REVIEW: "Development of memory", Harry Lorraine and Jerry Lucas - about the limitless possibilities of our memory

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

After reading this book, you no longer have to make excuses: "Sorry, I have a bad memory for faces", "I can't remember numbers." You will learn a number of simple mnemonic tricks and will excel in your studies and work. I’ll tell you how Harry Lorraine and Jerry Lucas’s technique helped me boost my memory.

After the review of the book "" by Arthur Dumchev (by the way, the scientific editor of "Development of Memory") was published on Lifehacker, I decided to definitely read it or something like that. The work of Harry Lorraine and Jarry Lucas fell into the hands.

The book was co-authored with basketball player Jerry Lucas. Since childhood, he trained not only muscles, but also the brain, invented and modified various memorization techniques (including Lorraine's techniques). When Lucas and Lorraine first met, they talked for 18 hours. Excerpts from this conversation are given on the pages of the book.

Jerry Lucas Professional basketball player, NBA and NCAA champion, 1960 Olympic champion with the US national team. Ranked among the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. From childhood he was fond of mnemonic techniques. In the late 1980s, he founded Lucas Learning Inc, which teaches memory development.

The art of memorization

You can't forget - you can not remember. This is the main principle of mnemonics. Any new information is perceived through the prism of our knowledge. Lorraine calls this initial awareness. For example, everyone is familiar with the word "cup", if necessary, you can easily remember its color or pattern, since there is a ground for memorization. But "comerage" and "glabel" are not in the vocabulary of everyone. To learn them, you need to form an initial awareness. Associations will help here.

This is the first and most important of the mnemonic techniques outlined in the book. The rest are somehow connected with associations. I will give you the rest of the techniques, but I will not reveal their essence. Trust me, learning them on your own is extremely exciting.

• Associations.
• Replacement of words.
• Phonetic alphabet.
• Pegs.

By mastering these techniques, you will learn to memorize long words and abstract concepts, to-do and shopping lists, speeches and lecture texts, people's names and faces, phone numbers, dates, ambiguous numbers, and much more. Moving from chapter to chapter, you become more and more convinced that the possibilities of memory are endless.

The book is simple and exciting at the same time. It can be read in a couple of hours, but it took me two days to read it: I want to learn each technique well and try it in practice.

My use case for the book

Personal assessment of the book "Development of Memory" by Harry Lorraine and Jerry Lucas - 9 out of 10.

Why not 10? Simply because I could not find a use for all sections of the book. For example, chapters on cards, the stock exchange and sports.

But now I:

1. I don't make shopping lists. I usually go shopping once a week. I used to start a piece of paper and write down things to buy for seven days. Now I just string each new item on the thread of ridiculous associations and easily reproduce the list in the store.
2. Improving my English vocabulary. Honestly, I haven't updated the collection of cards for a long time, but the new memorization system pushed me to learn words again.
3. Learned important phone numbers. Have you had to stand in an unfamiliar area of the city with a dead phone in your hands and think about how to contact your loved ones? Yes, for me. After that incident, I memorized my mother's phone like a prayer. And now, with the help of the phonetic alphabet, I easily memorized five more numbers of loved ones. Just in case.
4. I always remember where I put what and whether I turned off the iron. It turns out that if you turn off the "autopilot" and turn on the imagination, the problem "forgot where I put it" will disappear forever.
5. I am developing terminology faster. I write many different articles for Lifehacker. Sometimes you have to deal with unfamiliar topics and study them. But to understand the essence is half the battle. It is important for a writer to use terms correctly. Sometimes I even had to write out new words, but memorizing it is easier and more interesting.
6. Having fun with my nephews. Want to surprise your friends? Say that you will memorize the forward and backward sequence of any 20 words in two minutes. The first time I showed this trick to my nephews, they called me for an encore twice.

I think that this list will continue in the future. It's nice when a book is fun to read and practical.

If you also read "Memory Development", share how you use the techniques described in it in practice.