Chapter - 17
Your Daily Schedule

Among the hundreds of uses to which the basic series of key words may be put is its employment in adhering to a schedule for a specific day. Let us suppose that you start your day at eight o'clock in the morning and that you have . the following things to do, each of them at a specified hour:

8 A.M.             You have to pay your rent.
9 A.M.             You must get train reservations.
10 A.M.           You intend to wire congratulations to a bride and groom.
1 I A.M.           You plan to enroll for a memory course.
12 NOON       You intend to buy a new radio.
1 P.M.             You have an engagement at the China Exhibit.
2 P.M.             You have a date for a boat ride.
3 P.M.             You want to order a bouquet for your wife.
4 P.M.             You have an appointment at your doctor's office.
5 P.M.             You must appear in court for a traffic violation.
6 P.M.             You have to look up an item in the public library.
7 P.M.             You have an appointment to look at a new apartment.

Let us try to remember these engagements with the help of our basic list. Since the schedule starts at eight o'clock, we cannot start with number I (tea) as usual. We must start with number 8 (fee) because this is the only way to connect the schedule with the proper hour. The associations which I suggest for the schedule outlined above are as follows:

8 A.M.             Associate fee and payment. A fee is something you
                        pay out, and the word "payment" will bring the payment
                        of rent to your mind.
9 A.M.             The ninth word of the basic list is bay. Form the
                        connection: bay—steamer—train.
10 A.M.           The tenth word of the basic list is tease. Send a
                        congratulatory wire to the newlyweds, but do not tease
                        them.
11A.M.            The word is tot. Connection: A memory course is
                        helpful to tots and adults alike.
12 NOON       Tan. Connection: A radio is usually tan in color.
1 P.M.             (Now you have a choice of going back to number 1
                        or following Army and Navy time and continuing with 13.
                        I have chosen the first alternative for the following
                        examples.)
                        Number 1 is tea. The connection with the China Exhibit is
                        easy if we think of the fact that tea comes from China or
                        that we drink tea from china cups.
2 P.M.             Noah. Like Noah, you take a ride on the water.
3 P.M.             May. In May you see the nicest flowers.
4 P.M.             Ray. Think of your physician using X-rays to examine your
                        body.
5 P.M.             Law. You have to appear in court because you violated a
                        traffic law.
6 P.M.             Shaw. Connection: Shaw—author—book—library.
7 P.M.             Key. When you rent a new apartment, see to it that
                        you get the key.

Now try to recall these twelve scheduled appointments with the help of these associations. You should be able not only to repeat them in sequence, but also to know exactly what you had in mind to do at ten o'clock, four o'clock, seven o'clock, and so on. Make up your mind not to use notes in the future, but to train your memory by using associations like those given above. If you do so, you will reap the advantage of being able to recall easily whatever you have to do during the day. Besides, if you do not write your appointments down on a slip of paper, you won't run the risk of losing the slip.

On completing her course, one of my students, Miss Nettie Sadewitz, gave a brilliant demonstration of the success of this method before a large audience. The audience called out arbitrary things for her to remember to do, which were also out of sequence, at specific hours of the day. All of the engagements, which extended over several days and which another one of my students wrote on a blackboard as the audience called them out, embraced not only appointments with a lawyer and a doctor but detailed business transactions. After many things had been called out in no sequential order, Miss Sadewitz was able to repeat the entire schedule without so much as a glance at the blackboard; that is, she named every single thing she was supposed to do at each specified hour.

At the conclusion of another course, the same sort of experiment was performed at another public gathering by Harry Ward and Stanley Gould. Susan Buch and Frank Murray went even further and repeated appointments through an entire week, naming the exact day and hour when the audience asked what the time was for a certain appointment; and naming the appointment, date, or errand when the audience asked what it was that was to be done on Wednesday at four o'clock, on Friday at eleven, or on Sunday at two o'clock.

I claim that the majority of my students are able to perform these feats of memory when they have finished the course. It is, of course, important that each of them apply this memory training to the field in which he is professionally active.

Miss Sadewitz's brother, Mitchell Sadewitz, a concert pianist and originator of the radio program "Music of All
 
Countries and Races/' often finds it desirable to announce the dates of birth and death of the composers whose music he is presenting. After having finished my course, he can remember the birth and death dates of more than three hundred composers, and he often amazes his audiences by mentioning them offhand when he is questioned about them.

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