How to Remember Anything: The Proven Total Memory Retention System (19 page)

How did you do? Considering that this was the first time you ever even tried to do it, I’ll bet you did pretty well. After you are certain you know the Key Words for all 100 numbers (00-99), practice taking at least a twenty-digit number every day. Soon you will use two rooms to store forty-digit numbers. After you have filled the first room (ending with the floor), just think of your next room and start at the ceiling. Repeat the process of visualizing an object in each of the ten locations within the room. I usually demonstrate a forty-digit number.

A 100-digit number would fill five rooms. Because you will be using your rooms to store the objects, soon you will be able to mentally move around each room very rapidly. When doing the long number exercise, you don’t need to think of the locations as being numbered. Just start at the ceiling, then the back left corner, then the left wall, and so on. Soon, you will automatically visualize the ceiling, back left corner, and left wall, in sequence without much thought.

As you visualize objects in each of the locations within your rooms, include in your image everything in that area of the room. For example, if there is a TV in the corner of the room, then you should associate the Key Word (or whatever data you are storing) to the TV, not just to the corner itself.

I use the kitchen of a previous residence for my 30s room. My location 37 is not really the back right corner—it is the refrigerator that was located in the back right corner. When I associate any data with location 37, I do not associate it with the back right corner in my kitchen, I associate it with my refrigerator that was located there.

Every time you use the Cube system, it will be easier. You will never have been more aware of your rooms and the things you have in them than when you begin using the Cube system.

Every time you store a long-digit number, it will be easier because you will become more familiar with the 100 objects represented by the Key Words. Everyone thinks they are giving you a long-digit number to remember. Actually, they are giving you your own objects that you can place in your own rooms.

The nice part about taking a long-digit number is that there can be no surprises—not if you know all of the Key Words (00-99). There will be those who will try to trick you by giving you the same number twice. Relax! If you can see a net on the ceiling, you can see a net at any other location!

Nearly every time I demonstrate a long-digit number, which is usually forty digits, the audience will give me combinations like 01 followed by 10. They think that I will be confused, but you and I know that 01 (
s
ui
t
) looks nothing like 10 (
t
oe
s
)! After I have demonstrated a long number, I wait a few minutes and then recall the number backward.

When taking a long-digit number from others, you must always be in charge! Don’t let anyone rush you. Never take the next set of two digits without clearly visualizing the one you have just heard.

Occasionally, you will be asked to immediately take another long number. If this happens, don’t use the same room or rooms for the next demonstration. Why take the chance of seeing two objects in the same location? You can use the same room(s) as often as you wish, as long as it is not done immediately. I woud not try to store two long-digit numbers in the same room within several hours of each other.

I consider a long-digit number a mental exercise. It is not something I want to keep any longer than it takes to call it back to the person who gave it to me. It is temporary information, and I treat it that way by ignoring it after I have recalled it. The information will remain for several hours or days whether I want it to or not. Unless you plan to recite the number again, don’t try to remember it.

Long-term and short-term information are treated alike, but with one exception: short-term information is simply ignored immediately after it is used. Long-term information should be reviewed immediately after it is learned, then periodically with greater time between each review (the next day, one week, one month, six months, and so on).

Most students use my suggested 100 Key Words, but prefer to create their own visual images for each of them. Your own images will be much more real than any illustration I can give you in a book. If, for example, you use
c
a
r
for 74, surely you will visualize a different car than the one I see. Also, it is better to use a real car than a drawing of a car.

Step 7

THE TOPOGRAPH SYSTEM

The Topograph system has many uses. I first developed this concept when I
was creating my course on the human skeleton in 1976. With the Topograph system, students learn the names and locations of all 206 bones of the human skeleton in only ninety minutes! The Topograph system is used when you want to learn the names and locations of the parts within a whole. For example:

• Classroom seating charts

• Names of players by position on a team

• Street layouts of towns and cities

• Layout of a grocery store

• Location of notes on a musical instrument

• The bones within the body

• The anatomical names and locations

• The countries within a continent or region of the world

• The states within a nation

• The parts within an engine

• The parts within an engine part

• The rivers within a country

• The parts of any machine or equipment

• The instrument panel of a plane

GEOGRAPHY

The Topograph system is designed to be used when you want to know the physical parts of anything in relation to the whole unit. This is the system I use to teach geography. With this system, you can learn and remember the name and location of every country in the world in less than six hours.

This system is fast, fun, and easy! Above all, it is incredibly practical because it can be used in thousands of applications. As an example for this book, I have chosen geography and the region of Central America. Here is an outline map of the seven countries of Central America:

The first step is to change the name of each country to an audionym. Following are the audionyms I use for the countries of Central America.

COUNTRIES OF CENTRAL AMERICA

Please be certain you know these seven audionyms before continuing.

The next step is to see each audionym in the area of the country it represents. The physical relationship of the audionyms to one another provides an incredibly effective visual system for remembering the names, locations, and physical relationships of the countries they represent. Look at the audionyms in place on this outline map of Central America.

HOW TO REMEMBER THE NAMES AND LOCATIONS OF THE COUNTRIES
WITHOUT
A MAP

To remember the names of the countries of Central America without using a map, first see the following map with a line drawn from the northernmost country to the southeasternmost country, just like you would read the pages of a book. In this case, the northernmost country is Belize. Notice that the line generally follows a north-to-south and west-to-east course. I call this a sequence map. The map puts the countries into the following sequence: Belize; Guatemala; El Salvador; Honduras; Nicaragua; Costa Rica; and Panama.

To establish the known—what you will know about the region of Central America when you want to recall all the countries—start with the northernmost country, Belize. Use the Link system to connect the audionyms for all of the countries.

Imagine the
bells
with
guacamole
pouring out of them!

Imagine the
guacamole
with an
elephant
standing in it!

Imagine the
elephant
holding a gigantic
honeydew!

Imagine the
honeydew
with a huge
nickel
stuck in it!

Imagine the
nickel
turning into a
coaster!

Imagine the
coaster
with a
pan
on it!

With your point finger, trace the ovals on each of the countries, starting with Belize. As you trace each oval, think, “Bells, Belize; guacamole, Guatemala; elephant, El Salvador … .”