watch tHe skies

This last week or so I’ve been reading Tony Buzan’s “Use your memory”. Buzan, creator of the World Memory Championships, speed reading competitions and much, much more, shares many techniques on how to make best use of our brain’s amazing ability to remember stuff.

At a basic level, the theory for improving your memory is based on Gardner’s Theory of multiple intelligences. That is, to engage your imagination in the creation of a list. The more vivid the imagination, the easier it is to recall. The book gives a lovely example in the first couple of chapters which is so impressive, that to this date I can still remember a list of 10 shopping items in the book that are completely unremarkable. And that is without using any of the systems that are given later on.

This isn’t really a book to read cover to cover. This is because it is essentially a toolbox of memory techniques and exercises to move on to progressively as you master each one. The techniques are very powerful. After about a quarter of the book you will find remembering a list of 100 items fairly easy, and by halfway through the book a thousand is achievable. Moving on from that you can learn some cool tricks to memorise a pack of cards and pull off quite astounding feats of memory that could earn you good money in wagers at a BBQ this summer.

Personally I am still playing with some of the more basic systems. I have memorised an alphabetised peg list that allows me to remember 52 items in order. My challenge is to find time to use a 52 item peg list… easier if I was revising for an exam. However the practice of involving my imagination in the rememberification process is use… the ability to create vivid visualisations is also very handy in developing powerful self-motivation. For example. Imagine what you would like your life to be like in a year’s time. Notice the images, make movies of what you will be doing, hear the sounds, voices, the smells, and the feelings that you will have, mix them all together as your personal movie of you in a year, and you may begin to notice a magnetic attraction towards that you. Fantasise this often and with increasing detail, and you will soon find yourself unconsciously working towards that goal… very cool.

So aside from providing lots of tools, Buzan talks about memory, and the fact that he believes that memory IS who we are. This, he suggests is the reason behind dementia… people’s personalities change when they lose their memory because it is the memories that form personality. He also suggests that memory, like muscle, atrophies if not used, and that using these tools and techniques keeps your mind fit, and muscly, maximising your chance to make it to old age without thinking that you are Nelson.

So many reasons to invest in this book, and none against. However I didn’t memorise a list of cons so perhaps I’m being selective.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 at 7:53 am and is filed under books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.