The power of your brain... yes - YOUR brain...

I’m sure we’ve all been in the situation where we’ve become so befuddled and forgetful that we’ve convinced ourselves that we’ve contracted a rare brain disorder which is robbing us of our faculties while we’re still in the prime of life. Or is it just me? Can’t remember something obvious and start regretting all those beef burgers in my youth. Well, obviously I regret them anyway but not usually because they may or may not have contained brain sapping critters. Anyway, before I lose my train of thought, people fall into two categories – those who think they have good memories and those who… what was I saying?

Yes, obviously there are cheap jokes to be made amidst the medico-paranoia of the age. But the point still stands. What is it about memory that we both worry about and seek to do nothing to improve? Can we do anything to improve it? How can you learn to remember?

Fortunately the answer is fairly simple but it isn’t the answer people tend to want. Memory is not a gift, memory is a skill. Just as we all have the ability to press a piano key, only those who have talent and who practice all the hours they can are able to press those keys in anything like a passable order. Some people are born with better memories than others. But that is no excuse for the rest of us. Take me, for example. I forget things all the time. I’m in a limbo state at the moment. I’ve read a few books and I know some of the basic secrets of good memory. I’m just too lazy to practice them.

A book I’d recommend is that by several time World Memory Champion Dominic O’Brien. He’s written several – pick the one that looks nicest. They’re all doubtless basically the same. I read the book one afternoon and one particular technique stuck in my mind to the extent that I was able to impress a couple of cyber-chums with the successful recollection of twenty random words a day or two later. It would’ve been easy to cheat but it was even easier not to. The method used was the story technique. It goes something like this – you make up a story from the words you’re given. That’s it. Imagination is used to create a mental sketch that is shaped by the words you are trying to remember. You mustn’t become over elaborate or you’ll lose the details beneath the intricate picture. You should also have a sense of moving through the scene to ensure that the words are in the correct order. This also allows you to recover any words that you miss because you can reverse your steps and trace your way back to the missing item. Best of all you can do it in real time. After all, the first thing that comes into your head is by definition the first thing you thought of. It was the strongest link to that particular word and therefore it would be silly not to use it.

That is, essentially, just a trick though. Not in the sense of not being real but in the sense that it isn’t a practical benefit. How many times do you face memorising a list of words in your every day life? Pah! Ignore the cynics – this is a valuable exercise in tagging information. The theory is that memory requires both sides of the brain to work together. The analytical side and the creative side. Exercises like the above train you to use little bits of imagination to record data and bigger bits of imagination to hold that data together. Like a coat hanger holding your jumper and a wardrobe holding the coat hanger.

Another technique is for remembering numbers. It requires huge amounts of practice to get it to work instinctively but once learned it can transform how you cope with numerical information. What is a number 4? It’s a 4. But it can also be a D if you convert numbers to letters. So what is a 42? It’s a 42. It can also be a DB. Letters are so much easier to play with than numbers. DB can be Danny Baker. Let’s say you are given someone’s extension number. 4235 isn’t terribly easy to remember. But 4235 becomes DBCE which is Danny Baker and Chris Evans. So if you imagine Coggins from accounts (whose number is 4235) sharing his little office with those two noisy gentlemen not only will you get a cruel chuckle from the tormenting of the number crunching dullard but you’ll also remember his number. This is just a simple example. In the above case it would be easier to remember the number than go through all the hassle of converting it into celebs. But suppose you have images for every number from 0 to 99 and can convert them instantly. Because it’s practice as well as technique. It’s like learning your own memory language. Once you are fluent there is no limit to what you can do.

Here’s a little something that might help you when you’re out shopping. Imagine you have a list of ten items you need to get. You could make a list – by all means make a list – but supposing you’re on the bus and you don’t have pen and paper to hand. Try the INLIBTD soon to be patented TARDIS method.

Totally

Accurate

Recall

During

Important

Shopping

Here is your list of random shopping. A pair of slippers, a cuddly toy, a visit to the cash point, a tin of dog food, biscuits, some crayons, breakfast cereal, jam, a Daily Mail and some pants. Using the TARDIS method we assign one item per Doctor and create a little mental montage. A mentage if you prefer. So we have the first Doctor putting his elderly feet up wearing a pair of slippers. The second Doctor is up against the Yeti in the Underground except that a teddy bear is playing the part of Yeti number one. The third Doctor gets money from an ATM using his ever present sonic screw driver. The fourth Doctor errs by giving K9 some real dog food, the fifth Doctor’s coat is the same colour as a Rich Tea biccie and so on. Taking a few minutes which would otherwise be spent starring out of the window or looking at the person sat further down the bus and trying to work out if they are male or female and, in addition, if they are aware that they look like Tommy Vance. In those few minutes you can create your scenes. If you have a longer list then you could assign one Doctor per store and have that Time Lord’s companions acting out the individual items. Once you have a memory frame work, you can build on it and build on it. Imagination plus logic. That’s the key.

So there we have a few thoughts on the subject of memory. I have these phases of being interested in it and the brain in general. Whether it be watching Derren Brown or deciding to do something productive (the former usually lasts longer as it’s a 75 minute DVD) I sometimes go off on a mental bent. If I’ve helped in anyway, you will remember to say so won’t you?

B’ohh.

2nd February 2004