From: llarsen%peruvian.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Loren Larsen)
Subject: Re: Failing memory(?) / speed reading, advice sought
Date: 18 Nov 92 12:13:01 MST
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Distribution: inet

In article <7473@kielo.uta.fi> f1sami@uta.fi (Samu Mielonen) writes:
>I have a huge problem with my memory or the way I manage my things (haven't
>necessarily figured it out yet) and I hope someone can help me out on this.
>I find myself forgetting not only the everyday tasks need to be done, but I 
>also forget names, places, events and whole subjects. 
>
>  For example, somebody introduces me a person, whom I find instantly likeable 
>and with whom I get along (this should aid the process of remembering or am I 
>wrong?), but may forget his/her name the next day even after having made a 
>conscious attempt to remember it. This happens a lot to me and I also forget 
>about names of the places, tasks I really ought / want to accomplish and stuff 
>that I have read about casually or for an examination. 
>
>  I cannot / do not want to associate this all to the amount of
>things to be remembered, although I am quite sure that as my interests have 
>grown the number of items to be remembered has also grown. Still, even if it's 
>a case of memory overload I do not want to give up without a fight. I have
>tried some mnemonic techniques (namely Buzen, but also others), but either
>they're of little help or I forget to use them! I think herein lies the
>main problem; as I am a believer in mnemonics and I try to train my memory,
>but even after trying to motivate myself I cannot use the techniques when
>I should. I am now not only ought of memory (:-), but also out of ideas. 
>
>  Or could it be that I am learning how to remember, but do not know how
>to recall correctly? If so, how can one train recall?

Well I hope someone else comments on this, but I think the memory "systems"
that Tony Buzan teaches are fairly useless.  Most of them are oriented 
around learning long lists of things.  Personally, I almost never need to 
remember lists.  Who does?  Maybe med students do I don't know.  What
is useful is the principles behind them.  Exaggeration, synesthesia, 
uniqueness.  If you haven't studied it yet, learn how to mindmap.  It is
the greatest thing.  I've known about them for about three years, but
until the last few weeks never really known how to apply them well.  In
short, mindmapping is a left/right brain integrated activity for outlining,
note-taking, brainstorming, etc.  It is much funner and you spend much more
time listening and understanding rather than writing.  What I didn't 
understand or believe about note taking is that your brain CAN remember
everything.  Mindmapping just allows you to key into your recall.  It
improves your creativity and is much more interested and fast to review.
That is another good point.  Always review the notes you have taken.  
Writing it down once just isn't enough to get everything out of your notes.
Mindmapping will also increase your synesthesia because as you review your
mindmap, you will see a key word or image that will trigger your memory and
you will HAVE to go back and re-experience the thing you are reviewing 
rather than just re-reading/re-ingesting the material from a boring linear
set of notes.

>  On another matter, there's been a lot of discussion on speed reading lately
>here and many people have stated that different texts should be read at
>different speeds. Fair enough, but can anyone state their minimum & maximum
>reading rates for reference purposes and tell how does one achieve such 
>results (I am also interested in finding about horridly low rates, as they're
>sometimes not only useful, but even necessary).

The slowest I read is naturally when I'm reading detail technical/mathematical
work.  An example of this is something that happened last week when I was
applying both Mindmapping and speed reading techniques together, something
I haven't done in a long time.  I was reading a book on computer graphics
and it was quite detailed and was describing several in-depth algorithms.
To read 25 pages it took 45 minutes, that includes taking notes with a mindmap.
I don't know how many words that translates to, but I was excited, especially
since I believe my recall is very high from that material.  Reading quickly
dramatically increases your recall I think, as long as you maintain 
concentration.

>Cheers,
>	Samu Z. Mielonen


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