Topic 1: Association of Ideas - Tutorial 1
For your first exercise in Association, let's assume you want to memorise these ten everyday, unrelated items, in sequence: banana, car, newspaper, sausage, pen, tree, watch, tie, television, football. In order to do this, you are going to consciously apply the basic memory rule defined in the Introduction, but with an an important addition - You Can Remember Any New Information If You Associate It To Something You Already Know In Some Ludicrous Way.
First, picture a banana in your mind. You can't apply the rule yet. But now we come to the next item - car. If we assume that you already know banana, you can now apply the memory rule. You simply need to create a ridiculous picture, or image, in your mind's eye - an association between banana and car.
In order to do this you need a ludicrous, far-fetched, crazy, illogical, absurd, - picture or image to associate the two items. What you don't want is a logical or sensible picture. For example, a sensible picture might be - someone sitting in a car eating a banana. Although this would not be something you would expect to see every day, it is in not in any way bizarre or impossible.
An impossible, crazy, picture might be - a gigantic banana is driving a car along the motorway, or you open a car door and billions of bananas tumble out and knock you over. These are ludicrous, illogical pictures.
What you need to do is select one of these pictures, or a crazy image you thought of yourself, and see it your mind for just a fraction of a second. Be careful not to picture the words banana and car. You need to see the action you've selected - the huge banana driving the car, or the mountain of bananas tumbling out of a car, or whichever image you've decided on. See that picture in your mind's eye for just an instant, right now.
The next item on your list is newspaper. Assuming that you already remember car, you now need to form a ridiculous association in your mind between car and newspaper. For example, you open a newspaper and a car leaps out of the pages and knocks you over. Or you are driving a huge rolled up newspaper instead of a car. Or you are driving a car when a massive sheet of newspaper appears in front of you, which the car rips as you drive through it. Choose one of these images, or one you conjured up yourself, and picture it clearly for a split second.
Sausage is the next item to remember, so you now need to form a ludicrous association between newspaper and sausage. You could picture yourself eating rolled up newspapers and eggs for breakfast instead of sausages and eggs, or you are reading a gigantic sausage which has lots of news printed on it, or a paperboy is walking along a street pushing very long sausages through letterboxes instead of newspapers. See one of those crazy images.
Next on the list is pen. Associate it to sausage. See yourself trying to write with a sausage instead of a pen, or you cut into a sausage with a knife and fork and gallons of ink shoot out of the sausage into your face. Picture one of these scenarios clearly in your mind.
The next item is tree. Picture millions of pens growing on a tree instead of leaves, or a colossal fountain pen is growing in your garden instead of a tree. Be sure to see the image clearly.
Watch is the next item on the list. Picture a tree with lots of branches which are wearing giant wristwatches, or you look at your watch and see that there is a tree growing out of it, with roots curling up your arm. Select one of these images, or one of your own, and see it for an instant in your mind's eye.
Tie comes next. See yourself wearing an elongated wristwatch instead of a tie, or an enormously long tie is tied around your wrist instead of a watch, so long that it drags along the floor.
The next item to be remembered is television. You might picture yourself with a television hanging around your neck instead of a tie, or you switch on the television and a vast, horribly spotted tie bursts out of the screen, unrolling itself for yards and yards. Select a crazy association between tie and television, and see the picture in your mind.
The final item on the list is football. See a football match where the players are kicking around a television instead of a football. Or you are watching a football game on television when millions of footballs suddenly burst throught the screen and hit you in the face. Picture one of those images.
If you have really tried to see all those pictures, you will now remember the list of ten items in sequence, both forwards and backwards.