Chapter 98 Chapter 6 Effective Laws for Strengthening Memory

Edison, the king of invention, once discovered that his 27 assistant researchers commuted to and from Menlo Park, New Jersey every day, which was a fixed route from his electric light factory to the main laboratory.They walked continuously for 6 months.Interestingly, there is a cherry tree growing beside this road.At one point, when he asked the employees if they had seen it, none of the 27 noticed the tree. For this reason, Edison, who was full of enthusiasm and vitality, lamented: "What the ordinary man's mind notices is less than one-thousandth of what his eyes see. Our power of observation—the real power of observation—is so poor To an unbelievable degree."

Try it out, introduce an average person to two or three of your friends.I'm sure he won't be able to remember the names of any of them in two minutes.Why is this so?For he had not paid sufficient attention to them in the first place, nor had he observed them carefully and accurately.He will likely excuse this result by saying that he has a bad memory.No, it's not a memory problem, but his poor observation skills.In real life, you shouldn't blame the camera for not capturing the foggy scenes, only your head for not capturing those rather blurry and hazy scenes in the rain. Joseph Pulitzer, who founded the New York World, wrote the same two words on the desks of every employee in his editorial department:

"Correct ← Correct ← Correct." It's exactly what we need in everything we do across industries.First of all, you must hear the correct name of the other party clearly, and you must make it clear.If you are not sure, you can ask him to repeat it, or even ask him how the strokes are written.Not only will he not be impatient with your carefulness, but he will also be flattered that you seem to be so interested in his name.It is precisely because you have focused on his name that you can firmly remember his name.Through this process you have acquired a clear and correct impression of your subject.

Why did Lincoln read aloud——Lincoln went to a very poor country school when he was a child. Even the floor of this school was made of broken wood, and the windows of the classroom were not equipped with glass. Post on torn oil-stained paper.There is only one textbook in the class, and the teacher reads it aloud with it.The students followed the teacher to read the text, and everyone read aloud in unison, so there was a constant roar in the classroom, and people living nearby even jokingly called this school "Long Tongue School". It was in this "Long Tongue School" that Lincoln developed a lifelong habit of reading aloud everything he wanted to remember.He explained this as follows: "When I read aloud, there are two feelings: first, I seem to see what I read; second, I seem to hear what I read, so I Just keep them in mind.”

Lincoln had a pretty good memory.He once said: "My attention is like a piece of steel. It is difficult to engrave on ordinary things, but once engraved, I can't erase them." The two feelings he mentioned above are his way of engraving on the steel plate of attention.You can do the same. The ideal way is not only to see and hear the object you want to remember, but also to touch it, smell it and taste it. However, the most important thing is to see it.We humans are visually minded creatures, and the impressions our eyes make can last forever.We can often remember someone's face even if we can't remember their name.The nerves leading from the eyes to the brain are 25 times larger than the nerves leading from the ears to the brain.There is a Chinese proverb that goes: "Seeing once is worth hearing a hundred times."

Write down names, phone numbers, and an outline of your presentation that you want to remember.Flip through it often, and close your eyes.Imagine them floating in front of you, and as you do, it's as if each word is written in shiny letters. How Mark Twain Learned to Speak Without Notes - Mark Twain was inseparable from notes and abstracts in the early years of his speaking career.Later he found that using his visual memory worked so well that he was able to put notes and summaries aside.He once recounted this transition in Harper's Magazine, transcribed as follows: "Dates are difficult to remember because they are made up of numbers: numbers are too dull in appearance to attract attention. They cannot be organized into graphics and therefore do not attract visual attention. Pictures do. Dates read really well, especially if they're designs that you design yourself, which is great, and it's important to design your own drawings. I've had that experience. 30 years ago, I had to recite a speech every night for Therefore, I must remind myself with a note, lest I confuse myself. The note has written the beginnings of some sentences, a total of 11 sentences, which are roughly in the following form:

"In that area, the weather... "The custom in those days was... "But Californians have never heard of . . . "There are 11 sentences. They are the beginning of every paragraph in this speech. It helps me not to miss any of them. But when I put them on paper, they all look the same because they are not to form any figure. I just keep them in my mind, but I have never been able to remember their order with certainty. For this reason, I have to hold the paper at all times and glance at it from time to time. Once, I did not know which Where did they go. You can never imagine the level of panic I felt that night. I have since invented other methods of protection. I have mentally memorized the first words of all the sentences in order : In, that, but wait, when I came to the stage the next night, I wrote these ten words on my ten nails with ink, but it didn't work. I still can only remember them temporarily, and forget them immediately Because on the stage I can't be sure which finger I have used and which finger I should use for the next sentence. Of course I can't just lick the ink off the nail after using that finger, so that Doing it helps me, but it makes the audience curious. In fact, even though I don't do it, the audience is already quite curious about me. I find that they seem to be more interested in my nails than in my speeches. Interested. Even after the talk, one or two people came up to me and asked if there was something wrong with my hand.

"From then on, I suddenly had the idea of ​​drawing pictures. Since then, all my troubles have disappeared. Within two minutes, I drew 6 pictures with a pen, and used them instead of coloring with my fingers as a reminder Sentence work, this change works great. As soon as I'm done, I put the drawings aside, because with these vivid images, I can see them popping into my head anytime I close my eyes. This story is from 25 years ago. Interestingly, even though what was said in that speech has faded from my mind, the pictures are still etched in my mind. Those pictures recall what was said at that time."

Once, when I was giving a lecture on memory, I wanted to make extensive use of the material in this chapter.So I used pictures to remember the main points.I pictured the following scene: Roosevelt was sitting in his room reading a history book while the crowd shouted something in the street below his window; I also saw Lincoln sitting in a chair reading aloud from the newspaper; I also imagined Mark Twain licking his nails in front of the audience. How can I remember the order of these pictures?In the order of one, two, three, four?No, it's too hard to do this, I turned the sequence of numbers into pictures, and then connected the pictures of the numbers with the pictures of the main points.The explanation is as follows: One (One) sounds a bit like the sound of running (Run), so I use a running horse to represent One.In this way, I imagined Roosevelt in his room, reading a book while sitting on a horse; Two (Two), I also chose a Zoo (zoo) with a sound close to it.I imagined the cherry tree that Edison drew the attention of the employees as growing next to the iron cage that kept the big bear in the zoo; Three (Three) I imagined something that sounded like it—Tree ( trees).I imagine Lincoln lying on the top of a tree, reading aloud to his companion; Four (Four), I imagine a picture that sounds very similar to it - Door (door).Mark Twain stands in front of an open door with his back against a pillar, licking the ink off his fingernails while addressing an audience.

I am well aware that many people reading this will think this approach borders on absurdity.In fact it is.Still, it works.The truth is that the absurd and the weird are fairly easy to remember.Even if I memorize the sequence of my bullet points numerically, I can quickly forget them.But in the way I have just described, it is almost impossible to forget it.When I want to remember the third point, I just have to ask myself: what is on the tree.Immediately I saw Lincoln. For convenience, I have turned the numbers from 1 to 20 into pictures, choosing pictures that sound similar to the numbers.As long as you spend half an hour memorizing these picture numbers, you can remember these 20 things at any time.As long as you repeat them in the correct order, you are free to say which is the eighth item in your memory, which is the fourteenth, which is the third, and so on.

Below are the figures after the diagram.Try it, you will find that such memory is extremely interesting. (1) Run (run) - imagine a horse running. (2) Zoo (zoo) - imagine a bear cage in a zoo. (3) Tree (trees) - imagine the things you remember as lying on a big tree. (4) Door (door) - or Wild pig (wild boar).Pick any object or animal that sounds like Four. (5) Bee Hive (hive). (6) Sick - Imagine a nurse with a red cross. (7) Heaven (Heaven) - the streets are covered with gold, and the angels are playing the harp. (8) Gate (gate). (9) Wine (wine) - the wine bottle is overturned on the table, and the wine in the bottle flows out and drips under the table.Add action to the drawing.This can deepen the impression. (10) Den (beast den) - deep in the jungle rock cave is the cave of the beast. (11) A football team consisting of 11 people is sprinting wildly on the field.I imagined them passing the eleventh thing I wanted to remember in mid-air. (12) Shelf (shelf) - imagine someone is putting something on the table. (13) Hurting - imagine you see blood spurting from a wound, turning item 13 red. (14) Courting - A couple sitting on something and making out. (15) Lifting - A strong man is holding something high above his head. (16) Licking - A violent brawl. (17) Fermatation - A housewife is kneading dough and kneading item 17 into the dough. (18) Waiting (waiting) - A woman is standing on a fork in the forest, waiting for someone. (19) Pining - A woman is crying.Picture her tears falling on the 19th object you wish to remember. (20) Horn of Plenty - A goat's horn filled with flowers, fruit and corn. If you want to give it a try, first take a few minutes to memorize these picture numbers.If you want, you can design your own graphics. If it is 10, you can think of it as Sirl (chick), or Fountain Pen (fountain pen), or Hen (hen), or anything that sounds like Ten ( 10) Stuff.Suppose the 10 things you wish to remember are windmills.You can imagine the hen sitting on the windmill, or imagine the windmill pumping up the ink and filling the pens.Then, when you ask yourself what the tenth item is, don't think of 10 at all, just ask yourself: where does the hen sit.You might think this doesn't work, but it's worth a try.Before long, you will surprise others, because they think you have a very unusual memory.At this point, you will find that this is one of the most interesting things.