...equipment as everybody else.
So, it's something anybody can do.
It sounds intriguing.
So I'm going to give it a try.
So, Andi, what mental torture have you got for me this morning?
Well, I'm going to give you this list of words,
and I want you to try to remember them.
These are the words: Wash, apple, jet, mad, actress,
marmalade, jack, van, clock, tile, polecat, tail, film, pier,
bucket, chain, bottle, sand, egg, window, salamander, paper,
microphone, Coke, piano, dog, captain, tennis, kennel, tomato.
Huh, huh.
And you're going to be able to remember it.
And I'm not.
Well, I think you might because I'm going to give you a
technique that will help.
I'm going to ask you to picture two words at a time in
a sequence of locations around your home.
So I'll give these two...
But then I'll have three things to remember:
The two words plus the location.
You already know the locations around your home,
so the sense of location is going to help you.
Trust me.
It's not going to add to your problems.
I'll never do it.
Yes, you will.
I'm going to give you at least until that egg gets cold to have a look at that list.
So I start off in the garden.
Wash the apple.
Go into the hall where there's a jet madly flying around.
To the dining room where there's an actress.
Who's your favorite actress?
Judi Dench.
But she wouldn't be smeared in marmalade.
She would be.
Why?
So you can remember her.
For the next five minutes, I frantically try to imagine
all these crazy images and think where to put them.
The normally quite unexceptional Winston household will never
feel quite the same again.
Frankly, I'm convinced it won't work.
Better be time out.
No. Yep, yep.
I know the first two. Full of time.
I'll never remember that.
Well, no, you'll do okay.
I better get to work. See you later.
Now all I've got to do is to go through my normal working day.
The challenge will be to see how many of the 30 words I can
remember at the end of it.
So do you think you can remember any of the words
I gave you earlier today?
I'll give it a go.
We'll start off outside in the garden.
Wash apple. Jet mad.
Actress marmalade.
Jack, van. Polecat tail.
That's right.. Bucket chain.
Uh, uh.
Clock, tile.
Bottle, sand.
Okay.
Try to remember the room you were in when you thought of those words.
Salamander, paper.
Microphone, Coke.
Piano, dog.
Captain, tennis.
Kennel, tomato.
How many out 30 do you think you got?
I think I probably got them all right.
All of them.
Well done.
So it works.
Of course it does.
When we use a simple story to memorize facts,
we're creating several pathways to where those memories are
formed in the brain.
It's as if instead of lining up one set of dominos,
we're setting up several.
The reason we often have difficulties in retrieving
our memory is because one neural pathway can easily get broken.
But by having several different pathways to our memory,
it means that if one doesn't manage to reach it,
another one will.
That's the advantage of the story technique.
It creates lots of neural pathways in our brain,
and all of our brains can work in this way,
which is why everyone can use this method.
By using a story to memorize facts,
we all have the potential to perform astonishing feats of memory.