Read The Power of Forgetting Online
Authors: Mike Byster
One person chooses ten household items (it could be fewer or more depending on the number the players agree to) and covers them with a sheet. When the sheet is removed, the person who chose the ten items picks up each item one at a time and says what it is. For example, let’s say the ten items are maple syrup, a calculator, a soda pop, a fork, a cell phone, soap, a book, a candy bar, a pen, and a belt. When the person finishes naming the ten items, he or she picks up the stopwatch and says, “Go,” and the other person must rearrange the items in alphabetical order from left to right: belt, book, calculator, candy bar, cell phone, fork, maple syrup, pen, soap, soda pop. When the person finishes, he or she says, “Done,” and if everything is in the correct order the stopwatch is stopped. If it’s not all in correct order, the stopwatch keeps running until it’s done correctly. If the person trying to alphabetize the items forgets what an item is named, he can ask, but fifteen seconds is added to his time for every item whose name is repeated. It’s a good idea for the person naming the items to write down what he is naming them and read the list when naming the items to the other person so there are no arguments later on.
You might be saying to yourself:
What makes this game hard?
The challenge here is listening to the person articulate the name of each item and remembering exactly how the item is identified, because each item could have multiple names. For example, if the maple syrup is a bottle of Log Cabin maple syrup, the person laying out the items could call it any of the following: syrup, maple syrup, bottled syrup, pancake syrup, or Log Cabin syrup. Similarly, a cell phone could be
a phone, a telephone, a mobile phone, an iPhone, a Samsung phone (or any other brand name), and so on. If the soda pop is a can of Diet Pepsi, he could call it soda, Pepsi, canned soda, a beverage, a drink, a carbonated beverage, pop, a soft drink, and so on. What he cannot do, though, is call it “lemonade” or personalize the word by saying something like “my favorite soda.” He also cannot add an adjective, such as calling the syrup “delicious maple syrup.” He can only call out what the item is, but that is what makes the game hard—you have to remember exactly what he says.
So, in this example, if the same ten items we used last time were named differently, they could be alphabetized this way:
1. Ballpoint pen
2. Bar of soap
3. Chocolate bar
4. Cola
5. Leather belt
6. Paperback book
7. Pocket calculator
8. Silverware
9. Syrup
10. Telephone
When the person is finished, the clock is stopped and the roles are reversed. The person with the lowest time wins the game!
When I am the person who has to organize the items, I look at them and number them one through ten in my head from left to right before the other person reads me the name of each item. Then I remember the numbers of the ones from the first half of the alphabet (A through M) and mentally grab those first and alphabetize them. That way, if I do forget the name of an item later, I’ll know if that name is from the first or second half of the alphabet, thus making it much easier to recall.
You’re empowering your mind tremendously as you get better and better at this game, but the expert level of this game can get pretty intense and difficult. What you need to do is take out four scraps of paper and write down the four different ways to alphabetize the items:
1. Alphabetizing
2. Alphabetizing based on the last letter of the word
3. Alphabetizing starting with the second letter of the first word
4. Alphabetizing starting with third letter of the first word
Before the person reads you the names of the items, pick one of the folded pieces of paper. If, for example, you pick the second way (alphabetized based on the last letter of the word), the ten items we used in the previous example (named as they were in the second example, not the first) would be alphabetized this way:
1. colA
2. telephonE
3. silverwarE
4. paperback booK
5. ballpoint peN
6. bar of soaP
7. syruP
8. chocolate baR
9. pocket calculatoR
10. leather belT
The reason why “telephone” comes before “silverware” is that, even though they both end in e, the last two letters of “telephone” read in reverse are
en
, while the last two letters of “silverware” read in reverse are
er
.
If you chose the fourth way of alphabetizing (starting with the third letter of the first word), the items would be in this order:
1. leAther belt
2. poCket calculator
3. coLa
4. teLephone
5. baLlpoint pen
6. siLverware
7. chOcolate bar
8. paPerback book
9. baR of soap
10. syRup
This game requires a tremendous amount of focus, concentration, eye-hand coordination, and memory, and it is
intense, fun, and sometimes immensely competitive. Every time you finish this game you will have had an amazing workout and improved several different areas of your mind.
Fact:
It’s almost impossible to memorize and organize a list of ten things without a strategy. Try one of the seven approaches mentioned in this chapter!
This card trick is meant to be memorized so you can perform it in front of someone else or a larger audience. I recommend that you go through all of the steps below a few times until you think you have this trick down pat. You have to keep the steps organized in your brain. For a live visual, refer to
www.MikeByster.com
. Oh, and if you’re wondering where the name to this trick came from (“13 − 1 = 10 + 2”), I’m saving that explanation for after I’ve taken you through the steps. See if you can figure it out on your own!
• Start with a full deck of shuffled cards. (Ditch the joker cards; you should have fifty-two cards total.) Hold the deck of cards facedown in your hand.
• Flip over the top card, place it on a table, and note its number value. Let’s say you turn over a six of spades. (Note: For the purposes of this trick, aces have a value of
one. If you flip over a face card—a jack, queen, or king—put it back in the deck on the bottom and choose another card until you get one with a value attached to it.)
• Continue to flip cards over onto the six of spades until you’ve flipped over the number of cards that, added to six, equals thirteen. In other words, don’t bother taking note of these cards’ values; just count out another seven cards, because six (the value of that first card, the six of spades) plus seven (another seven cards) equals thirteen. Once you’ve done that, you have pile 1. (Note: It’s okay to lay down face cards as you count to thirteen; you don’t have to put them on the bottom of the deck as you did when you were trying to find a “value” card.)
• After you’ve created pile 1, repeat the process and start a new pile. First, flip over a card from your original deck and place it on the table next to pile 1. Note the number (avoiding face cards), and then count out more cards until you reach thirteen. Let’s say the second pile’s first card is a three of hearts. You’ll then flip over ten more cards and add them to pile 2. Repeat this process until you have four separate piles on the table.
• Flip all of the piles over so that they are facedown on the table.
• Get rid of
one of the piles
and put it back in your deck of cards (on either the top or the bottom, it doesn’t matter).
• Starting out with the number ten in your head, turn over the top card from two different piles on the table. Add the top card numbers to the number 10. So if you flip over a three and a six (3 + 6 = 9), then your number is nineteen, because 10 + 9 = 19.
• Now count out nineteen cards from your deck.
• The number of cards
remaining
in that deck will be equal to the un-turned-over top card of the un-turned-over pile on the table.
Confusing? This trick is pretty straightforward, but you do have to be careful about the organization of the steps. It’s perfectly fine to need to do this trick several times in order to commit the steps to memory. If you haven’t figured it out by now, the name of the trick helps me to recall the steps. We create four piles by counting a particular way up to thirteen; then we remove a pile and place it back in the original deck. In the latter half of the trick, we start with the number 10 and add two numbers to it (from the top cards of the two piles).
If you take the last four letters of the word “twelve” (“elve”) and last two letters of the word “one” (“ne”), you can spell “eleven” when you flip around the letters. And 13 − 1 = 10 + 2 also reflects an anagram: In “twelve + one = eleven + two” all of the letters are the same! That’s how I came up with the anagram of 13 − 1 = 10 + 2 so I could recall that trick.
In
chapter 4
, you learned secrets to remembering faces and names. I’ve always had a knack for recalling every name I’ve ever heard. I also have a propensity for remembering characters’
names and the actors who play them on television. Take, for example,
The Brady Bunch
. I can tell you in seconds all of the characters’ names and their real-life counterparts—Mike Brady (Robert Reed), Carol Brady (Florence Henderson), Greg Brady (Barry Williams), Marcia Brady (Maureen McCormick), and so on. This may just be an innate gift of mine, but I know that fast recall of names is a skill that can be developed, though it requires constant practice. I practice every single time I’m confronted with a new face, name, or character. So if you’re not generally good at recalling names or other facts you want to keep stored in your brain for quick recovery, you simply need to practice more!
And here’s the interesting part: This skill also entails a great deal of mental organization. While you may not have considered organizing your thoughts in
chapter 4
as you learned how to memorize names and faces, you had to do some mental sorting just to keep incoming names in check. Now, however, we’re going to take this to the next level by adding a deeper layer of mental organization. The Name Game is an excellent way not only to practice getting good with names but also to organize your mind. What you’re doing is retrieving information and organizing it as quickly as you can. Let me describe the game first, and then I’ll share a bit more about what this exercise is actually doing for you.
You can play this game with two or more people. First, take a piece of paper and write all twenty-six letters of the alphabet down the middle in one long column, like this:
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
Now take a random set of twenty-six letters and match them up to this list. For the purpose of this example, I’m going to use the sentence “Actions speak louder than word” (not “words”), since it comprises twenty-six letters. However,
you could just refer to an article or book and take the first twenty-six letters of any sentence. It’s not important to use a string of real words or a full sentence. You just need to grab twenty-six letters from somewhere, and they can inlcude repeat letters. Alternatively, you can make up letters as you go down the column and write down one letter to go with each of the original set of letters.
In our list here, if we line up the letters from “Actions speak louder than word” next to our original alphabet, we’ve got the following:
AA
BC
CT
DI
EO
FN
GS
HS
IP
JE
KA
LK
ML
NO
OU
PD
QE
RR
ST
TH
UA
VN
WW
XO
YR
ZD
Each pair of letters now acts as initials. The goal is to come up with as many names as you can using this list of initials in a given time frame, say five minutes. The initials can relate to a fictional person, a famous person, or someone you know, so long as your fellow players are also familiar with that individual. (Otherwise, you could just make up names as you go along!) Here’s how the scoring works:
• Each person gets one point for naming someone whom all the players know.
• Each person gets two points for naming someone in sports or entertainment.
• Each person gets three points for naming someone in history.
Why do historical people reap more points? Because they are often harder to recall. People you see and hear about on a daily basis are much easier to bring to mind; the names of individuals buried deeper in our memories require more mental energy, so they of course should be rewarded with more points. There are a few more rules to consider:
• The initials can be switched around, so, for instance, the second pair—BC—can also be viewed as CB. Try to
come up with as many names as you can using the pairs of initials as they are read both forward and backward. In this example, we have Bill Cosby and Charlie Brown.
• You cannot use a modified version of someone’s name. If a person is known as Bill and not William, then you have to stick with Bill. For example, William Clinton or William Cosby wouldn’t be allowed. Norma Baker would not be allowed either, but Marilyn Monroe would.
• You can, however, use names that are iconic to a particular person but aren’t that person’s full name. Examples include Princess Di, Queen Elizabeth, and J. R. Ewing.
What makes this game so valuable for working on your name recall and organizing is that you’re having to mentally handle multiple streams of information and manage them all as you go through a certain letter and find a pattern. Thinking about first names that begin with the letter A, for example, and then matching those to famous last names requires that you juggle the competing ideas and faces that come crashing into your brain. You’ll find that you have to sort letters and names into categories quickly by common first names, common last names, famous faces, historical people, and so on. Then, as you hunt for the names that will give you the maximum number of points, you’ll be adding yet another dimension of mental multitasking that demands organization. You’ll be firing up your mental assembly line while at the same time flexing your mind’s muscles to heave old data files from the back of your mind to the forefront.