The Sisyphus Comments

I Don’t Remember! – Part II

In Part I of this series, I discussed how purpose and motivation can help to improve your ability to remember. However, there are times when it is important for us to remember information even though we may not be particularly motivated to do so. Fortunately, there are certain techniques that memory experts recommend using to improve your ability to remember.

A few years back, I hired Paul V. Mellor, of Success Links, to teach a class at a Governing Council In-service entitled Unlocking the Doors to a Powerful Memory. Mr. Mellor was simply incredible! By the end of his three hour class, he had memorized the names, agencies and at least one fact about all 25 of the chief and sheriffs that were in attendance. During the class, he explained that one of his primary techniques was the use of association.

You associate when you relate the things you want to remember to each other in some way, or to an unrelated thing. You must begin by determining what information you need remember and then mentally placing it into a general category. Mr. Mellor may have used the rows of students to generally categorize the students that he wanted to remember. However, as we discussed in the last article, motivation and concentration were also critical components of his success.

Remember, Mr. Mellor makes his living teaching memory improvement techniques so it was important for him to “walk the talk.” At the end of the class, his amazing display of memory definitely had an impact on every agency administrator in the room – possibly resulting in future business opportunities. So Mr. Mellor had the motivation he needed to help him concentrate on remembering.

I noticed that when I met Mr. Mellor, he looked directly into my eyes and listened intently to what I was saying. He was totally focused on our interaction, as he was for each and every student in the class. He later revealed to us that he used an association “stream” (my word, not his) to help him remember. It went something like this:

“Richard Schumaker was wearing white running shoes to direct the conference.”

From this association, he would be able to recall that the guy wearing the white running shoes was Richard Schumaker, the director in charge of the conference. Now, I am not sure what was actually going on in Mr. Mellor’s brain but I used this simple example of what he explained to help you get the essence of association. Although his years of experience would certainly make the memory task a little easier for Mr. Mellor – I’m sure he would agree that motivation, concentration and association play a big part in his memory retention. They will also work for you.

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Check out the other articles in this series.

I Don’t Remember! – Part I