#35 - Improve Your Memory Skill

The Why:

I've had a lot of difficulty in this area, and a real requirement to make improvements.

Firstly, we are in the age of digital dementia. Once upon a time people used to remember all their phone numbers, now we have smart phones and beepers and whizzamajigs AI things to do that for us.

Secondly, I am in recovery from several illnesses which have had a devastating impact on my brain and its capacities.

The What:

For this, I consulted Jim Kwik, who is widely known as an expert in the field of memory and speed reading. Well, I didn't consult him personally, but through his content.

Like with most things, knowing is not enough, you actually need to put in the work and practise this everyday, or every other day, to become competent.

There are many strategies. I believe you'll find you are better at some strategies than at others, however each have their functions and best uses depending on the information you are trying to remember.

The basic premise is to TIP - Turn Into Picture, as we are better suited to remembering images than text. Also, a picture is worth a thousand words!

For one of the exercises, the strategy is the sun list. So I'll give you a list of 10 words to memorise.

• Sun, Socks, Traffic Light, Car, Glove, Soda, Rainbow, Magic 8 Ball, Cats, Toes.

• Ok great....

• :)

What we do now is tie these words to something, in this case, the number itself.

1. Sun

2. Socks

3. Traffic light

4. Car (4 doors on a car)

5. Glove (five fingers)

6. Soda (6 pack)

7. Rainbow (7 colours)

8. 8 Ball

9. Cats (nine lives)

10. Toes (10 toes)

Here we have our list. Remembering the words on their own is much harder, but now we have a way to tie them to something we known, we can think... 1, Sun... 5, Glove, 9 Cats, 7 Rainbow - hence the association.

Now we can tie information to this list.

We could start with Australian Prime Ministers. The first, being Edmund Barton. We turn Barton into a picture, maybe a ton of bars, like a piano bar. Then we imagine all these piano bars on the sun, which forms the association.

For the second, we have Alfred Deakin, and for this we could imagine a big D in a can (DeeeKan), so instead of a can of spaghetti, its a can of D's, and these cans of D's are in big woolly socks (tying to the 2nd position association being socks).

So at position 1 we have Barton and at 2, we have Deakin.

And you just continue the process.

You can make your list longer, as in go to 20 places to fit more Prime Ministers (Or US Presidents, or shopping items).

This is just an introductory to what I have learnt from Jim's teachings. I've been having a lot of fun with the programme, however it does become challenging at times.

Lessons Learnt:

• All great things take time

• Be a child again and use your imagination

• Bit by bit, it’s a sinch. Yard by yard, it’s too hard

Status:

• With a bit of practise and training I think I can make some real in-roads…