To remember in detail all the activities you were involved in yesterday, if you’re like me you begin at the start of the day and “walk” yourself through the locations to remember what you did at each place. Then, if I ask you what you had for lunch yesterday, you probably catch an image of yourself in situ over your food. Perhaps you were at your kitchen table, at your work station or in a café or restaurant. Even if you ate on the move, you’d probably picture yourself wherever you were, walking and simultaneously munching. From this reference point – whichever it is – you’d work backwards and recall what you were eating. Job done.
Places provide anchors for our memories – they are the reference points by which we plot our movement through time. I believe that without these, our thought processes and specifically our memories would be far more chaotic, random and impossible to recapture. If I’m asked to give an overview of my life, I plot my movements through all the different towns and villages I’ve lived in. To reveal my experiences with education, I recall first the images of the different schools I went to. For my career, I start by picturing myself in each of the buildings where I have worked.
The three keys to developing a highly efficient memory are Association, Location and Imagination (think of Mohammad ALI to help you remember them) – and once I’d devised the Journey Method, I’d finally arrived at the ultimate solution to the challenge I’d set myself when I first saw Creighton Carvello memorize that deck of cards on TV.
I’ve told you about how I used the Journey Method to memorize my first deck of cards, but to introduce you to using the method yourself I want to take you specifically through my thought processes as I use a short, seven-stage journey around a typical home to memorize a list of items.
Here are the first seven stages on my Home Journey:
| STAGE 1 | Bedroom window |
| STAGE 2 | Bedside table |
| STAGE 3 | Landing |
| STAGE 4 | Bathroom |
| STAGE 5 | Linen cupboard |
| STAGE 6 | Living room |
| STAGE 7 | Kitchen |
First, picture yourself walking the journey in logical steps. Don’t worry if this route doesn’t exactly match your own home. You can adapt the method to fit your house later on in the process. For now, learn this route so that you can walk it in your mind’s eye backwards and forwards. Once you’re confident you can do this, you’re ready to use it as a set of hooks for a list of seven items. Again, we’ve talked about how people are easier to hook on to journey stages than objects, but objects provide good test cases while you’re getting used to the method (you’re also more likely, in your daily life, to want to memorize objects – in the form of shopping lists, or perhaps gifts given to you on your birthday so that you can write thank-you notes).
When, during my trials with playing cards, I came to the conclusion that using a journey was the most effective way to memorize a list of information, I thought I had developed a new system all of my own. Some years later it came as a bit of a blow to discover that this method was actually thousands of years old! In oral traditions the world over, elders told stories to preserve their customs and cultures for future generations. It turned out that, with papyrus for writing in scarce supply, the ancient Greeks had been using “loci” (places) as an aide-mémoire considerably before I discovered it! So, how did they come up with the system?
The story goes that the ancient Greek poet Simonides of Ceos (c.556– c.468BC) narrowly escaped death when he was called away from a victory banquet to meet two young men outside the palace. When he arrived outside, Simonides couldn’t find his visitors, and turned to go back to the feast. However, as he did so an earthquake struck and the banqueting hall collapsed, killing the guests inside. Later, Simonides was asked to identify the bodies of the other diners, which he did by recalling who had been sitting where at the table. Historians claim that this was the birth of the system of memory loci. From then on ancient Greek orators placed elements of their stories at certain places along a mental route in order to recall the story in the right order.
While I have to admit I was a bit shocked to discover that I wasn’t even close to being the first person ever to use such a system, I was also reassured – if a system like the Journey Method had been good enough for the ancient Greeks, I must have struck gold.
As strange as it may sound, I recommend that you don’t approach this exercise with the intention of making lots of effort to memorize the items. The whole magic of the Journey Method is that it’s virtually effortless – you don’t have to try too hard, because your powerful imagination and skill at making associations along the familiar journey will result in you automatically recalling the items in their original sequence. Don’t forget to hold on to your first associations, which are the ones most likely to come back to you. Here are your items:
FEATHER • TEASPOON • DECKCHAIR • SNAIL • UMBRELLA • ROSES • HAMMOCK
STAGE 1
The image that springs to my mind is of a white feather that slowly zigzags down past the bedroom window. Try to make sense of what you imagine to make this image stick. Think of a logical reason why the feather would be floating past – perhaps a bird has dropped it, or the wind has blown it from a nest in your guttering; or perhaps it is blowing out of your bedroom window, having come free from your feather duvet or pillow. Choose the association that feels most natural and logical to you.
STAGE 2
At stage 2, I see a teaspoon on the bedside table. That’s pretty straightforward, so to help the image stick, I have to ask why it’s there. Perhaps it’s been left behind from the morning cup of tea, or maybe it was left there after I took a nighttime dose of medicine? Remember how important it is to use your senses to firm up your associations (see p.26)? I want to imagine that I lick the teaspoon, hoping the taste on it will give me a clue as to why it’s there and what it has been used for. I fully immerse myself in the scenario.
STAGE 3
As I move out to the landing, I find a deckchair blocking my path. There’s lots of opportunity here to use your senses. What colour is the chair? Is its frame wooden or metal and is it smooth or rough? Do you have to step around the chair or do you have to lift it to move it out of the way? I also ask myself why would someone have left it there? Were they waiting to put it back in the loft? Perhaps a child brought it upstairs to play with it? See yourself sidestepping the chair or collapsing it – remember you’re the star of your mind-movie, so do what seems natural. Perhaps you feel a bit agitated or frustrated about the obstruction – all the better if you can use your emotions to make the scene feel more real. Remember that if you’re actually part of the action, you’re more likely to trick your brain into thinking it’s really happened (see pp.39–40).
STAGE 4
This stage poses slightly more problems, because a clear line of logic is harder to find. However, this just means that it’s time to make one of those associations you practised in Chapter 6. Are there snails all over the bathtub, up the walls, and over the basin? Or can you just see a single snail that’s left trails of silvery slime across the tiles on the floor? Perhaps there’s only one snail but it’s huge and oversized? Personally, I find that exaggerating size interferes with my need for logic and unnecessarily increases the workload on my brain, so I’d probably go for something more believable (the slime trails, perhaps).
STAGE 5
Any cupboard on my journeys simply has to be opened! I imagine myself pulling back the door and a bright red umbrella falling out. The colour is important in the process of memorization because it makes the association more vivid. I also try to conjure up the sound of the umbrella as it clunks awkwardly to the floor. Why was the umbrella in the cupboard in the first place? Is it closed or open? Is it a type that’s small and compact or is it a large umbrella with a long handle? Who does it belong to? Do you pick it up to put it back?
This room smells of fragrant roses. On top of the coffee table is a vase bursting with bright yellow blooms. You can make them any colour you like. I chose yellow as it’s a happy colour – this is how the recipient of the roses may have felt when she or he received them. Why were they given? Perhaps they’re a birthday gift?
STAGE 7
when I can’t find any obvious sense to an association, I put myself inside the scene. I picture a hammock hanging from kitchen-cupboard handles, blocking the path to the back door. I throw myself into the hammock and imagine swinging from side to side and bumping into the refrigerator in the process.
Your journey is complete, and now I bet that you’ll be able to answer the following questions with ease (and then certainly by replaying the scene in your head until you come to the answer):
• What item was in the bathroom?
• Where were the roses?
• What is the fourth item on the list?
• Which item is between the feather and the snail?
• Can you name all seven items in order?
Now try the exercise on the following pages, and then read the conclusion on page 62.
Now it’s time for you to test the Journey Method for yourself – this time I won’t put ideas into your head, because your own associations will be much stronger than links that I make for you. Follow the steps and as always try not to edit the first links that come to you, but do try to make them as vivid as possible, using all your senses.
1 Devise a route around your house consisting of 12 stages. If you run out of indoor places, extend the journey through your garden and along the road. Make sure the route is logical – don’t make stage 1 the bedroom, stage 2 the kitchen and stage 3 your en suite, for example. Second, don’t return to a room once you’ve left it. Write down the list of stages if it helps you to plan your journey – this is what I did when I first developed my own routes back in 1987.
2 Run through the journey in your mind over and over until you can recall it forwards and backwards without thinking. It may help to actually walk the journey a few times, too, if it’s practical to do so.
3 Once you’re confident you know your journey inside out, apply the Journey Method to memorize the following list of 12 items in the correct order. Allow your vivid imagination to come out to play – remember, use logic and creativity and your senses and emotions. As you move along the route, don’t be tempted to look back over the list to refresh your memory. Trust the power of your mind and have faith that the journey will preserve the items and their order. Take as long as you need, but usually a couple of minutes is enough.
CAKE • HORSE • NEWSPAPER • KETTLE • WHIP • CANNON • BANANA • TELEPHONE • ELVIS PRESLEY • TELESCOPE • BELL • COFFEE
4 Now, cover the list and see how many items you can recall in the exact order. Write the items down. Some will come back to you more easily than others. For example, Elvis Presley was probably one of the easy ones – remember how I discovered that people work far better with the Journey Method than objects, which is why I turned all my playing cards into people? A score of nine or more items is very good.
5 Now, to prove to yourself the thoroughness of the method, answer the following test questions:
• Which item on the list is between Elvis and the bell?
• Which is the third item on the list?
• Which number position on the list is the cannon?
• Which item follows the banana?
• How many items can you recall correctly in reverse order?
Recalling the items in reverse is a toughie. So, congratulations if you got all 12 right. Don’t worry if you didn’t – it will get easier with practice.
Here’s another question for you. Which of the following functions of the left and right hemispheres of your brain have you used for the practical elements of this chapter? And how many of your senses did you use? The answer is – the lot!
Thanks to your left brain, you used sequence, logic, speech, analysis and numeracy (for example, to work out which was the fourth item on the list on page 59), while your right brain gave you imagination, colour, dimension (the size and shape of the objects) and spatial awareness (a sense of location and place). Your senses gave you taste, touch, sight, smell and sound. The two sides of your brain and your senses were all working in harmony.
The exercise on the previous pages is one of the most important in this book, because for the first time you’re devising your own journey and using it to memorize a list of items I’ve given you. I can tell you everything I know, think or have discovered about the Journey Method, but until you start using it for yourself, including devising your own journeys, it will still be an abstract principle that has no bearing on your ability to memorize day to day. I love this bit in the tutoring process, because it’s now that everything I’ve tried to explain so far comes together and you can see for yourself the magic of the Journey Method.