You Can Have a Photographic Memory

I memorized these for the first time last night:
1. Golden goose egg, 2. Firefly, 3. Paint roller, 4. Diamond ring, 5. Stop sign, 6. Kitchen table, 7. Ticket stub, 8. Leather jacket, 9. Ice cream cone, 10. ATM machine, 11. Scalpel, 12. Champagne bottle, 13. Stroller, 14. Couch, 15. Rose bush, 16. Swimsuit, 17. Apple core, 18. Candy cane, 19. Cowboy boots, 20. Train.
And I just remembered them all again. The only one I miss is #17. It’s “Rotting apple.” I didn’t cheat. Let’s see if I can do one more list and then I’ll share whose fault it is for remembering all of this.
1. Rusty razor blade, 2. Goalie mask, 3. Red VW bug, 4. Blender, 5. Coffee cup, 6. Brown paper bag, 7. Chess set with broken white king piece, 8. Marble statue, 9. Megaphone, 10. Shower curtain, 11. Canopy bed, 12. Plaid wool blanket, 13. Pencil, 14. Salt shaker, 15. Wooden baseball bat, 16. Private jet, 17. White apron, 18. Button, 19. Superman costume, 20. Fluorescent light bulb.
W00t! Mike “The Toilet Paper Enterepreneur” Michalowicz does a beautiful job of explaining how to have a photographic memory in 30 minutes. I didn’t sleep well last night and yet, I managed to memorize 40 items. The key is to have a base list of 10 items. I stole his (hey, he offered!).
1. Gun
2. Shoe
3. Tree
4. Floor
5. Bee hive
6. Sticks
7. Heaven
8. Skate
9. Slime
10. Hen
Notice these words rhyme with the numbers and they’re things you can visualize. “Alive” is not as a good a visualizer as “bee hive.” Sticks and slime give me all kinds of fodder involving my young sons. I visualized #6 as “kitchen table” by thinking how the boys brought in the sticks and put them all over the kitchen table as they always make a mess of the table. Then #16 is “swimsuit” because the kitchen table is right by our back door to the pool. They’d track in dirt and other things sticking to their swim suits right into the kitchen.
Since “brown paper bag” is the other #6, I visualized the boys collecting sticks and putting them in a brown paper bag because they always love to bring stuff in from outside and make a mess in the house. We can’t take much on an airplane, so I figure my boys can bring their brown paper bag full of sticks on a “private jet” as we can do whatever we want if we had one 🙂
Think I have a great memory already? Think again. I have a weird memory — remembering things I don’t want or need to remember and yet forgetting things I need to remember. I’m working on making this a habit.
Read Mike’s entry on how to improve your memory. Another good memory process is the Roman Room Technique. It also uses visualization. Ron White who can memorize impressive stuff like a long list of numbers explains his process.
Can I use this to remember all the US presidents again? Yikes! Too tired to try.
Do you remember things well? What process do you use?