You forgot - again?
THE INDIAN examination system in schools and colleges focuses on the ability to remember, so it really is surprising how so many of us muddle through life like absent-minded buffaloes more intent on chewing the cud than anything else. Then one day we make the worst mistake in our miserable lives, something from which we live ever after in servile subordination, trampled upon by everybody and their sisters. Yes! We forget our anniversary or, if happily unmarried, the birthday of our special friend's mother's cat.
I took as much as I could till I met this wonderful person with a beatific smile on his face and since people of that ilk come few and far between; I bravely accosted him and demanded of him the secret of his joyous beatitude. He told me that he had just remembered his wife's mother's birthday and having wished her, had been allowed a day off from the daily grind of all the housework and shopping, and was at that time on his way to a carefree and stress-free day as a pneumatic drill operator. I was amazed. I am so forgetful that I often forget I have a mother-in-law (and hence have the same beatific smile on my face - but it never lasts) so his extraordinary feat impressed me no end.
Being a resourceful and fiendishly clever person I immediately bought my pneumatic driller's freedom so that he could share his awesome secret with my fellows in the office so that there could be the same sunshine in their eyes as there was in his.
He began by telling us about mnemonics. He did not call them that but we got the drift when he mentioned the little statement about "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" which, while being very interesting and insightful about the culinary habits of my new friend's mother, also served to remind us of the order of the planets in our solar system from Mercury to Pluto. The basic principle of mnemonics is to use as many of the best functions of your brain as possible to store information. And it often works!
Our education often forces us to learn things by rote while our brains are supposed to code and interpret complex stimuli such as images, colours, structures, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, positions, emotions and language and if you look at it you will find that we have no difficulty in doing this. Although the information we have to remember is almost always presented in language, there are so many other ways by which we can actually remember them. By reducing language and numbers (and your special friend's mother's cat's birthday) to image form, one can reliably code both information and its structure. Recalling this later (at the right time) becomes a cinch!
It is quite easy if you know how. The first step is to use positive, pleasant images. The brain often blocks out unpleasant ones so leave out the mother-in-law vision. The second is to use vivid, colourful, sense-laden images - these are easier to remember than drab ones (special friend's mother). Try and utilise all your senses to store information or to conjure an image. Mnemonics can potentially contain sounds, smells, tastes, touch, movements and feelings as well as pictures so think of smell...umm... no suggestions here but you get the idea right? By giving your image all three dimensions, the thought becomes more vivid. I later found that exaggerating the size of some significant parts of the mind-picture helped since it injected humour and I rather like that part of life.
For effective mnemonics you need imagination, association and location. Using these together, you can use then to create great mnemonics. The first is important and you need to have oodles of it. Association involves linking something you need to remember to a way of remembering it. Such as placement, collision, joining, covering, twisting or colour typing them or associating it with something like a traffic sign that you recall to mind instantly. To differentiate mnemonics, I usually tag on a different country so that there is a clear and distinct image of distance. I must add that while there are some universal mnemonics, the best ones are the ones one makes up oneself.
Try it and see, but if this is not enough, I will get back to you with another way to remember where you kept that important file or that important document you had to give to the boss. After all, being the chief `rememberer' in the company can only give your career a shot in the arm! The cry on everybody's lips should be "Ask {lt}your name{gt}, he knows where everything is!" Talk about being indispensable.
ABHIMANYU ACHARYA
abhimanyu@india.com
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