HOW YOU CAN REMEMBER

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 72, 18 December 1937, Page 22

HOW YOU CAN REMEMBER

Cultivating A Memory

You can learn and remember almost anything If you repeat It often enough. That is the oldest and jbiost primitive aid to memorising, says a writer in an overseas journal. A second aid to memory is to bring as many of your senses as possible to bear on what you want, to remember. There is a definite scientific reason for I his. The impression that you receive through tlie sense of sight is recorded on an entirely different cell from that transmitted through any other sense. All cells are connected, however, In the nervous system, so that the more impressions you get of a thing the more strings you have with which to pull it out. of the subconscious min’d at will. This principle is important in cultivating a memory for names and faces. A man who Is employment manager for a great industrial company once had a very ordinary memory for names and faces' Upon his appointment as employment manager, it. became highly important for him to remember people. So he set out to develop this faculty. When any person came to him looking for work, or for a transfer within the organisation, he made sure at the start that he knew the name exactly. If there was the slightest doubt about the spelling he wouTil ask for it. write the name down, and look carefully at what lie lin’d written, in his conversation with tile applicant this man would repeat the name again and again. Meanwhile, he was studying the man’s face, expression, and mannerisms. By the time the conversation was over he had a definite mental picture of the person. In a long period of time that emplovment manager met tens of thousands of people—and thereafter when he saw any one of them again he could cal] him by name even after months and years. One of the most effective ways to improve your memory is to cultivate the power of attention. Most people do not focus sharply on one tiling at a time. Few of us pay exact attention to the things we see flay after day. You may have played cards all your life, but can you tell whieh of the kings pre-

sent a full face to you and which a profile? Ddes a cat climb down out of a tree head first or hindwise? Does a cow get up first on its fore legs or its hind legs? These particular facts are not very important, but they illustrate the point.

A fourth important factor in memory is association. We remember a certain man’s name because it is the same as that of a boyhood friend. Another important factor is interest. We seldom experience trouble in recalling the names of people who can be useful to us or to whom we are greatly attracted. A sixth requisite to memory is understanding. If you do not fully understand a certain subject or situation you cannot he expected to remember it. You must, know the logical relations between all the given facts. College students who jot down a mass of jumbled facts never have the grasp , of the subject shown by the students who arrange notes in logical order. The seventh basic principle of memory improvement is selection No one can remember everything. The fault with many people who would like to Improve their memory is that they use a £2OO tool for sixpenny jobs. For instance. they try to memorise a medley of telephone numbers and addresses, when to make a memorandum of them would stive their precious mental machinery for more important work. If you find difficulty in remembering what you read, make a brief daily selection of something of real importance, and read it with extreme care. Stop at the end of every paragraph and see if you can remember just what was in it. if you are at all hazy rend it over and over again. This may seem stern discipline—but your frayed mental machinery may have need of that kind of training badly. Most people read far too much and far too casually. The inveterate newspaper reader who skims over the entire contents of a daily paper is as bad as the woman who races through two or three novels a week. Either practice is sufficient to strip the gears of the stoutest memory.