You Can Learn to Remember: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life pdfdrive com

the memory forest 10-note keyboard
EXERCISE NINE

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The memory forest keyboard consists of 10 logically ordered woodland features;
each set of five (plants and animals) is arranged in size order.
1. Commit the keyboard to memory by visualizing it in sequence. One aid to
memory is the logic behind the order of pegs: each set of five begins with the
largest component and ends with the smallest (tree to berry; deer to ant); the
plants and animals are easy to remember as a single set of 10 pegs, as they are
linked by the element of the forest.
2. As an example use the keyboard to memorize the first 10 books of the Old
Testament, in order: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy,
Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel. Tree might remind you of family tree,
showing the genesis of your family; roots are spread out under the ground, as if
in exodus from the tree itself; for Leviticus you might think of a leaf “levitating”
on a gentle breeze; and so on.

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the story method
M
emorizing through storytelling gives us an enjoyable oppor tunity to stretch
our imagination. If you think back, you can probably recall many of the stories
that you were told as a child – perhaps because they were dramatic, colourful,
full of suspense and enjoyable, so that when you heard them you found them
engaging.
In the peg system the pegs themselves are preselected, but in the story
method the narrative comes into existence only by virtue of the items that we
need to remember. To use this method, we string together in a tailor-made story a
list of items or events that we wish to memorize. A new story is created for each
new list, and it is memorable because we use our imagination to emphasize,
exaggerate and elaborate in the way that all good storytellers do.
The principles are the same whether we are linking together items that have
an intrinsic connection (such as the states of the US or kings and queens of
England) or whether the items are completely unconnected (as in the exercise
opposite). The links that we form between items must be sufficiently attention-
holding. To make your links interesting, employ such devices as the surreal, and
movement and colour. For example, if the first two items in a list are “backpack”
and “diamond”, you might link them thus: “I was searching through my dirty
backpack to find my dazzling diamond ring.” Try not to fall into the trap of
thinking that you will remember certain items without embellishing them: by
making the items more vivid and your visualization of them precise (which
includes imagining any sounds or smells they make), you will cement them in
your mind. If you come across an item that you find hard to visualize, you could
try a system of “part-wording”, in which you take the first or key syllable or
syllables from the name of the item and make the necessary link using another
word containing those same syllables. For example, if you had to link together
Virginia and Washington, you might imagine your friend Virginia up to her
eyeballs in soapsuds, washing the dishes.