Memory is a funny thing. Many of us recall a time before mobile phones and tablets, when we could rattle 30 different telephone numbers off the top of our heads without giving it much thought. Friends, family, business contacts, and that favorite pizzeria in Chicago that delivers to my hotel when I’m working there … remembering phone numbers was just one of those things you did. Today, I might be able to come up with five of those same numbers, and I’d probably have to think a bit on at least three of them!

Research shows that the more we become reliant on technology for information retrieval, the more we lose our ability to retain content in our heads and access it quickly. So, while technology can be a wonderfully useful tool, we shouldn’t allow it to completely replace our even more wonderfully useful brains as our best, go-to source for vital information. After all, your mind works even where there’s no cell tower or Wi-Fi connection.

So what can you do to strengthen your memory? I’ve found the following seven tricks to be of great use, for everything from remembering my car keys to memorizing new names at speaking engagements. I’m sure they’ll work for you, too, and that you’ll enjoy implementing them—they’re actually quite fun to put into practice.

1. Same old, same old…

Human beings are creatures of habit. We love routines and repeated practices, so why not put this natural inclination to work for you? If you always put your keys in your purse when you unlock the front door, and then you always put your purse in the hall closet next to the front door you always come in through, finding your keys in the morning is literally a no-brainer. Good organization and memory go together like peanut butter and jelly. For an additional bonus, putting things in the same place every time frees up valuable storage space in your brain for more complicated tasks. (More on that later.)

2. Use visual cues

Let’s say you need to remember to get dog food on your way home from work tomorrow. Before you retire for the night, tape the label from the dog food bag to your steering wheel so it’s the first thing you see in the morning—and leave it there until you’ve actually made the purchase. Alternatively, mentally visualize your dog wearing an apron and chef’s hat making you dinner tomorrow night.  When you’re heading home after work, that visual will most likely pop back into your mind and you can stop by the pet store.

At work, use visuals in your reports and presentation slides. People tend to forget chunks of data after about ten minutes, but a terrific infographic helps people remember complex concepts better.

3. Put your “must not forgets” with your “always forgets”

This is similar to the visual cues trick, but it goes a step further. Let’s say you’re always forgetting your cell phone as you head off to work. Start putting it inside your shoes—you can’t leave without them on your feet—and your train pass and reading glasses into the pocket of the jacket you wear every day. If you know you have a 2pm meeting this afternoon, put everything you’ll need for the meeting together on the corner of your desk first thing in the morning, so you’re not rushing around trying to find it all at 1:58.

4. Get emotional

One trick to remembering seemingly mundane things is to give them emotional value. I once had a co-worker friend who loved her job, except for a monthly report that she hated to do. (For fans of the movie “Office Space” think of the TPS report cover sheets!) She would constantly put it off until the last second, so I finally asked her what would happen if she didn’t get this particularly irksome report done. It turned out that another person in another department absolutely needed that report to do her job, and if she didn’t get her work done, she could get in trouble with her boss. Boom! Once my friend attached doing the report with the negative emotion of potentially getting another person in real trouble, she never forgot to get it done on time (and with a smile).

5. Create associations for names

By itself, a name is an abstract thing—which often makes it hard to recall. But, if we encode a name in our brain so that it becomes an image, from there we can create a story we’re sure to remember. Take my name, Denise Dudley, for example. If we meet for the first time, you might picture me in a Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniform like the kind worn by the cartoon character, Dudley Do-Right. It might seem ridiculous, but that’s the point: Conjuring up a silly image when you see me is what will help jog your memory.

Not into wacky imagery? You could instead think of a rhyme that tells you something about the person (like “Mike with the bike,” assuming Mike does, in fact, ride a bike), or an alliterative phrase (like “Anne the artist,” if Anne likes to paint).

6. Chunk items together

You can only hold a certain amount of information in your short-term memory before it’s full and you have to kick something out, say most memory experts. So try grouping several items into one unit whenever possible. After all, attempting to remember 10 different ingredients is more difficult than simply remembering that you want to make your special turkey tacos. Instead of going to the store and thinking, “tortillas, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, jalapenos, cheese, ground turkey, etc.,” consider “turkey tacos” as one unit and it should trigger you to recall the components once you get to the grocery store.

7. Reflect on it

When you take time to review what happened with something at work, whether it’s a project, meeting, or just your day in general, you’re reflecting. Ask yourself a few questions: What went well? Where can you improve? Does what happened remind you of another similar time and if so, how did you handle it then? Harvard Business School researchers have found reflective writing to be an incredibly powerful business tool. They found that just 15 minutes of written reflection at the end of the day improved long-term memory and increased performance by 23% for one test group of employees.

So there you go. Use these tricks to improve your memory and you’ll reap rewards both professionally and personally—and maybe your poor dog will even get her dinner tonight!