The Number Shape System
We now move on to the first of the Peg
Memory Systems. A Peg Memory System differs from the Link
System in that it uses a special list of Key Memory Images that
never change and to which everything that you wish to remember
can be linked and associated. A Peg System can be thought of
much like a wardrobe containing a certain definite number of
hangers on which you hang your clothes. The hangers themselves
never change, but the clothes that are hung on them vary infinitely.
In the Number-Shape System, which is the first of the Peg
Systems covered, the number and shape represent the hangers,
and the things you wish to remember with the system represent
the clothes to be hung on the hangers. The system is an easy one
and uses only the numbers from 1 to 10.
The best system is one you will create yourself- rather than one
supplied for you. This is because minds are infinitely varied, and
the associations, links and images that you may have will generally
be different from mine and everyone else's. The associations and
images you generate from your own creative imagination will last
far longer and be much more effective than any that could be
'implanted'. I shall therefore explain exactly how you can construct
a system and shall then give examples of its practical use.
In the Number-Shape System, all you have to do is think of
images for each of the numbers from 1 to 10, each image
reminding you of the number because both the image and the
number have the same shape. For example, and to make your task
a little easier, the Key Number-Shape Memory Word that most
people use for the number 2 is swan because the number 2 is
shaped like a swan, and similarly because a swan looks like a living,
elegant version of the number 2. Look at the diagram below to have a feeling of what I am saying.
Listed below are the numbers from 1 to 10, with a blank
beside each number for you to pencil in the various words that you
think best image the shape of the numbers. As you select the
words, try to make sure that they are exceptionally good visual
images, with lots of good colour and basic imagination-potential
within them. They should be images to which you will be able to
link the things you wish to remember with ease and enjoyment.
Here are several examples:
1 Pole, pencil, pen, penis, straw, candle
2 Swan, duck, goose
3 Breasts, double chin, behind, molehills
4 Yacht, table, chair
5 Cymbal and drum, hook, pregnant woman
6 Elephant's trunk, golf club, cherry, pipe
7 Cliff, fishing line, boomerang
8 Bun, snowman, hourglass, shapely woman
9 Tennis racquet, sperm, tadpole, flag, lorgnette
10 Bat and ball, Laurel and Hardy
Give yourself not more than ten minutes to complete the list from
1 to 10, and even if you find some numbers difficult, don't worry;
just read on.
Now that you have generated several of your own number-images and
have seen other suggestions, you should select the Number-Shape
Key Memory Image for each number that is the best one for you.
When you have done this, draw in below and overleaf your
appropriate image for each number. (Don't feel inhibited if you
consider yourself not good at art; your right brain needs the
practice.) The more colours you can use in your images, the
better.
At the end of this paragraph you should close your eyes and test
yourself by mentally running through the numbers from 1 to 10 in
order. As you come to each number, mentally link it with the
Number-Shape Key Memory Image you have selected and
drawn, using the Basic Memory Principles throughout, especially
exaggeration, colour and movement. Make sure you actually see
the images on the videoscreen of your closed eyelids. When you
have done this exercise once, run through the numbers in reverse
order, again linking them with your chosen word and again
applying the Basic Memory Principles. Next, pick out numbers
randomly and as quickly as you can, making a game to see how
quickly the image comes to mind. And finally reverse the whole
process by flashing the images on your internal videoscreen, seeing
how quickly you can connect the basic numbers to your
images. Do this exercise now.
If you managed to do this successfully, you have already accomplished
a memory feat that most people would find difficult if not
impossible. You have now forged into your memory and creative
imagination a system that you will be able to use throughout your
life and that combines the qualities of both the left and the right
hemispheres of your brain.
The use of the system is simple and enjoyable and involves the
other major memory device: linking/association. For example, if
you have a list often items that you wish to remember not simply
by linking, as in the previous chapter, but in numerical order,
reverse numerical order and random numerical order, the
Number-Shape System makes the whole process easy. Let us put
it to the test:
Assume you wish to remember the following list of items:
1 Symphony
2 Prayer
3 Watermelon
4 Volcano
5 Motorcycle
6 Sunshine
7 Apple pie
8 Blossoms
9 Spaceship
10 Field of wheat
To remember these items in any order, all that you have to do is to
link them with the appropriate Number-Shape Key Memory
Image. As with the Link System, and all memory systems, the
Basic Memory Principles should be applied throughout; the more
imaginative you can be, the better. Give yourself not more than
three minutes to complete your memorisation of these ten items and then write them into a piece of paper.
As a guide for those who might have had a little difficulty with this
exercise, the following are examples of possible ways in which the
ten items to be memorised might have been linked to the
Number-Shape Key Memory Images:
1 For symphony you might have imagined a conductor conducting
frantically with a gigantic pole or pencil, knocking over
most of the musicians as he did so, with ensuing pandemonium; or
you might have imagined all the violinists playing their instruments
with straws; or again you might have imagined them all with
gigantic penises. Whatever your image, the Basic Memory Principles
should be applied.
2 Prayer is an abstract word. It is often mistakenly assumed
that abstract words are hard to memorise. Using proper memory
techniques, you will find that this is not the case, as you may have
already discovered. All you have to do is to 'image' the abstract in
concrete form. You might have imagined your swan or duck or
goose with its wings upheld like hands in prayer; or filled an
imaginary church with imaginary swans, geese or ducks being led
in a prayer service by a minister who was also a bird.
3 Easy!
4 You might have imagined your gigantic volcano within the
ocean, seeing it erupting red and furiously beneath your yacht, the
steam and hissing created by the volcano actually heaving your
yacht right off the water; or you might have had your volcano
miniaturised and placed on a chair on which you were about to sit
(you would certainly feel it); or imagined a mountainous table actually
blocking the power of the volcano.
5 A giant hook might have come down from the sky and lifted
you and your motorcycle off the road along which you were
speeding; or you on your motorcycle might have crashed, incredibly
noisily and disruptively, into a musical instrument shop,
knocking over cymbals and drums; or seated astride the motorcycle
is an enormous pregnant woman.
6 Sunshine could be pouring out of your pipe; or you might
have flung the golf club rhythmically up into the air, and it got
entangled in a sunbeam and drawn toward the sun; or the
sunbeam could be zapping like a laser into a cherry, making it
grow gigantic before your very eyes, and you imagine the taste as
you bite into it, the juices dribbling down your chin.
7 Your gigantic cliff could actually be made entirely of apple
pie; or your fishing line could catch, instead of a fish, a bedraggled,
soggy but nevertheless still scrumptious apple pie; or your
boomerang could fly off into the distance and, with a thunk, end
up in an apple pie as big as a mountain, not returning to you but
sending only the delicious smells of the apple and the piecrust.
8 Your snowman could be decorated entirely with exquisitely
pink blossoms; or your hourglass could tell the time not by the
falling of sand but by the gentle falling of millions of tiny blossoms
within the hourglass; or your shapely woman could be walking
provocatively through endless fields of waist-high fallen blossoms.
9 You could miniaturise your spaceship and make it into one of
thousands of tadpoles; or miniaturise it even further and have it as
the leading sperm about to fertilise an egg; or imagine it leaving
Earth's atmosphere with a huge flag on its nose.
10 You feel the shock in your bat as it cracks against the ball, and
you see the ball sailing across endless fields of rhythmically
waving, beautifully golden wheat; or you image Laurel and Hardy
playing the ultimate fools and thrashing around, while trampling,
the same endless fields of wheat.
These are, of course, only examples, and are included to indicate
the kind of exaggeration, imagination, sensuality and creative
thinking that is necessary to establish the most effective memory
links. As with the Link System, it is essential that you practise this
system on your own.
In the next topic, I shall introduce a second system based on
the numbers 1 to 10: the Number-Rhyme System. These two
systems can then be combined to enable you to remember twenty
items with as much facility as you have just remembered ten. In
subsequent chapters more sophisticated systems will be introduced
to allow you to store lists of items stretching into the
thousands. These systems are recommended for long-term
memory, the things you wish to retain over a long period of time.
The Number-Shape System you have just learned and the
Number-Rhyme System you are about to learn are recommended
for your short-term memory purposes - those items you wish to
remember for only a few hours.
Before going to the next topic, I recommend you try this method over and over. It only gets better as you try.
So, keep trying.
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More updates coming soon.