I'm reminded of Stephen Covey and his '7 Habits...' because of Derren Brown. I'm reminded of Derren Brown because a friend rang up this week and asked if I would like to go see him live. Which reminds me of the very first time that I saw Brown, which was this clip which blew me away. So there I was, remembering (there's a theme starting to develop here) Derren Brown, and I thought of his book, 'Tricks of the Mind' which I cannot recommend highly enough. I started reading it expecting an autobiography of sorts and finished it uplifted, mentally exhilarated and empowered with more brain improvement techniques than I did after reading '7 Habits...'!
Brown elaborate tricks are heavily reliant on memory and he discusses several techniques. The simplest is the 'Loci' method. I use this for lists such as shopping lists, it works a treat;
1) Create a mental map of your home, and move from room to room in a logical order, paying attention to things that stand out, fireplaces, sofas etc.
2) Form a visual image of the items that you need to remember in the different rooms, if you can make them larger than life and either moving or funny, so much the better.
3) Take a minute to impress the memory into your head, and then hey presto, you should remember those items for as long as you wish to by taking a 'mental stroll' through your house and asking yourself, 'what was on the sofa, or in the oven or on the creaky step' etc!
Here is a little game to reinforce the idea.
I've expanded my 'mental map' to go from the train station home, past several shops, houses and cars that stand out, right through to all the rooms in my house and various bits of the garden. I haven't counted, but I guess I could probably remember a list of 50 items if I ever had the inclination (which is highly unlikely!). There is no limit, and if you start making up locations, you will have the beginnings of a memory palace like Hannibal Lecter in the book Hannibal ( I believe that it was edited out of the film)!
They have memory championships, and those people have trained their minds to remember thousands of things. Here is a recent champion Andi Bell demonstrating the Loci technique with a slight twist.
Finally, I thought I'd leave you with a couple of Derren Brown video's to amuse yourselves!
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