Memory and Tony Buzan

Earlier this week I attended a course on electrical testing and from this it was decided to go and take a City and Guilds Certificate in Inspection and Testing. Roger was a little worried about the prospect of remembering all the things that could be in the written exam. I told him there is a little secret to remembering and that these can be found in books by Tony Buzan.

Master Your Memory is on sale at Amazon for £6.39 is the first book I would get and then work through the book and try it out for yourself. I can still recount the story that places the planets in order from the Sun and not only that but also in relative size to each other.

Jim was going to take a degree and I mentioned about mind maps, when he got to university on the first day, one of his lecturers said "If you do not know about mind maps I suggest you begin by finding out". Jim had already got the books and had the basics. Tony Buzan also has a book called The Ultimate Book of Mind Maps which is £8.99 from Amazon. I have not read this one but have an older book. Traditionally, note taking for revision was done in a linear format. However Tony's work shows that the mind does not store data in a linear fashion but rather in the form of links, a bit like the WWW in that there is no organised structure. By using mind maps you bring out data from the brain and create a picture of the data. An A4 sheet of paper can have a surprising amount of data contained in a mind map.
I made a mind map of the computer revolution and was amazed at level of complexity of the map created and yet it proved easy to remember this map to use at a later date.
Let us go one further and imagine you are going to give a speech then you could write several sheets of words for the speech but you will generally have to rewrite it several times since many key points are either missing or not given in a logical sequence. With mind maps you place the salient points on it with respect to the subject to be spoken about. You can then either write out your speech or just take the mind map with you. Since you only have one sheet or two at the front of you any question from the floor requiring reiteration can easily be located and the answer returned.
Before knowing about Tony Buzan I was just getting passes in exams, then using techniques shown by Tony buzan I began to get far higher marks like credits and distinctions.

The only trouble is you have a brain that is full of stuff that does not go away. Like 0.4971 being the log of pi, the square root of 3 being 1.732 or that Ada Byron was the first computer programmer but also a druggie, Alan Turing was a homosexual that died in mystery, due to cyanide poisoning. Cyanide is contained in the pips of Apples. Apple is the name of the company began by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Snow White bit into an apple and slept until she got a kiss from a prince and the story made a hit when animated by Disney that later had Pixar to produce modern animations like Toy Story but is not Steve Job in there somewhere?