Speed Memory [antikvár]

FOREWORD Once again my gifted young friend—and if I may say so with pride, protégé—Tony Buzan has asked me to give one of his eminently useful books a send-off. In a lop-sided kind of comparison, if you already have a good memory, training is not needed, and if you do not—well, how useful really is training? I can answer this contmdrum by suggesting that memory exists only in the use of it. It may not be true that everyone has a good memory to begin with, although I should like to think so; but it is certainly true that many people simply do not use the memory they have. It has always seemed to me that memory systems tend to be cumbersome, even though, as you will see, I have developed one of my own. They are like crutches, when one ought to walk unaided. How much simpler to remember the thing directly rather than to have to remember a way of remembering it! A fine way to send off a book on memory training, you may say—^but let me add quickly that to my mind the real value of memory training and a book such as Tony Buzan's is that it is, or shotild be, self-liquidating y so to speak. No doubt memory can be trained, like an imused muscle, on a dumbbell, but in the end the dumbbell is thrown away and the muscle goes to work on the job to be done rather than on a training aid. Could you remember something—let us assiune you have a 'bad memory'—if you had to ? James Bond lay dying. 'The formula,' he whispers, . . can say it only once. . . . Your life depends on it. The world will go smash if you don't. Would you remember? I think you would. This attention set seems to me all-important in remembering. Let me give you a small example. Someone gives you his telephone number over the telephone. Almost invariably nine persons out of ten will say: 'Would you mind repeating that?' Why? He said it perfectly clearly the first time. All you had to