Try something right now. Do not think of a dog.
What happened? You thought of a dog. You did not see the letters D, O, G. You saw a dog, maybe the one that sleeps outside your gate. That small test shows the most important thing I teach. Your mind thinks in pictures.
Most of us study the opposite way. We read words, repeat words and write words again and again. But the eye is the strongest part of the memory. That is why you can recognise a face at a wedding and still forget the name two seconds later. We remember what we see far longer than what we only hear.
A test you can do in five minutes
In my book Memory Power, I give a list of twenty items. Pencil, sink, circus, track, star, bullet, dice, hourglass, baseball, fingers, goal post, eggs, flag, necklace, paycheck, car, magazine, soldier, golf clubs and shotgun.
The rules are strict. Go through the list only once. Spend five to seven seconds on each item. Do not write anything while you read. Then close the book and write what you remember, in the same order.
Most people manage three to five items. If you got six or more, that is good. More than ten is definitely above average.
Now give every item a reason
Here is the secret. Each item on that list can be tied to its own number, and the tie has a reason.
- One is a pencil, because the number one looks like a pencil.
- Two is a sink, because a sink has two knobs, hot and cold.
- Three is a circus, because a circus has three rings.
- Four is a track, because a track has four lanes.
- Five is a star, because a star has five points.
- Seven is dice, because opposite sides of a dice always add up to seven.
- Eight is an hourglass, because the number eight has that shape.
- Ten is fingers, and twelve is eggs, because a dozen is twelve.
Once a number has a reason to go with its object, it is no longer a random list. It is a set of small facts you already know. The book carries the same reasoning right up to number twenty.
Do not just read it, see it
Reading the reasons is not enough. You must make the picture in your head, and you must make it big. Huge dice, as tall as a door. Twelve eggs on the floor and you are breaking them one by one. A star with five sharp points. Ten fingers holding a ten rupee note.
The bigger and sillier the picture, the better. A small, polite picture is easy to lose. A giant one stays.
After this round, write the list again. In my experience most people get fifteen or more the second time, and many get all twenty. The list did not change. You did not become a genius in four minutes. You only stopped asking your mind to hold words, and started giving it pictures.
Where this method stops
I must be honest about the limit. This works only when the number and the object have something in common. If I give you a mountain as number one, ice as number two and a bike as number four, there is nothing to connect them to their numbers. Basic association will not work there. For those lists you need the next level, which is the story method.
But do not skip this step. Basic association is the first rung of memory training, and every later method stands on it.
Try it tonight
Take the five things you must carry to school or college tomorrow. Give number one to the first, number two to the second, and so on. Find a reason for each pair, even a silly one. Then see each picture, large and clear, and say the numbers once in your head.
Tomorrow morning, count from one to five. You will be surprised how little effort it takes.
This is one idea from my book Memory Power.
