Tips, Tricks, and Techniques—Memory

Memory seems so closely associated with concentration, I doubt that one can be treated exclusive of the other. When reading a memory advisory site, the first mention was attention. Dale Carnegie reported that the most common reason we fail to remember other peoples’ names is that we didn’t hear it to begin with. Rightfully so—memory automatically improves as concentration does, thus I mentioned concentration first.

Memory improves with practice. Plebes (freshmen) at the U.S. Naval Academy are required to spout the menus of the upcoming four meals anytime an upper classman demands. When Mary was studying for her doctorate, she often fell asleep with her books, and I would later kid her about sleep-learning. She definitely could perform rather amazing feats such as, say, quoting the footnote on page 382 after obtaining that book from the library earlier that day. I’m still not sure there was not more fact than humor to in her apparent method.

One experience I can provide first hand is qualification in submarines. In order to earn one’s Dolphins, indicating one is a submariner, equivalent to wings worn by pilots, one had to memorize all ships systems figuratively and literally, in sufficient working detail that one could successfully answer such koan-like questions as “How can one pump fuel oil from the officer’s shower?” One had to know the two systems and proximity of their components in the submarine well enough that one could figure out how to cross-connect the two systems to literally get fuel oil from the officer’s shower. I sometimes wondered if someone had tried it, thus giving reason for the taste of the water.

On diesel-electric submarines (non-nuclear), one had to know how to operate machinery on the submarine well enough to get underway without lights. On nuclear submarines, that requirement was relaxed a bit since no one not nuclear qualified was going to get their hands on the nuclear reactor controls. One still had to answer questions about it, and any simplification enjoyed was offset by having more and more complicated other stuff. In other words, this was a major memory feat, and required completion on in a limited time.

In my last compartment, the auxiliary machinery space, the machinist mate on duty took me for a tour of all 143 valves and switches in the compartment, telling me the function and use for each. Upon finishing this one-hour-plus tour, I took him on the same tour, pretty much verbatim. It rather astounded him, and he must have told the engineering officer since the engineering officer signed off both that compartment and my overall qualification without ever interviewing me.

Afterwards I noticed a few, shall we say, unusual capabilities. For example, while on watch I had to calculate the location error for the three inertial navigators in latitude and longitude, and plot those errors, every fifteen minutes. I would do so mentally, including the carryovers of a 60-based system—in my head, then walk across the room and plot the six errors on graph paper—without writing them down. Although these capabilities have faded with time, my memory still astounds people at times. For example, I have taken vital signs from several patients, and then returned to the nursing station to chart these, not writing them down until I do so in each individual’s chart. I do that by replaying a movie in my head of taking the vital signs. In the auxiliary machinery space, I also touched each valve and switch, then mimicked moving it to perform the operation I was talking about. I also visualize actually doing things, even when not present.

The point in all this is to communicate what is possible—and the immensity of that possibility. Tricks and techniques are easily locatable once one looks for them.

When I was going to college, it was the fad for instructors to say, “This is not a memory course.” Cringing, my thought response was, “Well, if we don’t have to learn anything, how does one earn an A?” I suspect that one of the reasons the British Empire became so immense and successful was in no small part because those bureaucrats staffing it were from the British liberal education system that required memorizing the Greek and Roman classics—in the language they were written--in other words, the British Empire rested on developed and trained memory.

As do we all.