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Unlimited Memory by Kevin Horsley -Part 1

 As you already know from the title, this is a book review blog. As this is the first time I am talking about books, let me tell you that I mostly read books related to productivity, motivation or something that I want to learn. I also read fiction but that is very limited. I have been planning to begin The Song of Ice & Fire Series, but I haven’t yet. One of my favourite books is Attitude Is Everything by Jeff Keller and in fiction, I like A Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I will talk more about this and many other books that I have already read and the ones which I will read. You can buy yourself a copy of Unlimited Memory by Kevin Horsley from this link.

Before diving into the book, let me tell you about my obsession with memory and IQ. If I talk about my childhood, I would say that I was quite intelligent, but I never realized that I lacked the confidence to believe in myself, a story for another time. Even now, I have a pretty good brain, some might envy it. But if I talk about my memory, at a time I could remember 10 pieces of information on average. An average human being can hold 7 pieces of information. So, you can say that I had an average memory. Then I watched The Big Bang Theory, and Sheldon Cooper has an eidetic memory. My curiosity forced me to search what eidetic memory is. I was astonished to find, how is something like that even possible. I wanted an eidetic memory so badly. Soon I started to focus on small details, I started to link details of events with other special occasions, instead of mugging formulas I used my imagination to keep them in mind, I even started to memorize phone numbers from my contacts. Through this technique, I was able to remember many things, dates, events. In about 6months or so, I developed my memory much. For me, it wasn’t enough. Then I bought this book in March 2020.

The book is divided into 3 parts, the first part is like motivation to read the book and start to implemented the techniques in life, the second part contains the actuals techniques or methods to be precise and in the last part, the author has talked about continuously using the memory methods in daily life.

The First part is “Concentrate” and has three chapters. I won’t talk about this part much, it’s quite simple, I want to talk in detail about the main methods and techniques. The first chapter is Excuse Me, in this, the author talks about the excuses we give instead of taking action. The second chapter is Never Believe a Lie, in this chapter the author has discussed the misconceptions of society about memory. Many people think that a good memory is something you are born with, it is true, but it is also true that if you aren’t born with some gifts, still you can improve your memory. The author knows that memory can be improved because he has done it, I know. After all, I have done it, and soon enough the readers of my blog will also know. The third chapter in this part is Be Here Now.

The second part is “Create and Connect”. This is where you put your actual efforts. The first chapter is Bring Information to Life. Very simple concept, whatever you want to remember, imagine it, create graphics and sounds in your mind. If you want to remember your shopping list, create a short-animated movie in your mind, use cartoons, your favourite film stars, actors, sounds, anything. Just make sure to highlight the contents of the shopping list in your mind. Link each item with the next one, for example, if you have slippers followed by flour and tea, the scene in your mind could be that you are wearing the slippers, and while making tea, you added flour by mistake. But items are not the only thing that we need to memorize in daily life, there are numbers, definitions, people’s names, and some other things. Well, there’s no way we can add big chunky numbers in our stories and movies, or is there? Most of you won’t be knowing the method to memorize numbers or ordered lists, but we will cover that.

The second chapter in this part is Use Your Car to Remember. Personally, I don’t use this method much because I don’t own a car yet and can’t relate to this. The idea is to use something familiar, something which you use daily, something which you can see vividly even in sleep, like your car to memorize multiple pieces of information by linking the short-term memory to long term memory. Now your car has many distinguished places, driver’s seat, passenger’s seat, dashboard, hood, roof, trunk, wheels, number plate. If you have listed to remember, convert the words in that list into images or animations, then place them in different places in your car. This way you be able to remember things stored in short term memory by anchoring them to your long-term memory.

The third chapter is Use Your Body to Remember. This is the exact same as Use Your Car to remember, instead of your car, you use your body. Starting from the hair, forehead, nose, chin, neck, chest, stomach, palm, thighs, legs and feet. The concept is again the same, anchoring short term memory to long term memory. The one benefit that the Body Method provide over the Car Method is that you can memorize an ordered list. Moving from head to feet in a specific order.

The fourth chapter is Pegging Information. The first part of this chapter is Peg Method of Memory. First, you need to assign pictures to numbers. For example, one-bun, two-screw, three-tree, four-door, five-hive, six-stick, seven-dwarfs, eight-gate, nine-shine, ten-ben10 and so on. Now whenever you hear two, the first thing that should come to your mind is a screw, a very distinct picture of a screw. You can create your own list with anything that you like. Now if you need to remember something, in a very strict order. You can use images of numbers to link images of what you need to remember. This way it is very easy to assign numbers to a list, just include these images of numbers in your story. The second part is The Shape Method, it is again the same as Peg Method. In Peg Method, we have used rhyming words to create images corresponding to numbers. In The Shape Method, you use shapes of numbers to create images of them. The rest is the same. I don’t personally use The Shape Method because I am very comfortable with The Peg Method. You can decide for yourself.

The fifth chapter is In the First Place. This method is also called the Journey Method. This is one of the best memory methods that I know of. It is very effective. Close your eyes for a while, and visualize your house, visualize it in every detail, the couch, the dining table, your room, your bed, other rooms, etc. In this method, you are going to place images/animation in your house, like a juggler in juggling on the kitchen island. Try to make visuals funny and as descriptive as possible. You can use any place that you have embedded in your memory. I use this method more than any other. You can hold up to 50 or even more pieces of information through this.

That is enough for today, there is still almost half of the book remaining to discuss, Linking Thoughts, Remembering Names Method, Remembering Numbers Method, The Card Exercise, etc. I will shortly post a blog in continuation to this. You can subscribe to my blogs for updates. Soon I will be sending a weekly newsletter to my subscribers. Your suggestions are welcome in the comments section.

 

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