Memory—Your Mental Filing System |
| You forget names and faces, facts and figures, simply because you never really has to remember them. You would be surprised at your powers of recollection if your career depended on it. Dr Salo Finkelstein, Polish mathematical performer, was once asked by a broadcasting company to tally the returns of a US presidential election because he was faster than an adding machine. He did it in 4.43 seconds. People have different types of mind. Some remember pictorial images, others recall sounds, others learn by the "feel" of words. Most have some share of each type of ability, although one faculty usually predominates. No matter what type of mind you have, there are some general rules that will help you in training your memory. In memorising, tackle a thing as a whole. In learning a poem, you might imagine it would be easier to memorise couple of stanzas at a time. Read the poem right through from start to finish, many times as necessary, and you will learn it in connected form. Don't try too hard. It produces mental tension. Over-trying slows down the memory. Every time you remark that you have a memory like a sieve, you are knocking one more hole through its bottom. Shun artificial aids such as associating disparate elements. This puts your mind to unnecessary labour in handling two kinds of material that have no natural relation to each other. It is possible to recognize familiar pattern in figures themselves. This was the secret of Dr Finkelstein's wizardry. He viewed a long number as a string of smaller, three-digit figures. The best time to memorize a thing is just before you go to sleep. Bedtime memorisers score consistently 20 to 30 per cent higher than those memorising at other hours. The material sinks in most effectively then. You must keep the memory traces fresh if you wish to recall easily. This needs frequent revision. The more you can reiterate the matter you want to recall, the more efficiently you will do it. New information has to be associated with what you already know. Recall is then easy. This may be compared to a bicycle chain. Each link brings along the one behind it provided the connection is there. In the dark recesses of the mind are filled literally billions of information bits. Each time you dip back into the past you are activating this most remarkable of faculties. You have a prodigious memory. In a few cubic inches your brain stores much more information than can be stored in a large computer installation costing millions. Further, it can do things that would stump any present-day computer; remember how burning leaves smell, or how a chocolate ice-cream tastes. One researcher calculates the brain's storage capacity at one quadrillion bits of information—that's a million times a billion. With such capacity, says Harvard's John Merritt, "No one has ever filled the pitcher to overflowing." Memory works in queer ways. Some people have extraordinary retrieval powers. A few individuals can look at something and have total recall of minute details. A friend of Professor William James was introduced to a Colonel in the British army. Presently the men were chatting about the signs of age, at which the colonel challenged anyone to say how old he was. The professor's friend astonished both the Colonel and others present by giving the correct date of his birth. He later revealed that one day he had picked up a copy of the Army List and while turning over the pages had unconsciously memorised the birth dates and various particulars. When he was introduced to the Colonel all the particulars he had read about him rose into his mind without any conscious bidding. James Macintosh, a well-known writer and politician, claimed that he could remember all the facts coming to his attention in the course of a long and busy career and most of what he had read. He could identify even obscure quotations. He could repeat not only the passage correctly but say on which page it would be found. Hazlitt said of this man: "There is scarce an author that he has not read….If an opinion in an abstruse metaphysical author is referred to, he is probably able to repeat the passage by heart, can tell the side of the page on which it is to be met with, can trace it back….and thus give you in a few minutes space, and without any effort of previous notice, a chronological table of the progress of the human mind in that particular branch of inquiry". It was said of Bonar Law that he never prepared speeches or spoke from notes, yet once, while Secretary of State for Colonies, he delivered the annual statement of his department's work, a very lengthy speech, with many figures, without a single note. Robert Browning had only to read a book once to be able to quote entire pages fluently and easily. It is also related that Ben Johnson could recite long books by heart. Jonathan Swift, when three, could read most of the different passages in the Bible. He also repeated easily from memory what he had read. Sir William Robertson Nicoll, for many years editor of The British Weekly, read on an average two books a day, which he claimed to master at the rate of 40,000 words an hour. Nicoll's memory and mental grasp were remarkably sure, for in a few seconds he had mastered even the most difficult paragraphs. In addition to such mental activity he wrote between 30,000 and 40,000 words a week and maintained complete control of his paper. He was born and reared in a Scottish manse containing over 17,000 books, which overflowed from the rooms into the passages and down the staircase. In his own library he had over 25,000 books and could put his hand on any book he wanted and turn up any quotation with no delay. Clement Shorter said: "He could read a page while I read a sentence." And Sir James Barrier, "No pocket could have contained all the books he needed for the shortest journey." In protracted travelling he gra-dually left his clothing behind him as more and more books crowded it out of his valises. He was so fond of books that I am sure he never saw a lonely one without wanting to pat it and give it six pence. I should say that he read thousands of them every year of his life, and as quickly as you or I may gather black berries. It was said of Professor Richard Porson, a famous Cambridge authority on Greece, that he remembered substantially the hundreds of scholarly books he had read in the course of a busy lifetime. He was one of the few men of his time who knew by heart every ancient Greek writer so well that he could tell the position of a quoted line in the copy of the work concerned in his library. Dr Samuel Clarke, a famous divine, always took a book with him and claimed that he remembered all that he had read. The mind often takes impression with the accuracy of a camera and reproduces them as readily. Macauly, the historian, was fond of demonstrating this feature of the mind's activities. He would read rapidly several pages of print, close the book and repeat what he had read word perfect. |
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with warm regards
Harish Sati
Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU)
Maidan Garhi, New Delhi-110068
(M) + 91 - 9990646343 | (E-mail) Harish.sati@gmail.com
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