The Power of Forgetting (16 page)

Josh employed a few techniques. First he’d break the numbers up into sections that seemed to have natural breaks. Different numbers come out of the mouth at different speeds—for instance, the word “seven” takes longer to say than “two.” Then he’d create a song in his head to help him get the numbers out. He’d hear drums playing and group the numbers by certain rhythmic patterns, chiefly in groups of three and four. Because Josh was taking piano lessons at the time and was already musically inclined, this was what
came easily to him. In other words, hearing drums playing to the tune of his numbers came pretty naturally, and it was familiar. As I’ve been emphasizing, any form of memorization that you can relate to is key.

Josh is now a teenager, and even today he can still recite much of that long number just by bringing his drum-filled song to mind. I realize that the thought probably crossed your mind: What was the point of his memorizing such a long and random number? What did he really gain from doing so? First of all, one of the most important lessons that this experience taught him was to know in his heart that he could memorize anything. When students have an overwhelming amount of information to memorize, they can easily feel psychologically overwhelmed and lose confidence in their abilities. Josh, however, can always fall back on his two-hundred-digit experience to remind himself that there’s nothing he can’t do. If he could commit a two-hundred-digit number to memory at the age of seven, he knows he can do practically anything now. He has a certain level of confidence gained from that single feat.

Second, Josh’s mental stunt tapped more storage capacity and power in his brain. It’s practically unfathomable how much we can pack into our brains, and we take their capacity for granted. Theoretically, our brains have the room to hold a lot more information than we realize—upward of ten billion encyclopedia pages’ worth. But in order to do so optimally, we have to continue to work the brain in ways that compel it to absorb, sort, organize, and file away information properly. This includes utilizing the brain’s internal trash compactor, where we throw away the nonessentials we intend to forget in order to make room for the important stuff. Obviously,
the number Josh memorized wasn’t important in and of itself. It was meaningless. But the task of committing that number to his memory was indeed important. And it was a very meaningful lesson.

Most of us have to remember lots of information in life, some that’s important, some that’s not important, and some that we’d like to avoid. With the help of fun memory systems, it’s possible to make anything that we need to retain, from the most boring and tedious details to the critical information, really stick. To navigate the basics of the world requires remembering lots of information—information that can further be used to solve any problem.

Now I’m going to take you through a few ideas on committing phone numbers to memory. On the surface, this may not appeal to you at all, since we have nifty devices called computers and smartphones today to remember our contacts for us. But the overall lesson is an important one, because these strategies can have an impact on how your brain rewires itself to retain other types of information, especially the kind that you cannot rely on anything or anyone but yourself to remember. This exercise also sharpens your ability to forget where appropriate to make your brain stickier for the salient points you need to commit to memory. So I encourage you to try all of these techniques and to find ways of applying them to other types of memory challenges in everyday life. For instance, perhaps the skills you acquire here to instantly memorize a series of numbers will ultimately help you pick up all the engrossing facts embedded in a magazine or newspaper article, thus making you the center of an enthralling conversation at your next social event (perhaps with your boss, who no doubt would be impressed!).

Have you ever lost your cell phone only to realize that you don’t have or know anyone’s number? Many of us today rely on technology completely to be our substitute memory banks. Cell phones can store so much data now that we don’t have to remember numbers anymore as we used to. We simply choose a person from our contacts list and hit “send.” In fact, smart phones can be programmed to include people’s faces and names, so we don’t even see phone numbers anymore on the screen when the phone is dialing. What we see are photos of our friends and family or just a name.

For old-fashioned folks like me, it’s easy to recall the alignment of the alphabet with the numbers on a phone’s keypad. The number 2 could also be
A, B
, or
C
; the number 9 covers
W, X, Y
, and
Z
. The 0 is “OPER”—the direct code for “operator.” But even younger generations today should be pretty familiar with the letters on a keypad by virtue of their texting experience. Those who don’t have a newer cell phone might still be using the letters of the keypad to punch in words. I marvel at how fast some teens can text by single-handedly punching in words via a rapid-fire strike of dozens if not hundreds of numbers.

There are four ways to put phone numbers into memory in an instant. Obviously, the first option is to create a word or sentence from the number itself. The key, though, is for this word to be significant to you and to be linked to the person whose phone number it is. For example, let’s say your friend Joe’s number is 563-7622. When you look at the keypad in reference to this number, you’ll see that I’ve made this one super easy. The numbers 563 could spell “Joe.” To find an appropriate word for 7622, we can apply something
about Joe to the number. What I didn’t tell you is that Joe graduated from the University of Southern California, otherwise known as USC and sometimes referred to as “SoCal.” You could definitely remember 7622 just by thinking of the word SoCa. Every time you have to drum up Joe’s number, you just think “Joe SoCa,” and you’ll be able to spell it out using the numbers.

Don’t know how to deal with the numbers 1 and 0, which don’t have any letters attached to them? It’s totally up to you how you treat these numbers. One way would be to move the
A
over to the number 1 so that the number 2 is just
B
and C. Since it’s natural to associate 1 and
A
—the first letter in the alphabet—this is an easy designation to make. You could do the same for the 0 by assigning the
Z
to it, but you could also just make the 0 equivalent to the letter O, since 0 looks like the letter
O
anyhow. This means you lose the
O
from the number 6 on the keypad. However you create your mental keypad, just make sure that it makes sense to you so that you can not only recall it but also use it. That’s all that really matters.

Another option is to look at the pattern created on the keypad as you dial the number. In the example we just used, 563-7622, we start in the center with 5, go right to 6, then up to 3. The 7622, however, is not so easy to spot. It gets a little messy. This number might not be the best one to memorize using pattern recognition. But other numbers might be ideal for this way of thinking. Take, for instance, a number such as 456-1379: The 456 is easy because these are the three numbers in the second row on the keypad; 1379 constitutes the four “corners” of the main keypad. So if you refer to this pattern when you need to recall this number by heart, you could picture the keypad in your head and find the numbers.

The third tactic is to look at the mathematics of a number, especially the patterns. Say you have the number 475-1288. The first three numbers are quarters in the sense that 4 could be seen as ¼, and 75 could be seen as ¾. With 1288, some people might instantly see that the number 88 is 12 less than 100. This may not seem so intuitive at first, but once you start to search for patterns in numbers, you’ll be able to pick up this skill rather quickly.

Finally, the fourth strategy for remembering numbers is to attach a story or facts to them. Let’s say you’re trying to remember 4561, the pass code you need at work to get into the garage. The pattern this number creates on the keypad doesn’t do much for you, and you can’t seem to find a good, memorable word to make out of it. You also don’t instinctually see an obvious math equation or numerical trend in the set of numbers. Instead, what pops into your head are two facts: World War II ended in 1945, and your spouse was born in 1961. There you have it. Remembering just the last two digits from each of those facts—45 and 61—you’ll be able to
recall this code. Whether or not you can link World War II to your spouse is another story! Or perhaps you can find an event and date more appropriate to your personal story and match up the numbers. This is a prime example of thinking outside the box.

Of course, you can always use any combination of these strategies. Because I know a lot about sports figures, I use athletes’ names and uniform numbers a lot, making up little sentences. Do what works for you and is relevant to your life. Just break the numbers down and try to see them differently.

Names tend to be pretty abstract on the surface. For many people, it’s easier to recognize faces than to remember names, which is why the secret to mastering name recall is to apply a strategy whereby a feature of that person tells you his or her name.

Being able to remember names comes in handy when you’re in a business setting or want to impress someone. Let’s say you’re attending a cocktail party for work and have a meeting with your boss the next day. Imagine being able to engage in an engrossing conversation with your boss just because you were able to remember certain people’s names from the night before. Or let’s say that you’ve represented your company at an important convention and need to report back to the CEO. Adding people’s names to the stories you share not only gives your stories more life but also shows that you paid attention. It indicates that you’ve got an amazing memory, which is a serious asset in the eyes of a boss. It’s also a serious asset to small-business owners who want to
remember the name of every single client or customer. If you own a store, being able to call people by their names when they enter could be the secret to keeping them coming back again and again. The same holds true even for doctors who maintain small practices and want to retain their patients over the long term. Those who can establish that immediate rapport with people upon greeting them enhance these important relationships and increase their success.

Obviously, there are names that have built-in reminders. Meaningful words can be substituted for names like Goldman, Payne, and Fanning. We can picture a “gold man,” someone who is always in a lot of “pain,” and a person who is “fanning” herself. Then we have names that hold meaning via an association with an object or place we can picture in our minds. The name Summer reminds you of a season, the name Dole reminds you of the pineapple brand (or the former senator), and the name Casey reminds you of the musical group KC and the Sunshine Band. But what about other names that don’t mean much of anything to us when we first hear them? What about names like Byster, Asderaki, and Karasek? We’re more likely to encounter names like these than the easy ones. And they rarely have meaning, but they do have lots of sounds to them. They might as well be a foreign language.

I like to use three strategies to commit a name to memory. The first strategy is simply hearing the name to begin with! So many of us fail to establish original awareness of a name when we first hear it. So it’s not that we forget names; it’s that we never hear them clearly at the start and end up with only gobbledygook to remember.

I think it’s human nature not to want to ask someone
to repeat his or her name. We don’t want to look stupid. To that I say, get over it! If you don’t catch a name clearly when you’re introduced to someone, ask again. And if it’s not an easy or common name, ask the person to spell it. That’s not rude, and there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. If anything, the person will be flattered that you’re interested enough to want to remember their name. Even if you don’t think that you’ll ever see this person again in your life, get the name right the first time so that you won’t be caught off guard when you do meet again after all.