Memory etc.
Photographic Memory, Speed Reading, Mental Math
If we could have all these skills, wouldn't life be so much easier? What if I told you you could learn these skills? What if I told you you could learn them in under a month? I'll even make you a deal! I'll teach you the basics here for free and give you a link to click that will take you to where you can buy the whole book or program at a reasonable price!!
Let's start with Memory! Afterall, if you don't remember the techniques this information won't help you as much.
What's the easiest way to remember what you did on a certain day, where you parked, where you put your keys, etcetera? Answer: do it the same way in the same place everyday.
Unfortunately, for most of us, that's not always an option. Because of that, most of us need some way to memorize where we put our keys/car or what we learn, and make that memory stand out. There are a few key tricks to that. One is visualization, and another is emotion.
The main technique taught by most books on memory is association. That means that by creating or realizing a logical relationship between known information and new information you expect to remember the new information. Try it with the following list:
1 pine tree, 2 coin, 3 triangle, 4 square, 5 fingers, 6 gun, 7 rainbow, 8 skate, 9 cat, 10 bowling pins
Take a moment to figure out the relationships (pine tree looks like a one; two sided coin; etc.) close your eyes or look away from the screen and see if you can quote the entire list aloud. Odds are you can get most of them the first try. If not, review the list and try to visualize the number and item. Now look away or cover the list and try again. You got all of them this time right?
Have you figured out the flaw in the association technique? It takes time to figure out what to associate each new item with and to develop an appropriate logical connection! Another problem is that logical connections aren't always interesting enough to remember.
A few better techniques are streaming and pegging. Streaming means to put known items or location into an ordered mental list that flows based on position. Pegging means to connect new information to a list of things you know using visualization of action.
You could use pegging by itself for something like were you put your keys. For example, if you are setting them down on the coffee table, you might imagine the keys exploded and destroyed the coffee table.
If you wanted to memorize a grocery list on the other hand you might want to stream a list using your body and peg the grocery list onto your body list. For example starting with toes as number one: 1 toes, 2 ankles, 3 knees, 4 thighs, 5 rear, 6 tummy(abdomen), 7 chest, 8 shoulders, 9 face, 10 head. Now let's peg on some groceries: 1 eggs biting your toes, 2 a gallon of milk being chained to you ankles, 3 a carton of ice cream being opened and smashed onto your knee, 4 onions tied around your thighs, 5 a pig hitting your rear with hams, 6 stawberries painting smiley faces on your tummy, 7 jiuce being poured down your chest, 8 your shoulder is drinking a bottle of wine, 9 a pie is hitting your face from across the room, and 10 a sandwich is hitting you on the head with a loaf of bread. Go through these in order, visualizing each one, them try to quote that grocery list in order. No problems getting it on the first try right?
These are some of the techniques in the "Mega Memory System"
Now let's try speed reading so we can process imformation faster. Did you know? Psychologists and educational specialists working on the visual acuity question devised the tachistoscope, which is a machine designed to flash images at varying rates on a screen. They found that, with training, an average person could identify minute images of different planes when flashed on the screen for only one five-hundredth of a second. The results had implications for reading. Using the same methodology, the U.S. Air Force soon discovered that they could flash four words simultaneously on the screen at rates of one five-hundredth of a second with full recognition by the reader.
Many speed reading methods are characterized by trade-offs between measures of speed and comprehension, recognizing that different types of reading call for different speed and comprehension rates, and that those rates may be improved with practice. Common techniques include: identifying words without focusing on each letter, not sounding out all words, not sub-vocalizing some phrases, or spending less time on some phrases than others, and skimming small sections.
For example even without reading every letter you automatically know that "th*nks" is going to be thanks or thinks and if it isn't part of a sentence which one makes sense? Or how about: th*nk y** M*m!
Other applications are picking out the chapter headings and the bold vocabulary words from a textbook and skipping the rest.
What most significantly sets effective "speed reading" apart from "normal speed" reading is that the reader sees words and interprets them using visual thinking processes rather than simulating the speaking and hearing of words. Most people learned to read by sounding out words in their heads without moving their mouths, and become dependent upon imagining the "hearing" of the sounds of words to process them. In contrast to this, speed reading involves harnessing the visual cortex which has vastly more neurons than the audio processing parts of the brain. The visual cortex operates at dizzying speeds, all day long. Speed reading takes advantage of visual cognitive functions that are grossly underutilized in most people while reading.
The speed building phase of the training process accelerates a person's current reading speed by first eliminating reading practices such as sounding out words out loud to oneself, re-scanning over passages already read, and other common habits. Most teach a student to read by pacing through the text with their fingers, maintain a constant high speed through reading material, not slowing down for anything. This coaxes a reader's speed from a typical 240 words per minute (300 words per minute is more typical of college readers) into the speed reading range which is generally considered between 600 and 2000 words per minute.
Effective reading systems all encourage reading habits that adjust the speed to match the level of understanding needed, and train the reader that re-reading passages is often critical to understanding. Another way is to summarize the information to yourself after flying through a good size chunk of text.
Starting to sound too complicated? The author of "Super Reading Secrets" makes it much easier!
And now for the Math.
Now in most of Asia, students learn to use an abacus to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. If they need to do math outside of school, they imagine they have an abacus in their hand and go through the motions of moving the imaginary beads to do the calculations. That's all fine and good, but it's a little inconvenient for a business person from North America who's never even seen an abacus outside of a history book.
For us Westerners there is an easier method. The key points are keeping in mind the place value of each digit and counting forwards or backwards. With very little practice you can be faster than the calculator.
Let's start with addition. For a problem like 25 plus 36 the usual method is add the ones, carry, add the tens, etc:
(1)
25 2(5) (2) 25
+ 36 +3(6) +(3) +36
(11) (6)1 61
This easier method from left to right is:
25 20
+ 36 + 30
50
+ 5
55
+ 6
61
Did we forget to carry the 10? Not really! We just counted by 6 from 55!
What about subtraction?
For a problem like 45 minus 16 normally you subtract out the ones, borrowing from the tens if need be, then subtract out the tens:
3
45 4(5) >4(15) (3) 45
- 16 -1(6) - 1(6) - (1) . -16
(9) (2)9 29
Want an easier way?
45 45
- 16 - 10
35
- 6
29
Did we forget to borrow? No. We just counted backwrds from 35 by 6.
Want more skills the calculator can't keep up with? Check out these from the "Human Calculator" himself: