| Why did I buy this book? I am a middle-aged professor, comfortably situated, and needing neither to impress anyone, nor to make more money, nor to "take exams." But for me, it is a joy at any age to improve my mind. This book is excellently designed for self-study. The first part gives you a wide variety of standard techniques, explaining clearly the kind of memory task where each applies, e.g., sequential versus non-sequential. The second part allows you to practice and develop your new skills on 11 different academic subjects, which run the full gamut of humanities and sciences, such as might be encountered in high school or college. One very effective feature: throughout both parts of the book, the author follows brief tutorial sections on the techniques--seldom longer than a page--with an exercise where you can solidify your grasp and get immediate feedback. I think when you see how well you are doing, you'll be strongly encouraged to continue. This is also an advantage over the well-known Memory Book by Lorayne and Lucas, which I once attempted to study; in that book, the chapters were fairly long, and at the end the authors might suggest you make up an exercise on your own to test the new technique. However, passing a test you made up yourself seems a little chintzy! Or maybe, my creativity was not up to the task. In any case, I gave up on that book after about 2 chapters, notwithstanding all the amusing anecdotes that fill it. In the second half, I wanted to strengthen my grasp, so I did all the subjects outside my own strong area (physics, math). These are areas I normally have neither much interest nor aptitude, but the techniques came through with flying colors. Out of the 43 exercises I did, with 319 separate items of information, I missed only 10.5 items (and I graded myself conservatively). In other words, my score was 96.7% correct. Now I don't know how well I would have done w/o those techniques, but my memory is entirely mediocre--I am one of those unfortunates who turns the page on a book and sometimes cannot remember what he just read--and it is very doubtful that my usual "brute force" techniques, applied over a similar study time, would have netted me a retention score above 33-50%. At first glance, techniques of memory play a role somewhat similar to that of glasses on a near-sighted person: they do not enhance his natural biologic capacity, but they give him "workarounds" using other factors at his disposal, in particular, visual and verbal associations built up with help of his own creativity. I was surprised and delighted, as I worked through the exercises, to discover in myself an ability to make creative mental associations I never knew I had. So in this sense, it seems that the techniques did change my brain for the better. I imagine that the techniques, if used often, may become more and more second nature and eventually even "first nature." I am so glad I found this book: unlike many a self-help book, it did live up to its promises. Dr. Browning, thank you for making available such a readable and well-structured guide! |
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