THE IMPORTANCE OF A GOOD MEMORY
Are you one of those people with a good memory, someone who can remember anyone's name at a party and never forgets an appointment? Or do you have the misfortune to remember little of what you read and hear, and are generally absent-minded?
Having a good memory is useful at all stages of our life. Being able to remember facts and figures helps us sail through our exams at college and when we are at work, we are superbly efficient. On the other hand, if we suffer from a poor memory, we struggle with our studies, writing out notes for ourselves hoping this will help the information to "stick". And of course at work, our office will be in a state of chaos, with little reminders and forgotten bits of paper all over the place.
But the idea that there is nothing we can do about bad memory is wrong. For a start, when we want to remember something, for example someone's name, we should try to concentrate on it and use it as often as possible in conversation. But by far the most useful technique is to build up a visual picture around the name to create an amusing mental image of it.. In other words we can learn to remember the name by association.
In short, we might have a naturally a poor memory but there are ways of improving it and remembering things we never thought possible.
After all, once something is in our memory it takes an awful lot to forget it!
Are you one of those people with a good memory, someone who can remember anyone's name at a party and never forgets an appointment? Or do you have the misfortune to remember little of what you read and hear, and are generally absent-minded?
Having a good memory is useful at all stages of our life. Being able to remember facts and figures helps us sail through our exams at college and when we are at work, we are superbly efficient. On the other hand, if we suffer from a poor memory, we struggle with our studies, writing out notes for ourselves hoping this will help the information to "stick". And of course at work, our office will be in a state of chaos, with little reminders and forgotten bits of paper all over the place.
But the idea that there is nothing we can do about bad memory is wrong. For a start, when we want to remember something, for example someone's name, we should try to concentrate on it and use it as often as possible in conversation. But by far the most useful technique is to build up a visual picture around the name to create an amusing mental image of it.. In other words we can learn to remember the name by association.
In short, we might have a naturally a poor memory but there are ways of improving it and remembering things we never thought possible.
After all, once something is in our memory it takes an awful lot to forget it!
