Sharpening Your Memory

 July 16, 2010

Interview with Dr. Thomas Crook, author of the book The Memory Advantage: Improve Your Memory, Mood And Confidence Throughout Life

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Mike Carruthers:
Having a good memory doesn't necessarily mean you remember everything.

Dr. Thomas Crook:
A good memory is a memory where you remember what is useful to you. And you forget what's best forgotten.
 

Dr. Thomas Crook, author of the book The Memory Advantage: Improve Your Memory, Mood And Confidence Throughout Life…

The memories that we hold tend to change and we tend to modify them and that's a healthy process. We all have a self-image of ourselves and we tend to modify things in the past to fit that self-image.

To deliberately commit something to memory like remembering someone's name…

There are two tricks, really - one is association, the other is visualization. So if somebody says, "Hi, I'm Joe."- if the first thing that comes to mind is Joe Frazier, Joe Lewis, then you have an image. My image there would be boxing gloves. You take boxing gloves, and you look at the person. You look for a distinct visual feature (nose, ears, whatever it is) -say ears. And then you impose the visual image of boxing gloves on the ears and then you form in your mind a clear visual image. It sounds frivolous but actually if you try it, when you see the individual, the name will come immediately to you.

And to learn and remember information, like for a test for example…

You don't want to do what we all did. And that is wait until the last minute and try to cram it all. If it's a test at the end of the week, then begin getting ready for it on Monday and study and rehearse. Cramming at the last minute generally doesn't work.