How to Improve Your Memory by Forgetting the Right Things
Back in 1885, the German scientist Hermann Ebbinghaus made the
first experimental studies in remembering and forgetting. What
he discovered then still holds true today -- that using the
common method of memorizing, we forget forty percent within
twenty minutes and seventy-five percent by the end of the week!
Doesn't it stand to reason, then, that if you are going to
bother to learn things once, you might just as well go to a
little extra trouble and protect your investment of time? You
can do this easily by repeating briefly what you have learned
once a day for a week, and then once a week for a month.
There have been men with a genius for memory, but their feats
lie entirely outside the experience of us ordinary mortals. Lord
Macaulay could memorize entire books at a single reading, Mozart
as a boy wrote down the score of an oratorio after hearing it
once, and Dumas pere never forgot anything he had read. My
course in memory training cannot claim to teach you to duplicate
such miracles. It is based simply on the laws of the workings of
the minds of normal men, and its success is due to the fact that
few people realize the potential powers of their thinking
processes.
You and I remember only what we know, and we know only what we
remember. The art I can teach you is the ability to use to the
best advantage what you know, to be able to draw upon the great
storehouse of your memory when you will, at a moment's notice.
The more easily you can accomplish that seeming miracle, the
farther and faster you will travel toward your ultimate success
in life.
This brings us to our next important consideration: what shall
we take the trouble to remember? We know of course that we
neither can nor want to remember everything. To make our
memories serve us intelligently, we have to be able to choose
the things we want to remember and concentrate on developing a
selective type of memory. Dr. R. S. Woodworth, of the National
Research Council and Columbia University, after testing the
memories of countless subjects, has come to two significant
conclusions:
1. That everyone has greater power of memory than he imagines.
2. That although intensive training produces great improvement
in memory, training does not develop the general faculty of
memory, but simply increases the particular kind of memory job
that is practiced.
>From this you will conclude that to develop your memory in order
to increase your personal efficiency you must first choose the
kind of remembering on which you want to concentrate. If you
learn to memorize poetry effectively, your friends may consider
you more cultured and you may get extra enjoyment out of life,
but it will not help you to remember the grocery list. Nor will
strengthening your memory for geography or history help you to
remember names and faces.
To help you decide what kind of memory you yourself want to
cultivate, I suggest that you get a piece of paper right now,
and write across the top the business or profession in which you
are now engaged. Below that write the answers to the following
questions. Take your time, thinking about the answers carefully:
1. Do my activities bring me into constant contact with people?
2. Would cultivating a better memory for names and faces pay
dividends in my work?
3. Does my work necessitate my knowing many facts and figures?
4. Is a general cultural background of miscellaneous information
important in my work?
5. Outside of business, what specific kind of memory would I
like to cultivate for my own enjoyment?
6. Based on these questions, what kind of memory should I go
about developing first?
By studying your answers thoughtfully, you will have a pretty
clear and definite idea of what things you should make an effort
to remember, and what you can afford to forget.
A surgeon, for instance, will want to remember the bones and
tissues of the body, the kinds of surgical instruments and their
uses, the virtues of the drugs and medicines in his materia
medica, the history and development of the art of healing, and
most of what he has read or learned of the achievements of other
medical scientists.
In addition, he will want to retain enough of his nonmedical
reading to hold up his head in a general conversation. If he is
fortunate enough to have some outside interest, such as
collecting stamps or amateur photography, he will want to
develop his memory along that line too. He, like all people,
will also find it advisable to remember the dates of his wedding
anniversary and family birthdays, as well as personal data about
his patients and colleagues.
With all this information and more to remember, wouldn't it be
the height of folly for him to waste energy remembering the
precise date of Congress's approval of the act authorizing the
Reconstruction Finance Corporation? You agree, of course, that
the chances are a thousand to one against a surgeon's ever
requiring such information. On the other hand, a lawyer, a
politician, a banker, or an editorial writer might be called
upon to produce such an item at a moment's notice, out of his
head. Inability to do so might even appear a serious reflection
on his general qualifications.
So by simply going through the questions above, you are on your
way to remembering more by allowing yourself to forget the right
information.