The Power of Forgetting (24 page)

Another way to help classify and categorize large amounts of incoming data so you can mentally organize your thoughts and capture what needs to be permanently stored is to do what many expert orators do: label chunks of similar information with a single word or term. Not only can this technique help you hold the remote control when your brain is besieged with information, but it can be incredibly useful when you are asked to speak in front of a large group while mentally juggling a library of details to share in your remarks. The pressure to perform alone can smother your memory and steal the thoughts you’re trying so hard to keep on the tip of your tongue. To this end, let’s see how linking single words to sizable, intricate thoughts can be applied to
the spectrum of circumstances that involve organizing massive amounts of data.

Most everyone is terrified of public speaking at first. Not only are we afraid of making a mistake or flubbing a word in front of a large group of people, but we fear that we’ll draw a serious blank, completely forgetting what we’re supposed to say, and find ourselves looking for an escape button. After all, they don’t call it “stage fright” for nothing! Of course, presenting a formal speech or lecture in front of a live audience is not the only form that performance takes. You may find yourself teaching a course, playing a part in a theatrical production, participating on a panel, leading a group, presenting your ideas to your boss or a boardroom, getting up in front of a classroom to share your stories, giving a eulogy at a funeral or a toast at a wedding, or just saying a few words of thanks or telling an ice-breaking joke at your Saturday-night dinner party as you take the head seat at the table. In any of these situations, being able to say two or three sentences perfectly in a row can be hard and heart-stopping.

I’m surprised that most of us are not formally taught the art of public speaking in traditional school unless we’re on the debate team or join the mock trial club. (And even then, sometimes the education system assumes we’ll pick up the secrets to this important life skill on our own, largely through trial and error.) The problem with trying to learn the ropes of public speaking is that if you don’t take to it easily at first (or if you have had the bad experience of totally floundering during a speech), you’re much more likely to give up and avoid the spotlight for the rest of your life. It only takes one embarrassing gaffe for some of us to turn the other way and never look back, which is a shame. Contrary to what you
might think, public speaking is not just for public servants and talented orators. It’s also not just for people who plan to become captains of industry, CEOs, and leaders of groups. Anyone who wants to be heard and to convey their ideas, thoughts, and opinions needs to know how to speak in front of audiences big and small. Like so many other skills taught in this book, the ability to speak clearly and candidly to anyone will give you an advantage—a huge advantage. Speaking well and easily will no doubt make you stand out and make memorable to scores of others the most important thing in the world: you. Yes,
you
.

I’m going to use the word “speeches” to refer to all the various ways in which we can present information in front of others. A quick toast at a dinner party can be considered a speech just as the Gettysburg Address is considered a speech. All speeches—long and short—can be viewed as collections of ideas or thoughts. With a beginning, a middle, and an end, a speech typically flows from one thought to the next. The key to “memorizing” a speech is to create a code relevant to you that helps you recall all the chief thoughts in the speech. Your code will automatically help you organize your thoughts because it creates a methodical sequence and flow from one point to the next. You’re not going to memorize everything word for word or even sentence by sentence. You’re just going to memorize the thought process from beginning to end. In this manner you’ll remember the speech thought by thought and let your mind fill in the blanks, fleshing out those thoughts as you speak them.

How exactly do you go about preparing a speech? First I will say that it does help to write out what you want to say in longhand or on a computer. Include all the important facts or phrases you want to include in your speech. Read it over a few times, then break it down into thoughts and try to find a single word that’s emblematic of each thought. What will happen is that you’ll end up with a ten-page speech broken down into a dozen words that reflect all of the main points made in those pages. The key is to choose words that remind you of the entire thought. For example, if I were to begin a speech by telling my audience how I came to write this book, I might use the word “history” to inform my opening act. Then let’s say I wanted to transition into an engrossing story about a student named Bobby who used my techniques. This anecdote could still be remembered under “history,” but to make sure I didn’t forget it I’d add the word “Bobby” to my list of key words.

Next would come the key word to get me into the second act of my speech. If I wanted to get audience members immersed immediately in a memory game, I could use the name of the game to direct me, such as “missing card trick” or some such phrase. The point is that I would pick certain words along my path that reflected the gist of what I wanted to say, and then I’d have to remember only those specific words.

I could even write down those words in order, just to be sure I got everything in sequence correctly. Ideally, I’d memorize the list of words using a simple sentence or story line and wouldn’t even need a set of notes with me when I delivered the final speech.

The following is an excerpt from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s
first inaugural address (“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”), in which the newly elected president set forth his proposal for what would become the New Deal. The words or phrases I’d pick to create my memory code are marked in bold. After each paragraph, you’ll see how zany this can get as I share how I’d try to mentally “picture” a story behind this speech in order to recall the order and gist of it. Bear with me:

For this paragraph, I see a group of people with pickaxes and shovels (putting them to work) lined up outside an army recruiting office, building a path out of stone and dirt and water (natural resources, which is close enough to “national” resources for recall purposes) to the office. At the door is Uncle Sam (direct recruiting), with a huge sign reading
ACTION NOW!

I see a man on a farm surrounded by a city skyline with belching smokestacks (industrial centers), with big stacks of corn, moving cobs from one pile to another (redistributing). In the scene is a home with
FORECLOSURE
on a plank nailed across the front door. He looks up as three Uncle Sams (small, medium, and large, representing the local, state, and federal governments) appear, with dollar signs above their heads (costs) that are rapidly shrinking away (drastically reduced). The Uncle Sams hold hands (unifying) as they approach a small lake where people are drowning. The Uncle Sams stop talking, and the biggest Uncle Sam, with a notebook and bullhorn around his neck, throws a bunch of raw materials into the lake. The drowning people use them to build roads and bridges and power structures (transportation,
communications, and other utilities) to climb safely out of the lake.

Here I imagine an old devil with two angels (safeguards) sitting on his shoulders. One is guarding a bank (banking), carefully watching who’s going in and out (supervising); the other angel is in a casino, taking away a gambler’s dirty, broken chips (end to speculation) and waving a wand to turn the chips into a pile of brand-new dollar bills with muscles (healthy, or “sound” currency).

This example is not meant to be something you actually memorize. I merely wanted to show you how I personally would go about trying to associate scenes and sentences with the words of the speech. By no means is this the only way to tackle the task of committing this particular speech to memory. Notice that each segment of my imagined story doesn’t seem to relate to the next, and that’s okay. So long as I can recall their sequence, I can create as many vignettes for the speech as I need to best remember it.

As we’ll see in the next section, sometimes it helps to create an acrostic to provide another guide to the exact sequence of events or material, thus generating organization. Acrostics have been used for centuries as a way to manage ideas and incoming information. This ancient strategy has also been
used to encrypt secret messages. Although I enjoy learning about the role of acrostics in history, I find them to be essential tools today for supporting my organizational skills and putting chunks of information into bite-size pieces that my brain can handle.

An acrostic, whose name originates from Greek words that mean “top verse,” is a form of writing in which the first letter, syllable, or word of each line, paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message. Traditionally, acrostics have been used as mnemonic devices to aid memory retrieval. A very famous Greek acrostic was made for the acclamation “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior.” In Greek, the first letters spell ICHTHYS (IXTYS), the word for fish. This explains the origins of the fish as a symbol for Jesus Christ from the early days of Christianity to the present time.

The classic mnemonic device for remembering the planets is another well-known example of an acrostic. You make the following sentence from the first letters of the names of the planets in order: My (Mercury) very (Venus) excellent (Earth) mother (Mars) just (Jupiter) served (Saturn) us (Uranus) nine (Neptune) pizzas (Pluto).

If you prefer to drop Pluto, then you can end the sentence with “served us nachos.”

Acrostics are common in medieval literature, where they serve to highlight the name of the poet or his patron or to make a prayer to a saint. They are often found in verse works but can also appear in prose. A classic example of an acrostic
poem in English was written by Edgar Allan Poe and aptly named “An Acrostic”: