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- ^Tutorial 1 - Association of Ideas\
-
- For your first exercise in Association, let's assume you want to memorise
- these ten everyday, unrelated items, in sequence: banana, car, newspaper,
- sausage, pen, tree, watch, tie, television, football. In order to do this,
- you are going to consciously apply the basic memory rule defined in the
- Introduction, but with an an important addition - You Can Remember Any New
- Information If You Associate It To Something You Already Know $In Some
- Ludicrous Way.\
-
- First, picture a ^banana\ in your mind. You can't apply the rule yet. But
- now we come to the next item - >car.\ If we assume that you already know ^
- banana,\ you can now apply the memory rule. You simply need to create a
- ridiculous picture, or image, in your mind's eye - an association between
- ^banana\ and >car.\
-
- In order to do this you need a ludicrous, far-fetched, crazy, illogical,
- absurd, - picture or image to associate the two items. What you <don't\
- want is a logical or sensible picture. For example, a sensible picture
- might be - someone sitting in a car eating a banana. Although this would
- not be something you would expect to see every day, it is in not in any way
- bizarre or impossible.#
-
- An impossible, crazy, picture might be - a gigantic banana is driving a car
- along the motorway, or you open a car door and billions of bananas tumble
- out and knock you over. These are ludicrous, illogical pictures.
-
- What you need to do is select one of these pictures, or a crazy image you
- thought of yourself, and see it your mind for just a fraction of a second.
- Be careful not to picture the %words\ banana and car. You need to see the
- <action\ you've selected - the huge banana driving the car, or the mountain
- of bananas tumbling out of a car, or whichever image you've decided on. See
- that picture in your mind's eye for just an instant, ^right now\.
-
- The next item on your list is ^newspaper\. Assuming that you already
- remember <car\, you now need to form a ridiculous association in your mind
- between <car\ and ^newspaper\. For example, you open a newspaper and a car
- leaps out of the pages and knocks you over. Or you are driving a huge
- rolled up newspaper instead of a car. Or you are driving a car when a
- massive sheet of newspaper appears in front of you, which the car rips as
- you drive through it. Choose one of these images, or one you conjured up
- yourself, and picture it clearly for a split second.#
-
- $Sausage\ is the next item to remember, so you now need to form a ludicrous
- association between >newspaper\ and $sausage\. You could picture yourself
- eating rolled up newspapers and eggs for breakfast instead of sausages and
- eggs, or you are reading a gigantic sausage which has lots of news printed
- on it, or a paperboy is walking along a street pushing very long sausages
- through letterboxes instead of newspapers. See one of those crazy images.
-
- Next on the list is <pen\. Associate it to $sausage\. See yourself trying to
- write with a sausage instead of a pen, or you cut into a sausage with a
- knife and fork and gallons of ink shoot out of the sausage into your face.
- Picture one of these scenarios clearly in your mind.
-
- The next item is |tree\. Picture millions of pens growing on a tree instead
- of leaves, or a colossal fountain pen is growing in your garden instead of a
- tree. Be sure to see the image clearly.
-
- %Watch\ is the next item on the list. Picture a tree with lots of branches
- which are wearing giant wristwatches, or you look at your watch and see that
- there is a tree growing out of it, with roots curling up your arm. Select
- one of these images, or one of your own, and see it for an instant in your
- mind's eye.#
-
- ^Tie\ comes next. See yourself wearing an elongated wristwatch instead of a
- tie, or an enormously long tie is tied around your wrist instead of a watch,
- so long that it drags along the floor.
-
- The next item to be remembered is <television.\ You might picture yourself
- with a television hanging around your neck instead of a tie, or you switch
- on the television and a vast, horribly spotted tie bursts out of the screen,
- unrolling itself for yards and yards. Select a crazy association between
- >tie\ and <television\, and see the picture in your mind.
-
- The final item on the list is $football.\ See a football match where the
- players are kicking around a television instead of a football. Or you are
- watching a football game on television when millions of footballs suddenly
- burst throught the screen and hit you in the face. Picture one of those
- images.
-
- If you have $really\ tried to see all those pictures, you will now remember
- the list of ten items in sequence, both forwards ^and\ backwards. Press
- Page Down to test yourself on how well you have memorised the ten items.~
-