Memory:

Scott Hagwood:

"Of all the natural methods that we use to remember something, interest, by far, is the easiest and simplest. Simply put, we remember what interests us. And what interests us isn’t necessarily what is important to us. Take television and movies. Most television programs and movies are not life-altering events. Yet, we remember scenes from our favorite movies and programs because they were entertaining. They engaged us. They interested us. If you’ve seen the movie Planet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston, I think you’ll agree that there isn’t anything important about it. Yet, I will stay up until the wee hours watching a rerun and waiting for my favorite line: “Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape.” I love it! That warning sends a shock through the mass of monkeys as they suddenly begin to doubt their superiority to a mere human being. If I try to put the best gloss on my love of that scene, I might think that it is a reflection of some deeper interests of mine. Perhaps my feelings about that scene reflect my concern about social injustice, racial prejudice, conformity, and the travesty of trying to suppress the differences in others. Maybe I’m sensitive to related issues such as cruelty, the establishment, fear of change, and blind obedience.
Sometimes we don’t really know what we are interested in until we write it down. This is another reason why it is so important to write to remember. It helps you define and analyze your interests. A salesman once told me after one of my lectures that he used to think he had a terrible memory for names and faces. Then he realized that his business was not about the product he was selling. Rather, it was all about establishing relationships. His interest in people became paramount to success, and now he has a remarkable ability to remember names. Some people are very good at remembering details such as batting averages, shooting percentages, or a plethora of other statistics that sports seem to generate. For people with such interests, sporting events become as much an exercise in calculating probabilities as they are a competition. Take a few minutes to make a list of some of your passions. Then break each passion down to its indivisible core. For example, you may have a passion for cooking, which is a combination of art and science. You may like to start at the very beginning and follow the step-by-step instructions of a recipe. You combine specific ingredients in precise measurements with other ingredients. This is followed by a particular sequence of operations, including stirring, folding, blending, baking, etc. Sometimes you can substitute ingredients to enhance the taste or the visual nature of the dish. Cooking is a blend of combining details to create an overall effect. Perhaps you have a passion for playing golf. A friend asks you how you did at the end of the round. You say, “I shot a 95.” That statement is a simple fact. But there’s a story behind it. Since your average round of golf is about 80, you begin to explain. “On the very first hole, which you know has a severe dogleg to the left, I sliced my drive out-of-bounds. My fourth shot went to the very back of the green, but the hole position was up front on the very bottom end of that sloping tier. I three-putted and that was just the beginning of a very bad day.” Now that you’ve added lots of supporting details, the story of that lousy round of golf is developing nicely. Passions and interests, broken down in this way, give clues to how you construct a memory. Perhaps you start at the beginning by layering a sense of touch to a mental picture to create an experience. Or perhaps you start with an experience and then break it down to reveal the specific details that make the memory relevant. Next, apply the Law of Association to the interests you have defined and see what imaginative and creative opportunities you can develop. Interest is like the canvas on which the picture is painted. Defining our interests provides the background to help us build our memories and gives us a way to remember whatever we want to. Let’s say you want to remember a short grocery list. You know that you’re one of those people who start at the very beginning and proceed in a step-by-step fashion to their goal. Make each item on the list part of a mental recipe that you are concocting to make an exotic dish. To keep the logical part of your brain from dissolving the mental recipe due to the combination of items that seem not to make sense, simply ask yourself this question: “How would that taste?” This simple thought allows both sides of your brain to work together. The right side of your mind is the mental eye, where you see the tangible pictures of the list, and the left side contains the analytical skill that determines why the images are there. The point is, your memory engages with the things about which you’re passionate. Therefore, you know you have a good memory. All you have to do now is apply it to things about which you may not be so passionate but which can be useful or entertaining."