Dates, PINs, phone numbers and the digits of Pi

1. Four-digit PINs

A PIN becomes two images interacting.

4728 gives 47, rock, and 28, knife: an enormous rock falls on a knife and snaps the blade. One scene, two seconds of encoding, retained for years.

A security tip: put the scene in a place tied to its use. The bank card PIN inside your wallet, the building code on the front door. The place becomes the retrieval cue, and you write nothing down anywhere.

2. Phone numbers

312 456 7890 becomes mat, Nero, leash, cave, bus.

The chain. A mat is yanked out from under Nero, who falls onto a leash; the leash drags him into a cave, where a bus is parked with its engine running.

Five images, one story, a ten-digit number retained in thirty seconds.