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Remembering 127

An underlying idea of all four memory principles is that to
retain things, you need to connect with them to ensure that they
stick in the memory. Another way of looking at this is to think of
your brain as if it were your garden, with a rather unusual clothes
line to which various items have been pegged. This line is strange
because the things that are attached to it are not your clothes, but
all the bits and pieces you want to remember. So, there are lists,
bills, photographs, and jottings pegged to it.
A common way of “pegging” a sequence of words or ideas so
that you will remember them is an acronym, or word constructed
out of the first letters of various other words. Joyce Taylor, manag-
ing director of Discovery Networks Europe, has developed one—
SPIRIT—with her staff to sum up their corporate values:

Simple
Passionate
Inspiring
Refreshing
Involving
Trustworthy

The acronym is used regularly by Taylor and her staff and she has
written it in the personal work book she carries around with her. It
is useful because each of the words has a clear meaning and
together they serve as a regular useful reminder of the sort of busi-
ness that Discovery wants to be.
Acronyms work best when they act as a peg for key elements
of a belief system or, as British accelerated learning expert Colin
Rose has shown, when they help you to remember the ordering of
an important process. Rose applies the acronym MASTER to the
process of how to learn:

Mind relaxed
Acquire the facts
Search out the meaning
Trigger the memory
Exhibit what you know
Reflect on the process