How to Develop a Brilliant Memory Week by Week: 52 Proven Ways to Enhance Your Memory Skills

chapter 1

Memory Tools

•  Step 01   How Good is Your Memory?

•  Step 02   Visualization and Observation

•  Step 03   Acronyms

•  Step 04   Turning Numbers into Sentences

•  Step 05   The Body System

•  Step 06   Association: the First Key

•  Step 07   The Link Method

•  Step 08   Location: the Second Key

•  Step 09   Imagination: the Third Key

•  Step 10   The Journey Method

•  Step 11   Concentration

•  Step 12   The Language of Numbers

•  Step 13   The Number-Rhyme System

•  Step 14   The Alphabet System

Memory depends on three basic processes: making something memorable, storing that item in the mind, and recalling it accurately at some future time. Before you can begin to improve your memory you must have faith in it as a perfectible faculty. We may speak of having a memory like a sieve – yet this is not in the same order of reality as being balding, or colour-blind, or pigeon-toed. As you begin to use the memory techniques in this chapter, you will find that your ability to recall facts, numbers, objects, events, places and people gradually sharpens.

This chapter begins with some word, shape and number tests to help you to evaluate your current memory power. You will learn some basic stand-alone techniques, such as Acronyms and the Body System, that are useful for memorizing small and simple sets of information.

Then we look at developing the key skills of association, location and imagination. I will introduce you to effective memory techniques including the Journey Method, a filing system for storing items you wish to remember, and the Number-Shape System, a way to recall a sequence of numbers from four-digit PINs to historical dates. I will guide you as you learn these methods and practise them in the various exercises.

01   How Good is Your Memory?

Whether you feel your memory is unreliable or performing reasonably well, the chances are that it is already in fairly good shape. But it is likely that no one has shown you how to access its true potential. Self-doubt may have crept in as you become conscious of forgetting people’s names, where you left your wallet, or that new PIN for your credit card.

This first step will measure how good or indifferent your current memory power is through several tests. Write down your answers and keep track of your scores in your notebook.

Don’t worry if you score poorly at first, as I am confident you will make rapid progress after just the first few steps of your 52-step journey to a perfect memory.

TEST 1: Words

Allow yourself three minutes to study the following list of 20 words. Write down as many words as you can recall. The order is not important. Score one point for each word you can recall correctly, then move on to the next test.

TREE    TIME    FACE    PIPE

CLOCK    MOUSE    ENGINE    PLANET

THUNDER    NECKLACE    WARDROBE    CATERPILLAR

GARDEN    TREACLE    PICTURE    HARNESS

SLEEP    APPLE    OCEAN    BOOK

TEST 2: Number Sequence

Study the following sequence of 20 digits for three minutes. In this test the order is important. In your notebook write down as many numbers in the correct sequence as you can before a mistake is made. Score one point for each correct digit. This is sudden death: in other words, if you recall all 20 digits but the fifth digit is incorrect, your score is four. Good luck!

5 0 3 6 7 4 4 0 9 2 8 2 0 5 7 6 7 1 2 9

TEST 3: Shapes

Take three minutes to look at the following sequence of 10 shapes. Memorize them in the running order shown below, from 1 to 10. Then turn the page where you will find the shapes reproduced in a different sequence. Follow the instructions you find there to complete the test.

Below you will see the same shapes you have just memorized, but in a different order. Try to number them in their original order (that is, as shown on the previous page, but without referring to that page). Score one point for each correctly numbered shape.

TEST 4: Binary Numbers

Allow yourself three minutes to memorize the following sequence of 30 binary numbers, then in your notebook try to write down as many of these numbers as you can before a mistake is made. Score one point for each correctly remembered binary number. Again, this is sudden death: if you recall the first five digits correctly, then make a mistake on the sixth digit, your score is five.

1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1

TEST 5: Playing Cards

Take three minutes to study the following 10 playing cards, then try to repeat the exact sequence in your notebook. As with the numbers, this is sudden death. Score one point for each card you can recall before a mistake is made.

Score Add up your scores from the five tests to arrive at a total.

Maximum points: 90     Untrained: 20+     Improver: 35+     Master: 70+

If your score is above the Improver range, then you have great memory potential – expect superb results by step 52. Don’t worry if your score is below the Untrained range: once you start following these steps you should notice impressive progress straight away, and I am in no doubt that your memory will be in great shape by the end of this book.

02   Visualization and Observation

Throughout this book I ask you to picture or visualize various objects, faces and places. Some people worry that because they are unable to produce in their mind’s eye a faithful representation of items, such as an apple or cow, then these techniques will not work. However, you don’t need to produce a photographic replica of the item: all that is required is simply to imagine some particularly memorable aspect of whatever it is you are attempting to visualize.

Let’s say you want to picture a panda bear. There’s no need to visualize the exact proportions of its nose in relation to its ears or the glint of the sun catching its fur. Just think of a cartoon image of a big black and white fluffy animal with black eyes and maybe some sharp claws.

I find when I am chasing through a list of, say, 100 words, and trying to commit them to memory, I concentrate on getting a flash of one element of the object. For example, all I may see for the word shoe is a shoelace, or for a telephone I may get a split-second picture of the keypad on my own phone.

Remember, the word imagine does not only mean, to form a mental image, it can also mean to devise or contrive. The image you create is specific to you – it exists only in your mind and is not real outside of this perception.

There are techniques for developing powers of mental imagery, and the more you exercise your memory the stronger your inner eye will become.

EXERCISE: Visualization through Observation

This is a great exercise for enhancing the visual side of your memory as well as developing powers of observation.

1  First, take any household object near to hand such as a telephone, vase, kettle or radio. Let’s suppose you choose your kettle: study it for about 15 to 20 seconds to observe as many aspects of it as possible.

2  Now close your eyes and recall as much about that object as you can in your mind’s eye. To begin with, all you may recollect is the shape of the kettle’s body and the curve of the handle. When you’ve run out of ideas, open your eyes and take in more detail, such as the shape of the spout or the manufacturer’s name.

3  Close your eyes once more and add your new observations to your original mental picture. Then open your eyes again to observe more detail. Keep repeating this pattern of open eyes – observe – close eyes – review, until you have absorbed as many features of the kettle as you possibly can.

4  Now, without looking at the object, try to sketch these memorized features in your notebook. When you have exhausted your visualized recollections of the kettle, take one final viewing to notice if there is any more detail that you could add to your stored mental picture file.

03   Acronyms

You are most probably already familiar with using Acronyms as a memory aid. An Acronym is a word formed from the first or first few letters of several words. For example, NATO is an Acronym for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Acronym is spoken as a word, rather than a series of letters each with its own pronunciation. Here are some more examples:

EXTENDED ACRONYMS

One popular form of Acronym is when a sentence or verse is created from the first letter of each word to help us remember certain pieces of information in sequence. This is known as an Extended Acronym. For example, to remember the colours of the spectrum – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet – British readers will find the following ditty familiar:

RICHARD OF YORK GAVE BATTLE IN VAIN.

EXERCISE: Extended Acronyms

Take a look at the following two examples of Extended Acronyms:

•  Sergeant Major Hates Eating Onions

Great lakes of North America:

Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario

•  Help Five Policemen To Find Ten Missing Prisoners

Bones of the lower limb:

Hip, Femur, Patella, Tibia, Fibula, Tarsals, Metatarsals, Phalanges

Now see if you can memorize the following two sets of data by creating your own Extended Acronyms. Be imaginative and use exaggeration and humour to make your own Acronyms memorable.

•  Volts = Amps x Resistance (Ohm’s Law):

Hint: Make a saying from the three letters V,A and R.

•  Order of the nine planets from the sun:

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto

Hint: Again, make a saying from the first letters of each planet in order.

I will be asking you to recall your two Extended Acronyms in a moment, but first, let’s have a look at a variation in the Acronym method, one that helps us to remember numbers.

04   Turning Numbers into Sentences

On February 18th 1995 at NHK Broadcasting Center, Tokyo, Japan, Hiroyuki Goto recited Pi by memory to 42,195 decimal places. He did this to set a new world record. Pi denotes the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter