THE BUSINESS OF MEMORY

“Visualization plus association is a virtually unbeatable

combination. And when you throw in paying attention – Fast-Track Your Career With
itself a combination of observation and concentration – Supercharged Brainpower
you have real mental power at your disposal. You’ll be By Frank Felberbaum and Rachel Kranz
amazed at how much you can accomplish once you
begin practicing these basic concepts.” The Four Key Zones of Business Information
- Frank Felberbaum (continued)

Zone 4 – Numerical Information

This system for remembering numbers will take some time to master so be patient and work at it until
you feel more confident. Associate each digit with a specific letter and sound using this table:

Step 1: Translate digits:

1 t, d or th Dental sound

2 n Nasal sound

3 m Humming sound

4 r Rolling sound

5 L Liquid sound

6 j,dg,sh,ch,tch Soft sound

7 K, C, Q, ng Hard sound

8 f, v, ph Fricative sound

9 p, b Plosive sound

0 z, s, c Sawing sound

Step 2: Form interactive images

For each digit, you then create a word which starts with either the sound or the letter associated with
it. You can put together your own list that you feel comfortable with. Ideally, however, you want a list
of words which can easily be translated into vivid and memorable visual images.
You can create your own list of words which evoke images for you. For illustrative purposes, you
might come up with a list like this:

1 = toy 2 = inn 3 = Mow 4 = rye 5 = Law 6 = Jaw 7 = Kiwi 8 = foe 9 = pie 0 = zoo

Note that you can add as many vowels as you like to make a word – it’s the consonants that count.
Similarly, to represent bigger numbers, you simply add more consonants and vowels:

100 = disease 101 = dust

Step 3: Associate the images together to form a story

Once you have an image for each digit, you can then string those images together to make a
memorable story. By recalling the story, you also remember the numbers. Example: 5218 “A bunch of
Lawmakers were meeting at an inn, where they planned to send a trick toy like an exploding cigar to
their worst foe.” Although this may seem confusing at first, when you’ve developed your own set of
mental images for the digits and get used to using this system, you will soon find that with practice,
you’ll become highly adept at generating some great stories which incorporate the images you need
to remember sets of numbers. Your stories can be completely absurd or make perfect sense – it
really doesn’t matter since nobody else will ever see them.

Step 4: Associate the number with its context

The final step is to then embed somewhere within your mini-movie a connection between that movie
and where you’ll use that number. For example, suppose 5218 is the number of your office suite. In
the example given above, you might picture the Lawmakers gathering at your office before they go off
to the inn. Or alternatively there might be a big 5218 on the door of their foe who is about to get a trick
cigar. By making that mental connection, you’ll always be able to retrieve the numerical sequence
whenever you need it.

Admittedly this system may appear intimidating at first but with just a few minutes practice each day,
you’ll soon find you become very comfortable with it. You’ll very soon find there are a limitless number
of potential applications:

• If you have a standard set of mental images for 1 through 10, you can then memorize your
prioritized to-do list by creating small mini-movies which combine those standard images and
what needs to get done.
• If you have charts of financial information you want to commit to memory, create a mental image
for each number on the chart and then develop a mini-movie which incorporates all those images.
• If you have developed set images for the days of the week in advance, you can memorize your
schedule by integrating those predetermined day images in with mini-movies of the tasks to be
done that day. Over time, you can add refinements which also reflect the specific times involved
and so forth.

The more you use the system and keep practicing with it, the better you’ll become at using it. This
increased confidence, in turn, will mean you can start having fun with numbers rather than being
intimidated by them.

“I can’t give you any set time frame for mastering this system or any one way of approaching it,
because different people have different capacities and learn in different ways. I can promise you,
though, that using the system, a little bit at a time, will have great results – so don’t worry. Just find a
way to incorporate a little daily practice into your routine. Check back with yourself in a few weeks
and voila! You’ll discover that without your even realizing it, the system has become familiar to you.” –
Frank Felberbaum