim and Jane. If you remember to invite the 2 G's, the 2 J's and one W, then you're set. If you have a long shopping list, try grouping it according to sections of the store, so that when you get to the dairy section, you'll know you have a few items to look out for.

5. The Name Game

This memory tip builds upon many of the tips we've learned so far. When you meet a new person, it's important to pay attention to the name and the face. As soon as you learn the name, repeat it back to the person by saying, "Nice to meet you, so-and-so." It's not a cheap trick; researchers have found that people have a 30 percent better chance of remembering a name when they repeat it as soon as they learn it [source: Herold].

Then it's time to put those visualization and association skills to work. Let's say you're meeting a person named Katie Lambert, who just happens to be this humble writer's editor. First, you want to repeat the name, but you also want to start looking for identifying features that will help you with the visualization and association. Check out the person's hair, nose, mouth, cheeks and eyes. Katie has chin-length blond hair, so you might take that feature and combine it with her last name, Lambert. Suddenly you're picturing little lambs with blond hair frolicking about. You name one of those lambs Katie to help you with your image, but you also take the "kat" from her first name and imagine little cats running around as well.

If you wanted another way to remember "Lambert," you could picture Katie on the "lam" with "Bert" from "Sesame Street." You could also use rhymes or a celebrity she resembles to make the association. If all else fails, you could just focus on how you would describe her later to a police sketch artist if you were to hear that a girl named Katie Lambert had committed a crime. Whatever it takes to remember her name and face together.

6. Pay Attention

Eight seconds is more than just a length of time that bull riders try to stay atop a bucking bronco, it's the amount of time you need to completely focus your attention upon something to effectively transfer it from short- to long-term memory [source: Crook]*. No matter how wonderfully you can conjure up entertaining and useful visualizations for incoming information, the skill will be useless if you're not paying attention to what you need to remember in the first place.

If you pay attention when you meet someone, you have a better chance of remembering a new name.

Sometimes we can't remember things because we never got the information into the memory bank to begin with. Like an absent-minded professor, we all have moments where we put down keys or an important book without noticing. Or we scribble phone numbers or one-word reminders on Post-It notes, thinking that's all the information we'll need later. However, without paying attention to why you need the information and its value to you, that Post-It is useless.

Try to stay in the present and really pay attention to the task at hand, whether it's learning new information for a job or meeting new people. Minimize distractions such as music, television or cell phones to focus fully. One way to stay mindful of even the smallest actions is to repeat aloud what you're doing; as you take off your eyeglasses, say aloud "I am putting my glasses on the kitchen counter." While talking to yourself may feel awkward, you'll be grateful to find your glasses easily later.

When meeting new people, we can often be more obsessed with how we look and the impression we're making than truly paying attention to the other person. Simply staying focused will boost your ability to remember the names of new people. But we're not done with faces and names yet. Since that area is troublesome for so many people, the next tip is all about using some of these techniques to attend parties with ease.

7. Visualization and Association

A picture's worth a thousand words, as the saying goes, so turning a list of random words into images may help you remember the words better. Explaining this method works best by example, so let's say that you need to remember that a parent-teacher conference is taking place at three in the afternoon. Take a moment and think of a visual image for three -- let's say that you and your son just love reading the story of the "Three Little Pigs." Visualize those three little pigs. To remember what exactly you have to do at three, picture your son's teacher cavorting with the pigs out in a meadow. Sometimes, the more unique the image, the easier it will be to remember. Here's another example: say you place your eyeglasses on the kitchen table. When you do so, imagine your eyeglasses eating all the food on the table. Later, when you're wondering where your glasses are, your brain has this image in the bank.

You can use visualization to remember an entire list of things if you associate the images together. Say that you need to remember to take the following things to your SAT exam: a No. 2 pencil, a calculator, your ID and a snack for the break. You can create a visualization that links all of the images together in a ridiculous story. Picture your pencil as a snake, curving itself into the number two. That snake just loves calculators, so it winds itself around the calculator, using its hissing tongue to press the buttons. When the snake pushes one of the calculator buttons, the calculator turns into a camera and snaps the snake's picture for an ID photo. All of this calculating and picture-taking has worn the snake out, so it wants a snack of pretzels.

Sure, it sounds bizarre, but you can't deny that it also sounds fun. Visualization is at the root of many of the memory tips left to go on our list, so go ahead and practice by visualizing yourself heading to the next page for another memory tip.

8. Get Moving

If you've ever taken a break from work or studying to take a quick walk around the block, you may understand the rationale for this next tip. Exercise not only exercises the body, it exercises the brain as well.

Obesity is a risk factor for many diseases and conditions that eventually wreak havoc on the brain, including stroke and Alzheimer's disease. Without regular exercise, plaque builds up in the arteries and blood vessels lose the ability to pump blood effectively. While you may know how plaque buildup leads to heart attacks, you may not think about the way your brain is gasping for breath as well.

The brain depends on energy received through a constant intake of oxygen and nutrients from the bloodstream, and when those nutrients don't arrive, the brain's ability to work is compromised. So to keep the blood moving to the brain, you're going to need to get up from your chair (after you finish reading this article, of course) and get the blood pumping. It doesn't matter what you do -- a brisk walk, a swim and even a dance move or two can all provide a good mental workout. Studies show that the more physically active a person is, the greater his or her cognitive performance [source: Victoroff].

Keep a lookout on your brisk walk for interesting images -- you'll need them for the memory tip on the next page.

9. Seek Treatment for Depression

Anything that causes major stress in life, including anxiety or anger, will eventually eat away at the parts of the brain that are responsible for memory. Chief among these stressors is major depression. Depression is often misidentified as a memory problem since one of the main symptoms of the condition is an inability to concentrate. If you can't concentrate on schoolwork or the information needed to complete a task on the job, then you may feel as if you're constantly forgetting things. As it is, you're not even able to concentrate long enough to learn them in the first place.

Depression causes an increase of cortisol levels in the bloodstream, which in turns elevates the amount of cortisol in the brain. With the help of brain imaging devices, doctors have been able to see how that increased cortisol diminishes certain brain areas, chief among them the hippocampus [source: Tan]. One study showed that people who had been depressed, even if it was years ago, had suffered a 12 to 15 percent loss in the hippocampus [source: Victoroff]. Since the hippocampus is the clearing center for short-term memory, prolonged depression demolishes the brain's ability to remember anything new.

Additionally, depression affects the types of things a person is able to remember. While everyone's brain is selective about which memories make it into long-term storage, people with depression seem only able to retain negative memories [source: Crook]. That means there's a neurological reason why a person with depression remains obsessed with the one time a loved one forgot a birthday or anniversary, even if it was remembered every other year.

But happy memories needn't be lost forever to someone battling depression. Medications for depression, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), have been shown to jump-start the process of cell regeneration in the hippocampus [source: Tan].

The next item on our list can help fight depression while it improves memory as well.