How to Develop a Perfect Memory (8 page)

When you are choosing a journey, exactly the same principles apply as

before. Try to ensure that it has some relevance. The first stage could start at the firm itself, perhaps. If you have come to know your Job Centre well over the last few weeks and months, it could always begin there.

Always keep the data as visual as possible. No matter how technical or

involved the information might be, there is always a way of translating it into key images. Use all the techniques you have learnt: The DOMINIC SYSTEM

for converting statistics into people and actions, word association to remember important members of staff.

Finally, you may wish to use a separate journey for your career. There's nothing worse than being asked about a dark and distant period in your previous employment and not being able to shed any light on it. Break down your CV into its constituent parts, and translate them into key images. Again, the DOMINIC SYSTEM can be used to make dates more memorable;

alternatively, you could assign each year to a separate stage.

No matter how well prepared you are, or how much research you have done, you won't get the job if you don't perform well in the interview. Mental composure is essential. A good memory allows you to maintain your train of thought in the often difficult environment of an interview, bringing out the best in you when it matters.

8

HOW TO

REMEMBER

SPEECHES

This chapter is for public speakers. You might be a barrister, lawyer, politician, comedian, priest, lecturer, actor, or perhaps you've been asked to make a speech at a wedding or after dinner. We all have to address others in public at some time in our lives, and for many of us it can be a nerve-wracking occasion.

A trained memory can help you to deliver a good speech, effortlessly and without any worry.

BAD SPEECHES

A badly prepared speech or talk is not only embarrassing for the speaker, it can also be acutely painful for the audience as well. For those who try to speak without notes, jokes can often fall apart in public, even though they went well in private beforehand. Ideas tend to peter out rapidly when you are ad-libbing, and remembering a punchline is so much more difficult when the pressure is on to perform.

There is also nothing worse than someone reading out an anecdote verbatim from a piece of paper. Their speeches are often punctuated with pregnant pauses as they desperately try to decipher their own handwriting.

KEY POINTS

Anyone who has tried to avoid these pitfalls and attended a public speaking course will have probably been told to condense speeches into a series of key points. Listed on a cue card, they are designed to trigger off particular anecdotes, subjects or aspects of a story. They are written out in sequence, thus preserving the natural order of the speech.

This technique usually results in a big improvement, but relying on an external memory aid such as a cue card can still interrupt the flow of a speech. (I am sure you have seen someone nervously shuffling their cards.) The most

successful public speakers, however, are able to store their key points in their heads.

Enter the mental speech file. Much like the mental diary, a speech file can help you to remember a talk in its entirety without any notes. Key points are translated into key images, and placed along a simple journey.

The following is a slightly edited version of one of Rowan Atkinson's infamous wedding speech sketches, taken from his
Live in Belfast
recording. If you haven't heard this masterful performance before, imagine him delivering it in a begrudging, acrimonious tone.

Pray silence for the Father of the Bride

Ladies and Gentleman and friends of my
daughter.
There comes a time in every wedding reception when the man who paid for the damn thing

is allowed to speak a word or two of his own. And I should like to take

this opportunity, sloshed as I may be, to say a word or two about

Martin. As far as I'm concerned, my daughter could not have chosen a

more delightful, charming, witty, responsible, wealthy — let's not deny

it — well placed, good-looking and fertile young man than Martin as

her husband. And I therefore ask the question: Why the hell did she

marry Gerald instead?

...If I may use a gardening simile here: if his entire family may be

likened to a compost heap - and I think they can - then Gerald is the

biggest weed growing out of it. I think he is the sort of man people

emigrate to avoid.

I remember the first time I met Gerald, I said to my wife - she's the

lovely woman propping up that horrendous old lush of a mother of his

- either this man is suffering from severe brain damage, or the new

vacuum cleaner has arrived. As for his family, they are quite simply the most intolerable herd of steaming social animals I've ever had the

misfortune of turning my nose up to. I spurn you as I would spurn a

rabid dog. I would like to propose a toast... to the caterers. And to the pigeon who crapped on the groom's family limousine at the church. As

for the rest of you around this table not directly related to me, you can sod off. I wouldn't trust any of you to sit the right way on a lavatory.

(written by Richard Curds and Rowan Atkinson)

Not many fathers are likely to stand up and deliver a tirade like this, although many would like to, but it is a very good example of what can be achieved using your memory. Timing, emphasis, and rhythm can make all the difference between a faintly amusing speech and a hilarious one. If you have a mental list of key points in your head, you can pace yourself better, knowing what's come up and what you've already said.

A speech file enables you to 'see' the entire contents laid out in front of you (like the mental diary), letting you make a smooth transition from point to point. As you are talking, you can 'walk' down your journey. A key image for each new point will appear in front of you, and those beyond it will also be visible. There's no chance of your rhythm being disrupted, providing of course, you have chosen a familiar journey and don't lose your way!

THE SPEECH FILE

I have divided the 'Father of the Bride' sketch into 22 points to show you how a speech can be converted into key images. You should be able to understand it all from the following.

10 Ram

21 Pigeon

11 Gerald

22 Loo

Notice how I have translated into key images the run of seven adjectives that describe Martin:

delightful

light

charming

snake charmer

witty

comedian

responsible

keys

wealthy

gold bars

well-placed

well

fertile

ram

I have also made passport the key image for 'emigrate'. This works well for me, but you might have a more obvious association. Whenever you are forming key images, you must remember that you have got to make the link again, and in a more pressured situation. I can't stress enough that the first associations are always the most important.

Choose your own journey, and try converting the 'Father of the Bride'

speech into key images. (Don't forget that facts and figures can easily be translated into memorable images using the DOMINIC SYSTEM.) Then practise

delivering it without writing anything down.

The next time you have to deliver a less vitriolic wedding speech, make sure you use a mental speech file. It looks so much more impressive than scrawny notes or smart cue cards. I suggest you choose a journey that involves a church, and be certain to memorize the route before you start filling it with key images.

A mental speech file is such a simple way of making a big impression.

Whether it's a wedding, or an important business presentation, you are bound to be noticed if you calmly stand up, and deliver a polished and appropriate speech with
no real notes.

9

HOW TO

REMEMBER

DIRECTIONS

If you want to join the ranks of London's 23,000 drivers of black taxis, you first have to pass a gruelling test known as 'the Knowledge'. Among other things, it requires that you learn 468 routes around the capital, including 5,500

roads, and a whole host of museums, churches, hospitals, railway and police stations, theatres, parks, and other landmarks. It's hardly surprising that the success rate for passing is a mere 30 per cent.

In 1992, I was asked by
Auto Express,
a motoring magazine, to memorize four routes from 'the Knowledge'. My examiner was none other than Fred

Housego, celebrity cabbie and winner of
Mastermind.
Never one to do things by halves, Fred asked me to sit blindfolded in the back of his cab before driving me around what he considered to be the toughest routes in London.

(Anyone who saw us probably thought I was being kidnapped.)

Fred sang out the directions to me as we went along: 'Left into Southwark Street. First right into Blackfriars Road. Forward Blackfriars Road. Remember the sandwich shop on the right. Continue into New Bridge Street. Leave New Bridge Street for Farringdon Street. Spot the station on your right. Turn right at traffic lights into Clerkenwell Road.'

On and on we went, twisting and turning through the streets of London,

passed St. Paul's, through Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square, around the Houses of Parliament. I wondered if it would ever end. Once the ordeal was over, however, I was able to recite perfectly the instructions for all four routes, including details like the sandwich shop on Blackfriars Road. Even Fred was a little bemused: 'I've never met a cabbie who can do anything like this!' he told the magazine. 'I gave him the hardest routes and he scored 100 per cent.'

It would have only confused the issue if I had disclosed that my mind hadn't been on the streets of London at all. I had, in fact, been taking a leisurely stroll around East Herts golf course.

HOW TO USE A GOLF COURSE FOR REMEMBERING

DIRECTIONS

Most of us tend not to be given instructions sitting blindfolded in the back of a black cab. They are usually offered in a hurry, through a wound-down window.

Or we are standing in a draughty phone box, lost in the dark and without a pen, desperately trying to remember what the person on the other end of the line is saying.

'Go left at the lights,' they say.

'Right,' you reply.

'Left, not right!'

'Right, I mean left!'

And so on.

If you are ever in this predicament again, try using a familiar journey to record the instructions. And I urge anyone who plays golf to choose a route around their favourite course. It doesn't matter if you're not a player; a country walk or a route through your town will more than suffice.

A round of golf is not such an odd choice for a journey as it might sound. I think it is fair to say that most golfers, on completing a round, are able to recall individual strokes; also the exact spot where the ball landed, their choice of iron or wood, and even their opponent's play. The next time you are in a clubhouse, grit your teeth for a few seconds and listen to the golf bores as they trade descriptions of miraculous second shots on the seventh fairway or twenty footers at the fifteenth green.

What's going on here? Are people suddenly being embued with wonderful

powers of recall every time they play a round of golf? If you were to ask any club player how he or she approached the third shot on the seventeenth, or how many putts they took on the fourth, they could probably tell you. In fact, they could probably take you through an entire round, recalling 80 to 100 shots in perfect sequence. It's all beginning to sound familiar. Isn't this exactly the sort of memory trick I perform, except with playing cards and numbers rather than golf shots?

So why do we have such a problem remembering eight to ten road

directions, when we can recall 80 to 100 golf shots in a trice? If you have understood my approach to memory, you already know the answer. A logical journey around a golf course, with each stage sequentially numbered, is bound to give order to an otherwise ramshackle set of memories. It's exactly the same technique you learnt for memorizing lists and appointments. Even if you're not interested in golf, it is a perfect example of the hidden potential our memories possess.

DIRECTIONS

Imagine you are given the following instructions to remember. You don't have the time or wherewithal to write them down; besides, it's hazardous trying to read and drive at the same time.

1. Left into Western Avenue

2. Right into Cannonsgate Road

It's a daunting challenge, but you were meant to be at Blacksmith Cottage half an hour ago for an important supper engagement. Let me tell you how I would memorize these instructions, using a golf course as my journey.

I relate each direction or signal to an imaginary strike of a ball and its subsequent position. Turning left, for instance, is represented by a ghastly hook shot; turning right is a slice; straight on is a satisfying drive plumb down the middle of the fairway; a roundabout is a green; and a T-junction is the next tee.