How to Develop a Perfect Memory (13 page)

Prune

Ecuador

The Equalizer
(Edward Woodward/TV series)

Colombia

Lieutenant Colombo (TV series)

Paraguay

Parachute

Step 4:

Once you have thought up your own key images, walk around your mental

journey, placing them at each stage. Don't forget that Paraguay is the odd one out: it may come at the end of your journey, but it's really in the middle (having landed by parachute, of course).

Step 5:

Look at the capitals of each country. Think of the first image that comes into your head and combine it with your key image. For example, the capital of Venezuela is Caracas and my key image is venison. I imagine a deer with a cracker in its mouth at the first stage of my journey. Or Colombia; the capital is Bogota and my key image is Colombo. I picture the lieutenant bogged down in tar at the twelfth stage of my journey.

Your own images will be far more useful than mine. Once you have finished, you merely have to review your journey every time you want to know the countries of South America, their capitals, and approximate location.

The European Community

Try doing exactly the same for the European Community. I expect that you know much more of the information than you did for South America, but it's a good way to plug any embarrassing gaps you may have in your knowledge.

COUNTRY

CAPITAL

COUNTRY

CAPITAL

Belgium

Brussels

Italy

Rome

Denmark

Copenhagen

Luxembourg

Luxembourg

France

Paris

Netherlands

Amsterdam

Germany

Berlin

Portugal

Lisbon

Greece

Athens

Spain

Madrid

Ireland

Dublin

United Kingdom London

Choose a journey with twelve stages, starting with Ireland. Working clockwise around Europe, the order of the countries is as follows: Ireland, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium,

Netherlands and finally Luxembourg, the smallest and in the middle.

Even if you know all the countries, capitals, and their whereabouts, a journey helps you to remember exactly who is and isn't a member of the European Community. For those countries that do pose a problem, apply the same

principles as before, using word association.

If you want to memorize information about other groups of countries, Africa for example, or the ever-burgeoning number of independent republics in the former Soviet Union, use more journeys. Alternatively, you can use an image of a department store. Assign each country a key image and then allocate them to a floor. Depending on the number of countries you want to remember, your department store could have a basement, ground floor, first, second, and third floors, each one covering two or three countries.

If possible, try to reflect the countries' geographical positions in the layout of your mental building: the further north they are, the higher their floor. It's not always easy, and you will sometimes have to settle for a rough

approximation. Some countries might even end up being represented as

stairways or fire exits!

HOW TO REMEMBER POPULATIONS

It's very easy to add further information to your images of countries and capitals. For example, if you want to remember that the population of Venezuela is 20 million, you just have to convert 20 into a person and incorporate them into your image.

Using the DOMINIC SYSTEM, 20 turns into Bill Oddie (2 = B; 0 = O). I

imagine Bill Oddie pulling a cracker with a deer. Unless the populations are very small, always expect your number image to refer to millions.

To remember that the population of the United States is approximately 249

million, I split the number down in to 24 - 9. Using the DOMINIC SYSTEM, 24 becomes the weatherman Bernard Davey (2 = B; 4
=
D). Using number-shapes, 9 becomes a balloon. I imagine Bernard Davey standing rather

sheepishly in the corner of the
Cheers
bar, holding a balloon. (Perhaps it's a weather balloon.)

THE WORLD'S LONGEST RIVERS

Have a go at learning the following twenty rivers. Memorize their length by converting the information into complex images. Using the DOMINIC

SYSTEM, break the numbers down into pairs of digits, ascribing a character and an action to each.

RIVER

LENGTH (miles)

RIVER

LENGTH

Nile

4,160

Missouri

2,540

Amazon

4,000

Parana

2,485

Chang Jiang

3,964

Mississippi

2,340

Ob-Irtysh

3,362

Murray-Darling

2,310

Huang

2,903

Volga

2,194

Lena

2,734

Purus

2,100

Congo

2,718

Purus

2,100

Mackenzie

2,635

Madeira

2,013

Mekong

2,600

Sao Francisco

1,988

Niger

2,590

Yukon

1,979

Yenisey

2,543

Rio de Grande

1,900

To remember that the Nile is 4,160 miles, I imagine David Attenborough (4 =

D; 1 = A) running along the banks of the river. (Running is the action of Steve Ovett. 6 = S; 0 = O.)

If I want to remember more information, I just add the relevant images to my scene. To remind myself that the Nile is in Africa, I might introduce a bit of big game, a lion or two perhaps. (David Attenborough is used to them, after all.) And to remember that it flows out into the Mediterranean, he could have a deckchair and lilo tucked under one arm. He is rushing to the beach for a spot of sunbathing.

THE TEN LONGEST RIVERS IN THE UK

RIVER

LENGTH (miles)

RIVER

LENGTH

Severn

220

Wye

135

Thames

215

Tay

117

Trent

185

Nene

100

Aire

161

Clyde

143

Spey

98

Numerical data of any kind can always be broken down into constituent parts and then converted into memorable images. If I want to remember that the River Thames is 215 miles long, I imagine Bryan Adams (2 = B; 1
=
A) at the Thames flood barrier, closing a huge iron curtain to stop the water from drowning London. (Using number-shapes, 5 = curtain hook.)

Try learning the nine other rivers. There is no limit to the information you can memorize if you use a little imagination.

14

HOW TO

REMEMBER

HISTORY

CONCEPTS OF TIME

What's going on in our minds when we think of historical dates? How do we know immediately, for example, that the year 1947 is later in time than 1923? I am certain that it's not just because we've learnt to count. Time is an abstract notion, and in order to perceive it, we try to give it some form of spatial representation.

How do you 'see' years? I have asked people this question many times.

Initial replies range from 'I don't quite get your drift' to 'How can you possibly see a year?' After further questioning, most of my subjects admit to having some form of mental landscape, some way of perceiving years in chronological order. Here are a few of their descriptions:

Mr A: I suppose I see this century as a straight line running from left to right.

On my far left is the year 1901. Directly in front of me is the year I was born.

To my right is this year, and at the end of the line, to my far right, is the year 2000. The nineteenth century runs in just the same way, only it is one line below. All previous centuries are progressively lower down the 'page'. The year 1 AD is a dot on the ground to my left. A thick black line separates AD

from BC. All BC dates are below ground level, deep underground.

Mrs B: I am standing on a wide step, which represents the current year. In front of me are more steps going forward, up to and ending with the year 2000. Behind me are steps of a similar gradient down to the year 1900.

Below these there are steeper steps representing previous centuries. At the foot of them all is the year 1AD. Beyond that, there is a sheer drop.

Mr C: I see the present century in terms of a graph; it's like the side of a mountain. It begins down to the left of me with the year 1900, and peaks slightly to the right with the year 2000. Beyond this, it's a misty plateau.

Although it's always rising left to right, the gradient varies at different decades. There is a significant change at my birth year; it levels out

dramatically for a moment. There are other subtle twists and turns, giving it an almost three-dimensional effect. In the forties, I can see puffs of smoke, commotion. The sixties I see as bright colours. The eighties is silver and fast. If I look a long way to my left, to the west, I can see the gradient continuing down through the centuries to 1AD. That area is rather like the foothills of a mountain. What lies beyond BC is unclear.

Having read these answers, ask yourself the question again: How do you

perceive time? Perhaps you have some sort of symbolic landscape for the

months of the year. I have talked to people who see individual months as part of a rising mountain, starting in the lowlands of January and ascending to the summit of December. Others see months in terms of a clockface: January is 1

o'clock, July is 7 o'clock, and December is midnight.

And what about the week? I talked to one person who visualized each day

in terms of its position in his weekly planner. Someone else saw Monday as the beginning of a conveyor belt. Each day it moved forward to the weekend,

whereupon it whipped round underneath to deposit them back at Monday. My own week looks like a playground slide. At the top is a Sunday, always the first day of my week. I begin slipping down slowly through Monday and Tuesday, speeding up to Friday before coming to rest at Saturday. I then walk back round again and climb up the steps to Sunday.

I hope that you are now beginning to understand your own perceptions of

time. Weeks, months, years, this century, past centuries — it would seem that our minds desperately need some sort of symbolic landscape, some spatial image, to help with the conversion of an abstract notion like that of time into something more intelligible and relevant.

A simple journey is a good method for learning historical dates because it satisfies this desire for shape and form; it gives substance and structure to the mental landscapes we have already partially created for the past.

HOW TO USE A JOURNEY TO REMEMBER

DATES

You are presented with the following list of twenty battles and wars and told to remember the whole lot in chronological order.

TWENTY BATTLES AND WARS

1066

Battle of Hastings

1314

Battle of Bannockburn

1415

Battle of Agincourt

1455

Wars of the Roses begins ( ends

1588

Spanish Armada defeated

1642

English Civil War begins (ends

1805

Battle of Trafalgar

1815

Battle of Waterloo

1853

Crimean War begins (ends 1856)

1899

Second Boer War begins (ends

1914

World War I begins (ends 1918)

1916

Battle of Somme

1939

World War II begins (ends 1945)

1940

Battle of Britain

1945

Bomb dropped on Hiroshima

1950

Korean War (ends 1953)

1956

Suez Crisis

1962

Cuban Crisis

1982

Falklands War

1991

Gulf War

Choose a journey with twenty stages. Personally, I would base mine in

Hastings, a town I know well and a particularly appropriate place to begin. My route would weave its way through the various narrow streets of the Old Town, using different shops, houses, inns, and churches as stages. I would pass the tall sheds used by the fishermen for hanging their nets, walk along the beach, stop at a restaurant, pop into the theatre and finish up on Hastings Pier.

Whenever you are choosing a journey to learn information, try to ensure that it has some physical relevance to what you are memorizing. Not everyone

knows the layout of Hastings, but there are many ways in which to incorporate the theme of war. Begin at a gun shop in the high street, or a local castle.

Run through the list, thinking of a key image for each conflict, and then place them at each stage. As ever, the first associations are the most important.

They could be phonetic approximations, or something more obvious. These are mine:

EVENT

KEY IMAGE

Arrow

Burning barn

Gin bottle

Rose

Sinking

Sieve

Nelson's

Train station

Prison cell

Wild boar

Muddy trench

Poppy

Churchill

Spitfire

Explosion

Apple core

Sewers

Pigs