Can you name everyone on the bus?

Photo by Daryl Fritz on Flickr

Many years ago I spent 21 days on a bus/camping trip in Europe with Contiki tours. There were approximately 40 people in the group from Australia, South Africa, USA, Israel, England and Hong Kong.

Our tour guide had issued a challenge. Whoever could stand up at the front of the bus and name everyone by first name would get a prize. I thought this was a wonderful icebreaker activity to motivate people to make an effort and get to know their fellow travellers. Unfortunately someone else beat me to the prize.

How often have you joined a class, club or social group and been worried about meeting everyone? Are you interested in getting to know everyone there or do you try and avoid social encounters? You will never know if you have something in common with a stranger until you start a conversation and introduce yourself.

Become the kind of person who initiates conversations and gets to know others in a group. After you have spoken with someone and remembered the name you now have something you can build on for future interactions. You may have decided you don't have anything in common but at least you made the effort to speak and make a connection.

There are countless situations where you join a group where you are going to see the people on a regular basis - daily, weekly or monthly. University students starting a new tutorial class, starting work at a new job, joining a Toastmasters club or sporting club. Maybe you have enrolled in a personal enrichment course -- there are many friendships to be made by getting to know other people.

Go on. Don't be shy.

Introduce yourself to others in a group and see if you can name everyone in the group.

How to remember a deck of cards

If you were given a pack of 52 shuffled playing cards, could you remember the sequence of cards? Does this sound impossible?

Memorising a card deck is part of Memory Sports and you could do it as well. There are two main skills required - developing a strong mental image for each card, then memorising the sequence of cards using a journey of 52 stages.

A playing card belongs to one of the four suits - Clubs, Hearts, Spades and Diamonds and is going to be a number between 2 and 10 or a Jack, King, Queen or Ace.

We explored the Journey method in an earlier article, but how can we make cards memorable? I chose the method described by Harry Lorayne in his book "How to Develop a Super Power Memory".

Each card is converted into a key image (known as a 'peg word') based on the suit and the value according to a pattern.

Every peg word begins with the initial letter of the card suit. Therefore all the words for the Spades suit begin with S, Diamonds with D, Clubs with C and Hearts with H.

Each word ends with a consonant sound based on the phonetic value of the card. The phonetic system converts 1 to T or D, 2 to N, 3 to M, 4 to R, 5 to L, 6 to G or SH, 7 to K or hard G, 8 to F or V and 9 to P or B.

The Ace is given the number 1 and the 10 card is turned into 0. The peg word for the Ace of Spades would begin with S and end in T or D - "suit". The peg word for the 10 of clubs begins with C and ends with S - "case".

The peg words for the Jack is the suit itself, so the Jack of Diamonds is a "diamond".

The peg word for the King is a word that sounds like King and starts with the first letter of the suit, so we have King, Hinge, Sing and Drink.

The peg word for the Queen is a word that sounds like Queen and starst with the first letter of the suit, so we have Cram, Queen, Steam and Dream.


A mnemonic for remembering the four suits is CHaSeD (Clubs, Hearts, Spades and Diamonds).

Here are my peg words which I based originally on Lorayne's list, then I modified to my own preference.

Clubs

• 2 Clubs - Coin (large gold coin)
• 3 Clubs - Comb
• 4 Clubs - car
• 5 Clubs - Coal
• 6 Clubs - Cash (pile of $100 bills)
• 7 Clubs - Coke can
• 8 Clubs - Cuff (of a shirt sleeve)
• 9 Clubs - Cap
• 10 Clubs - Case
• Jack of Clubs - Club (golf club)
• King of Clubs - King (fat man with a crown)
• Queen of Clubs - Cream (pile of whipped cream)
• Ace Clubs -cat

Hearts

• 2 Hearts - hen
• 3 Hearts - Ham
• 4 Hearts - Hare
• 5 Hearts - Hail
• 6 Hearts - Hash
• 7 Hearts - Hog (a large pig)
• 8 Hearts - Hive (bee hive)
• 9 Hearts - Hub (car hub-cap)
• 10 Hearts - Hose (green garden hose)
• Jack of Hearts - Heart
• King of Hearts - Hinge
• Queen of Hearts - Queen
• Ace Hearts - hat (Fedora hat)

Spades

• 2 Spades - sun
• 3 Spades - sum (Sigma sign)
• 4 Spades - sewer (pipe)
• 5 Spades - sail
• 6 Spades - sushi
• 7 Spades - sock
• 8 Spades - sieve
• 9 Spades - soap
• 10 Spades - suds
• Jack of Spades - Spade
• King of Spades - Sing
• Queen of Spades - Steam
• Ace Spades - suit

Diamonds

• 2 Diamonds - dune
• 3 Diamonds - dummy (pacifier)
• 4 Diamonds - door
• 5 Diamonds - doll
• 6 Diamonds - dish
• 7 Diamonds - deck (of cards)
• 8 Diamonds - dove
• 9 Diamonds - DEB mashed potato
• 10 Diamonds - dice
• Jack of Diamonds - diamond
• King of Diamonds - drink (tray of)
• Queen of Diamonds - dream
• Ace Diamonds - date

Now you will need a Journey of 52 stages to locate the cards in turn.

Shuffle the playing cards then reveal the first card. What is the peg word image? Create an association with the first stage of your journey. Draw the next card, recall the peg word and create an association with the second stage of your journey.

Practice using one suit of cards, then two and work your way up to the full deck. By the way, the world record for memorising a deck of cards is under a minute! With practice you should be able to memorise a deck of cards in under five minutes.

Now that you memorised peg words for the playing cards, you can use these images for other card games. In a later article I will write about "Memory" - a game of matching pairs of cards.
Read more about remembering cards at the Memory Sports web site.

Mind Your Mind - Alzheimer's Disease Awareness

Last Friday, schoolboys were selling fund-raising badges and toys. I noticed the toys included yellow elephants and squeezable brains. How could I resist buying these items with my interest in memory and brain skills?

The fund-raising was for Alzheimer's Australia research projects.

What is Alzheimer's disease and how can it be prevented?

Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia in the elderly and may start as early as mid-fifties. The cause is faster than normal loss of nerve cells in the brain, the cause of which is unknown.

Alzheimer's symptoms include recent loss of memory, loss of initiative and reduced physical activity. There is no cure and treatments are aimed at keeping the patient content. From diagnosis to eventual death takes seven years on average.

Dementia is a mental disorder in which the patient develops confusion, irrational behaviour. inappropriate reactions, poor or jumbled speech patterns, hallucinations and loss of short term memory. It is a permanent condition and unfortunately there is no cure for most causes.

How can you minimise the risk of degeneration of your brain? The Alzheimer's institute has some recommendations for brain fitness. Their campaign is called "Mind Your Mind" and is based on research that shows adopting a 'brain healthy' lifestyle may reduce the risk of developing dementia.

The Mind Your Mind signposts are:

1. Mind Your Brain
2. Mind Your Diet
3. Mind Your Body
4. Mind Your Health Checks
5. Mind Your Social Life
6. Mind Your Habits
7. Mind Your Head

A good way to exercise the Brain is to develop memory skills. Learn memory technqiues and challenge the brain each day. Crossword puzzles, word and puzzles, board games, thinking games like chess and Go.

Read more at the Alzheimers Australia web site where you can download posters and brochures.

Definitions from "The Complete Family Medical Guide" - Dr Warwick Carter - (c) 2003 Hinkle Books

Remembering 20 items with the Journey method

How would you go about remembering these twenty items?

In the previous article I described the Journey method. Now let's see the method in action.

1. Use your Journey

First of all, I need to explain the steps of my journey. The journey starts in my bedroom then visits every room, going out the front door, along the driveway then down the street past my neighbouring houses.

You won't be able to visualise all my steps so I stopped the journey at the letter box. This should be sufficient to explain the process.

- Bedroom
- Ensuite bathroom
- Entertainment area (TV, sofa)
- Bookshelf out the back
- Toilet
- Laundry
- Kitchen
- Dining Room
- Lounge Room
- Front Hall
- Out on the porch (entrance lobby)
- On the driveway
- At the letter box

2. Assign each object to a stage and create a strong image

Bedroom - Lightbulb - Huge lightbulb lying on the bed shining brightly

Ensuite bathroom - Easter Egg - The bathtub is filled with easter eggs. The eggs are overflowing onto the bathroom floor.

Entertainment area - Saucepan - A large saucepan is on the television set. A cooking program is being shown with the saucepan bubbling and overflowing on to the floor/

Laundry - Wineglass - A large wineglass on the washing machine is filled with washing powder and overflowing on to the floor

Kitchen - bicycle - A bicycle has been parked in the kitchen and a chef is seated on the bicycle but still able to reach the bench to chop up vegetables and stir the pots.

Dining Room - Car - A small car is parked in the diniing room and the dining table is balanced on the roof the car. Guests are sitting around the table using very high chairs

Lounge Room - Chair - A very large dining chair is balanced on the lounge suitee. Each dining chair leg is pushed into one of the lounge chairs making it very difficult to sit on the lounge.

Front Hall - Pencil - A large pencil is lying in the hallway very similar to a cannon about to be launched when the front door is opened.

Out on the porch - Postage Stamps - The front door has been wallpapered with stamps and the front doormat is a very large postage stamp.

On the driveway - Toothbrush - The toothbrushes are laid out on the driveway to make an articial grass covering.

At the letter box - Apple - An apple has been pushed into the letter box. An arrow has been fired in to the apple and holds a letter, probably sent by Robin Hood.


3. Review the list

Go back to the beginning of the journey, the bedroom, and recall what was happening there. A lightbulb! Go to the bathroom and what is there? Chocolate easter eggs. Continue the journey to recall the main items.

Review the list about an hour later and you will be surprised to see how much you can recall.

4. Conclusion

The Journey method is very powerful and I am now developing more journeys for remembering different things.


All images from commons.wikipedia.com

The Journey Method (revisited)

The Journey method is a means of remembering items in sequence. The method is based on a mental journey along which is a number of stages or locations. Each stage in the journey is used as an anchor for placing the information you want to remember.

The technique is relatively easy to use as the steps of the journey should be well established in your memory provided you have chosen a familiar mental route.

1. Creating The Journey

Think about a journey you can recall easily. A good starting place is inside your home. Start in your bedroom and follow a path through each room in turn. You could leave your house and continue the journey through the garden all the way to the shopping centre, bus stop or train station.

2. Remembering Information

Information is stored by mentally walking the journey and placing the items at each stage. Pause at the location, then imagine the sights, sounds and smells of the location. Create a vivid mental image of the item you are memorising at this location.

Move on to the next stage of the journey then repeat the process with the next item. When you are finished placing all the items, review the journey and check the information at each stage

3. Recalling The Information

Recalling the items is now a matter of mentally walking the journey and pausing at each location. What is happening at this stage? Use all your senses to help recall the association you made earlier. Once you have recalled the information, move on to the next stage.

What Can You Remember With The Journey Method?

This is a great method of remembering longer lists of items. For example, if you were shown a set of 20 items and asked to remember them all, you could mentally place the items on the stages of your journey.

A deck of cards (52 in total) can be remembered using a longer journey of 52 stages.

Many Journeys

Just using one journey can be confusing for memorising multiple sets of information. Typically you could use the same journey for remembering things that can be forgotten after a while.

Dominic O'Brien (author of Quantum Memory Power and many other books on memory) recommends using different journeys for different purposes. A journey of 31 stages can be used as a mental appointment book. Another journey can he used as a mental intray.

Milestones

I created a mental journey of 52 stages from my bedroom up to the footbridge of the Wahroonga railway station. I created a mental milestone every 10 steps to allow rapid access to different parts of the list. The image I use is of numbers 20 feet high glowing brightly like beacons. The milestones are useful for checking that I haven't forgotten one of the stages.

This journey is going to be used for remembering the sequence of a deck of playing cards. I won't list the stages of my journey in this article as it won't make sense, but I have a printed copy which I used to check my recall when first establishing the journey.

Practice Using The Journey

Use the journey for remembering lists of items. Gradually increase the number of items remembered. For example, remember this list of 10 items: teacup, chess set, milk, light globe, soccer ball, car keys, tape measure, mobile phone, compact disc and postage stamps.

Happy travelling on your mental journeys of memory!

The Number Shape System

In an earlier post I wrote about the Number Rhyme system for converting numbers into memorable images. This required thinking of a word that rhymes with the numbers from zero to ten.

The Number Shape system requires you to think of something that looks like the number.

Look at each number in turn and think what it looks like. This is my list which I have attempted to illustrate above.

0 - soccer ball (football in the UK)
1 - candlestick
2 - swan
3 - handcuffs
4 - sail boat
5 - hook
6 - elephant trunk
7 - axe
8 - hourglass
9 - balloon and string
10 - stick and hoop

The numbers can be used as pegs for associating information just as I described in an earlier article on Number rhymes. A useful application of the Number shapes is explained in Dominic O'Brien's Quantum Memory Power CD set.

When you need to remember numerical information, use the Number Shape image. For example, to remember that Mars has 2 moons, imagine a swan flying gracefully around the planet Mars.

To remember there are 4 horses on a polo team, imagine a sailboat sailing around the polo field with the players hitting the boat.

To remember that Santa Claus's sled is pulled by 8 reindeer you could imagine Santa holding the hourglass shouting out "We're running late!". If you had used a snowman as an image for the number 8, then your mental image would be much easier.

How do I pronounce your name? Just ask the person!

When presented with a list of names, some people feel challenged by the task of saying the names out loud. Naturally there is a fear of making a mistake and offending the person by saying the name correctly.

So what is the secret? It is quite simple! The best way to learn how to pronounce a name is to Ask the Person! You can do this tactfully without offence. If the person's name is unusual or difficult, do you think you will be the first person to seek clarification?

If you are unsure, ASK the person for clarification, LISTEN CAREFULLY to hear the pronunciation, then REPEAT it back for clarification. I am amazed to see people ask for confirmation then ignore what they heard.

I recently attended a Toastmasters speech contest. During the speaker briefing, the contest chairman reviewed the list of contestants and confirmed the pronunciation of the names.
I was surprised at the difficulty this person showed in mastering the pronunciation. Why was this?

Take the first name of Megan. The owner of this name likes to pronounce it Meg-an, not Mee-gan. This is a common variation. But the chairman didn't really listen and said it wrong. We chimed in "It's Megan.. not Meegan!".

The second incident was with the surname of Dokulil. When you see it written you may wonder about the pronounciation. But it is quite simple. The owner of the name said "It is pronounced as it is written - Dock - oo - Lill". Quite simple.

The third name was a Greek surname of Sofatzis. Once again, let the owner of the name pronounce - So - far - tsis. Easy! Hear it, then repeat to confirm your understanding.

Confirming the pronunciation of a name shows respect to the person and shows you were listening. There are many ways to ask tactfully. Ladies named Karen sometimes prounce it Kar-ren. Sarah is sometimes pronounced Sar-ra. Make sure you use the name as its owner pronounced it to you.

"Do you pronounce your name Karen or Kar-rin". And if you make a blunder with the name when reading out loud, the person will probably tell you the correct way. So listen carefully.

A final reminder of the technique:

1. Ask the person to say their name
2. Listen carefully
3. Repeat the name for confirmation.