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

the number-shape system
T
he modern world is full of numbers intended to make our lives easier. We
have to remember PIN numbers for our bank cards, security access codes for the
buildings in which we work, and parental censoring numbers for our televisions
– let alone the phone numbers of our friends, family, colleagues and clients. If
we leave our personal organizer or address book at home – or worse still, lose it
– we feel totally lost. Time to reinstate the only personal organizer that we can
never lose: our brain.
The problem with memorizing numbers is that to those of us without a great
passion for arithmetic they provide little inspiration. They are static, inexpressive
and impersonal. On the face of it, they relate only to the logical part of our
brains. To make them more memorable, we have to give them appeal for our
creative side too.
One of the most popular methods is the number-shape system in which each
number between and including 0 and 9 is turned into a particular item that relates

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to the numeral’s written shape. For example, 0 (zero) may be seen as a golden
ring or a football; 1 may be a candle or a pencil; 2, a swan or a snake; 3, lips in
profile or a pair of handcuffs; 4, the sail of a yacht, or a flag; 5, a seahorse or a
hook; 6, an elephant’s trunk or a golf club; 7 a boomerang or a diving board; 8, a
snowman or an hourglass; and 9, a balloon on a ribbon. You can choose your
own associations – try to make them relevant to your life by including items
from your favourite hobbies and so on. Once the associations are made, we can
create stories by which to remember sequences of numbers. For example, if your
bank-card PIN number is 4291, you might imagine that to get to your bank you
have to sail (4) down a river, passing a swan (2), which holds in its beak a ribbon
on the end of which is a balloon (9). Tied to the other end of the ribbon is a
pencil (1) – you take it to sign your name.
For longer sequences, try using the journey method (see pp.
102–7
)
combined with the number-shape system. So, if the first three numbers in a
sequence of 12 are 8, 0 and 3 and our journey is one along a golf course, we
might imagine a snowman at the first tee (stage one in the journey); a golden
ring glistening at the bottom of the tin cup of the first hole (stage two); a golfer
trying to swing a club while wearing handcuffs at the next tee (stage three); and
so on.