Introduction

Hi there
So this blog is my adventures in memory techniques.
I've always been interested in the potential of the mind and intrigued by intimations that I am not utilising my fullest capacity (this is an understaement). The surest indication that I could do better was when I fully understood the methods of memory enhancement practiced by select individuals going back through time to the dawn of history.

I was first introduced to a flavour of the technique back in my 2nd year at Comprehensive school. The form tutor was in a funny mood and in a departure from her usual stolid dreary pre-lesson blatherings she took the time to guide us through a simple 10 point peg list. She gave us the list of nouns to attach to them and said that she would test us for retention at some future date.

I can still recall some of the objects from that list today quite a few decades later. I kept wondering when she would test us, and this kept the revision going. She never did test us- much to my chagrin but the point was made.

However I saw no obvious application for this simple technique. Or rather I let the ideas leave my mind and didn't adapt them into useful retention techniques for my study and learning at school- which I now realise was a terrible loss. It is remarkable to me now that I could be so obtuse, afterall we had to learn lists of things all the time. I distictly hated, for example, the weekly chore of comitting by rote 10 words of German vocab, if I applied myself at all it took me an hour or so and then I'd forget half by the test time. Now of course, knowing the priciples of the Art of Memory the list could be memorised joyously in 5 minutes with perfect retention in perpetuity. If only I knew then... But I did know, or rather I knew but didn't apply it.

Anyway, throughout the years I dabbled on and off with the various techniques and recieved inspiration from sundry thinkers along the way. And now I think I shall write a blog- gathering what I know about the subject along with news reports, web-bounty, author links and anything else I consider to be tangental.