Sharpening the memories

I attended an Indo-US Chamber meeting last week after seeing the announcement that an extraordinary individual was going to speak about a subject every one of us face in our day to day life. I was curious to listen to this talk since I read the announcement and decided to spend the evening listening to this speaker instead of watching the world cup cricket. That was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life. The speaker was not only an extraordinary individual but he proved that he practiced what he preached.

Before the start of the meeting, he went around and met every person who came to listen to his talk and spent about 30-60 seconds with each person and the total number of people who attended the meeting was somewhere between 60-75. There were many Indians, Hispanics, Americans, Brazilians, Vietnamese, and people from other countries as well. The names of all these people were not easy to remember.

As soon as he started his speech, he asked, “Have you ever felt embarrassed that you could not remember the name of the person that you met number of time earlier?” “Have you ever felt you have forgotten something that was important for the meeting?” Many in the meeting vigorously nodded their heads in affirmation. Then, he declared that before we leave the meeting, he was going to make every one of us never face that situation again. We were all laughing about his confidence in our fading memories.

As the first step, he asked everyone in the meeting to stand up. He called the first name of everyone in the first row accurately. Then, he stopped and asked, “Do you think I remember them by the position of their seats?” Then, he moved all around the room to call the first name of each person seated in different places and to all our surprise he accurately called every one’s name perfectly. More than what he did, his words that he would make us become like him towards the end of the meeting made us curious to see how he was going to accomplish such an uphill task.

Next, he asked us to call the name of any item that comes to their mind. He listed about 20 of them and wrote them in the order with specific numbers assigned to them. He spent about a minute looking at what was written in the flip chart and removed the sheet and handed it over to someone in the crowd. Then, he asked the people to either call the name of the item or number assigned and he was able to identify each one of them flawlessly.

Finally, we moved towards the part of his challenge to make us sharpen our memories. He wrote the following 10 digit numbers in the flip chart: 1) 0110021815 2) 6075100001 3) 1010112016 He asked us to remember these 3 ten digit numbers so that we can recall after he erases it. We all laughed at it. Then, he told the following story: I challenged a person how he can appreciate $.01 to $1.00 on February 18, 2015 (the day of the meeting). When he failed, I challenged 60-75 people who attended this meeting with a prize money of $10,000, if they could recall these numbers within a minute. However, after 10 months and 10 days, on January 1, 2016, they were able to recall these 3 ten digit numbers.

After telling these words, he asked a person in the crowd to recall the numbers. He was able to recall all 3 ten digit numbers without any problem. Finally, he concluded that there are three reasons why most of us don’t make an attempt to remember things and they are, 1) We don’t get it, 2) We don’t care and 3) We don’t believe we can remember things. He told that our brain has the power to store everything we receive meticulously but the only reason why we don’t remember is because we don’t store the information systematically. The brain excels in its power when we associate what we learn new with what we already know. For example, if we have to remember ten important points made in a meeting or actions items we need to perform, one of the techniques we could use is to allocate those ten things to head, eye brows, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, tongue, hands, legs and stomach.

I always go to such meetings only to meet new people but in this meeting I walked away learning something really creative. How nice it would be if I can recall the names of the people after a long time and remember the names of their children and ask about them. I hope the ILites find this useful. I would greatly appreciate if ILites could share their secret sauce to remember things.

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Sharpening the memories