Years ago, when I was just entering the workforce, I was going through the same thing that many us experienced and many still do: The old "Need experience to get a job but need a job to get experience" conundrum. Ugh.
Luckily, my mom had a friend who was an insurance broker who was willing to hire me on a temporary basis as office help.
This was perfect! I could finally get some much needed experience AND get paid. Pretty sweet, right?
Unfortunately though, like most managers, he wasn't very engaged and so my training was lacking. Still I learned quite a bit but it was mostly through trial and error. It took awhile for certain processes to stick, but overall I couldn't really complain, it was quiet for the most part.
It was a small, empty office with awful carpeting and wood panelling on the walls. A huge filing cabinet was off to the corner and there was a larger desk for him and one for me. He was hardly ever there, sometimes as many as a few days would go by without seeing him, he was on the road quite a bit but would check in on things more often by phone.
When trying to learn best practices, as every job has, sometimes like I said, it was hard for certain things to stick in the beginning. This got me thinking as I'd often look across the room at the giant filing cabinet, wishing that if there was anything I needed to remember, I could just grab the right "folder" in my head as easily as it was to do at the office, maybe even more so.
As the months went by, I forgot about the brain folder thing since I was pretty much an expert on how to do things by then, the work became second nature.
Little did I know that years later while attending a workshop on, you guessed it, memory training, I learned that that's exactly how your brain can work.
Like a big filing cabinet! Maybe not exactly like the big ugly one at my mom's friend's office, but one that's even better.
Brains don't work like that, especially not mine!
They sure do. Well, that is to say they CAN. That's what I'm going to show you. Ready?
Cool! Let's do it!
Okay we'll make it "easy" at first. I'm going to give you a list of ten items. Grab your phone or whatever you have with a timer handy and set it for 1 minute.
Let's try to remember them all! NO CHEATING! And... Go!
- basketball
- hula hoop
- chocolate cake
- ice
- playing cards
- rum
- telephone
- wedding ring
- pizza
- cat
Time's up!
Now grab a piece of paper and write down the numbers 1 through 10 and your answer for each one. How did you do?
I'm willing to bet that most of you got the first couple, and the last couple, and that's fine. This is known as the Serial Position Effect.
From Wikipedia: " Serial-position effect is the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst. The term was coined by Hermann Ebbinghaus through studies he performed on himself, and refers to the finding that recall accuracy varies as a function of an item's position within a study list.[2] When asked to recall a list of items in any order (free recall), people tend to begin recall with the end of the list, recalling those items best (the recency effect). Among earlier list items, the first few items are recalled more frequently than the middle items (the primacy effect)."
Now I'm going to give you a new list of ten items, but first, let's do a quick exercise. Have a look at the diagram below.
From a standing position:
- Stamp your feet and say "soles!"
- Knock on your shins and say "shins!"
- Grab your thighs and say "thighs!
- Smack your butt and say "butt!" (don't smack anyone else's)
- Continue for the rest of your corresponding body parts
What the hell was the point of that?
Oh nothing, I just want wanted to see if I could make you smack your butt. I'm kidding!
What you really just did was create ten "folders"!
- Soles
- Shins
- Thighs
And so on...
Now let's try the same exercise again but with a new list of items, this time I'll offer a few tips:
- We remember things best as images, the crazier the better.
For example, if fish were the first thing on my shopping list, I'd picture myself wearing fish on my feet (soles..ha). - It MUST be attached/glued/nailed/tied somehow to your body part/folder (not literally). If you don't do this in your mind, you will forget, so get it on there TIGHT.
- Have fun with it and don't overthink it! Just go with what pops in there naturally.
- paint
- beer
- printer
- pumpkin
- dice
- xylophone
- bread
- flashlight
- berries
- lampshade
Let's try this new list of 10 items, now that we have our folders and creativity. Set our timers for 1 minute. And... Go!
On the back of the paper where we wrote our first list, we can write out the numbers 1 through 10 once again and write the corresponding word for each number.
Take your time, going through each body part the item is "stuck" to.
If you didn't get 10 out of 10, I'm sure you got pretty freaking close, and for sure better than our first list. Any missed ones had to have been stuck on more tightly.
Bonus:
Without looking at your paper, I bet you could even recite the order backward. As a matter of fact, I bet now you could tell me what item corresponds to what number.
See?
But what if I have to remember more than 10 list items?
You can double or even triple the number of items per "folder"
(I never go more than double). Or you can increase the number of folders, right and left foot, fingers, toes, palms, backs of hands, etc.
Is that it? Am I a memory master now?
Um, no but you're well on your way! Use this technique whenever you can for the rest of the week. Next week I'll show you more advanced techniques that you can use to help remember languages, names, equations, and abstract concepts.
In the meantime, why not use your new skill to win yourself a few drinkies at the bar?