How to Remember Anything: The Proven Total Memory Retention System (5 page)

6.
Multiply the data audionym. Your association can usually be strengthened by visualizing the data audionym multiplied by hundreds or even millions.

7.
Use all of your senses, if necessary, to strengthen your association. Immerse yourself in the illogical association.
See
it!
Hear
it!
Feel
it!
Smell
it!
Taste
it!

8.
The more action you can incorporate into your association, the easier it will be to remember.

9.
Personal involvement. Involve yourself, when possible, in your associations. When it is you who is involved, it will make more of an impression on your mind.

10.
As a general rule, if the association is possible in real life, it is not illogical enough.

The known audionym or physical location will always be clear to you. In the following examples, they appear in
bold
type:

1.
When you see a
face
and want to remember the name.

2.
When you want to call a
person
or
place
and need the number.

3.
When you need your
car keys
or
glasses,
or
another item,
and wonder where you put them.

4.
When you think of a
state
and wish to remember its capital city.

5.
When you think of a
book title
and wish to remember its author.

6.
When you think of a
food
and want to know its calories.

7.
When you think of a
motion picture
and want to recall the actors and actresses.

The guidelines for creating illogical associations are simple, but you must practice and apply these rules until they become “a way of life.” Association is the most basic and surely one of the most important of all memory techniques. You will use the association technique in every memory system I teach you in this book.

It is necessary to know how the association technique works before you apply it to specific information. It’s sort of like learning the individual notes on the musical scale before applying the notes to a specific song.

MORE PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS USING ASSOCIATION

So far, you have learned three memory techniques: the numbered Cube, the audionym, and association. The only reason to create audionyms is to change what you hear and read into things you can see. Associations are created in order to rapidly learn and easily recall information. Here are some practical applications for the association technique:

Data	Known
artist of a	painting
date of an	event
definition of a	word
price of an	item
combination to a	lock
meaning of a	foreign word
formula for a	math problem
symbol for a	chemical element
dates of the	zodiac signs
area code for a	city
definition of a	part of speech
code for an	airport
number of an	airline flight
departure time of	transportation

Some of my students have actually made a hobby of remembering notable achievements and statistics. This is another natural application of the association technique. Again, it is necessary to have a known and the information you want to remember:

Information	Known
highest	waterfall
longest	river
tallest	building
most	home runs
fastest	runners
largest	planet
youngest	president

Soon you will find limitless practical applications for this powerful association technique.

PROJECT INFORMATION VS. RANDOM INFORMATION

I place everything I want to remember into just two categories: project information and random information. Some examples of project information are learning a world language, the periodic table of elements, the presidents and their terms of office, the states and capitals, medical terminology, and so on. With these types of projects, you have time to analyze what you want to remember.

Some examples of random information are remembering a person’s name, a phone number, an address, the author of a book, directions, or cards that are played in a card game. With these types of information, you have to create a way to remember the information “on the spot.” There is no time to analyze it.

Following are some examples of the association technique used in project information. I recognize that you may have no interest in the content of the information. Again, what is important is not the content, but the methodology. Simply by “seeing how it is done” for various subjects, you will learn how to use the system on your own for unlimited applications.

ASSOCIATION APPLIED TO MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY

The most successful of my applied learning systems so far is the course on medical terminology. It was first published in 1974 and is the world’s first commercially successful applied memory system. More than 2.5 million individuals have completed the course in more than 10,000 academic and business institutions worldwide.

A medical term is made up of elements or word parts called roots, prefixes, and suffixes. The root element is always the subject or main topic of the medical term—frequently a body part. The prefix element appears at the beginning of a medical term and changes, in some manner, the meaning of the medical term or makes it more specific. The suffix element appears at the end of a medical term (after the root element), and frequently describes a condition of a body part or an action to a body part. A medical term may include more than one root element.

The course teaches 350 elements (prefixes, roots, and suffixes) that can be combined into more than 11,000 complex medical terms. Here are a few examples and a description of how the system works: