Page 86 - Use Your Memory

USE YOUR MEMORY
members of your family or with friends. Ask them to make up a list
of any ten items and to read the list to you with about a five- to
ten-second pause between each item. The instant they have given
you the item to be memorised, make the most wild, colourful,
exaggerated associations possible, projecting images onto your
internal screen, and thus consolidating them as you progress. You
(and they) will be amazed at the ease with which you can remem-
ber the items, and it is most impressive when you are able to repeat
them in reverse and random order.
Don't worry about confusing previous lists of items with new
ones. As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, this particular
Peg System can be compared to coat hangers - you simply remove
one coat (association) and replace it with another.
In the next chapter I shall introduce a second system based on
the numbers 1 to 10: the Number-Rhyme System. These two
systems can then be combined to enable you to remember twenty
items with as much facility as you have just remembered ten. In
subsequent chapters more sophisticated systems will be intro-
duced to allow you to store lists of items stretching into the
thousands. These systems are recommended for long-term
memory, the things you wish to retain over a long period of time.
The Number-Shape System you have just learned and the
Number-Rhyme System you are about to learn are recommended
for your short-term memory purposes - those items you wish to
remember for only a few hours.
Give yourself about a day to become skilled in using the tech-
niques you have learned so far before moving to the next chapter.

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