Ten Pegs - a memory system

A technique originally attributed to the ancient Romans, memory peg systems have been developed and modified over the centuries and have come in and out of teaching and learning practice at various times. Memory Peg systems have regained favour with educators like Dale Carnegie and memory master Harry Lorayne. Lorayne says "Screw a peg into a wall and you can hang your coat on it - keep a peg in your mind and you can hang a thought on it!".

Take the numbers 1 to 10 and turn them into drawings.

The 1 becomes a FLAGPOLE.

The 2 a SWAN.

3 is, of course, pushed over to become a two HUMPED CAMEL.

4 looks very much like the sail of a YACHT.

5 is a FISH HOOK.

6 is (with a dash of imagination) an ELEPHANT'S TRUNK.

7 an ARROW HEAD.

8 a SNOWMAN (a snow-person perhaps!)

9 is a broken TENNIS RACKET and

10 a BAT AND BALL.

You might recognise these figures as the TEN VISUAL MEMORY PEGS. Keep looking at them until you have them well rehearsed in your mind. Test yourself. What is number 8? How about 3?

Find a friend and have them test you. Teach them the TEN VISUAL MEMORY PEGS , teaching is a good way for you to layer and deepen your own learning, then test your friend. Have fun. Get family and friends together for a meal and do THE TEN VISUAL MEMORY PEGS as a game over dinner. Who can remember them quickest? Who can explain them in creative detail?

Once you have the TEN VISUAL MEMORY PEGS firmly memorised, you can start to use them to learn and remember other information. For example, on the Ten Main Messages of True Learning audio cassette we've used the TEN VISUAL MEMORY PEGS to teach our ten main themes.

I thought I would use the TEN VISUAL LEARNING PEGS here to share some key information I have gathered from some of my recent reading.

1. Imagine the FLAGPOLE with a flag fluttering in the breeze. The flag isn't that of any particular country, rather it's a flag with a picture of the whole planet Earth on it. It is the flag of GLOBALISATION. The era of Globalisation is described as a connected world, a world of integrated markets, nations and technologies. In his book 'The Lexus and The Olive Tree' Thomas Friedman describes it as a world that enables individuals, corporations and nation-states to reach farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before. The technologies of computerisation, miniaturisation, digitalisation, satellite communications, fibre optics and the Internet have enabled the world to be interconnected in this manner. Keep the FLAGPOLE and the flag of GLOBALISATION in your magic brain as your first thing to remember.

2. Number 2 is your SWAN. Think of a graceful swan gliding along on the Swan River, the beautiful river that flows through my home city of Perth, Western Australia. Think of the PEACE such a river, such a swan, such a scene can create. In a global world, the pace of life is picking up and we are becoming unsettled by the speed of such change. The swan is our reminder to find some peace on a daily basis, perhaps by going for a walk, a swim or saying a peaceful prayer. The swan is a reminder that despite our global world, we still have conflicts between and within countries. The swan reminds us of the importance of peace, within and between countries and for ourselves for individual internal peace.

3. Now remember the CAMEL'S HUMPS as our peg for Number 3. Imagine this camel wandering through the Middle-East. Perhaps it is a camel near Masada in Israel or wandering near the Red Sea in Egypt. Now see the camel wandering past an OLIVE TREE. The third thing to remember, after Globalisation and Peace, is the Olive Tree. The Olive Tree is our memory symbol for traditions and things that are old in the world. In The Lexus and The Olive Tree Thomas Friedman says "Olive trees are important. They represent everything that roots us, that anchors us, identifies us and locates us in this world – whether it be belonging to a family, a community, a tribe, a nation, a religion, or, most of all, a place called home." The Olive Tree also represents the things of yesterday that still need to be part of today. In a world of change there are things from the past we need to keep alive. Whether you're a big organisation undergoing a restructuring process or an individual undergoing personal transformation – you don't throw out everything you had before just for the sake of change. Wisdom is knowing what to prune back, what to keep and what to let go.

4. Picture your YACHT. See it as a sleek and modern creation and imagine it is called 'Lexus'. As the yacht berths you can see a person getting off the yacht and walking up to a car parked near the pier. The car happens to be an ultra modern, top of the range, LEXUS. Friedman describes the Olive Tree as a symbol of the things that root us to tradition and the Lexus as being the symbol of all things new, improved, modern and part of up to date prosperity. The Lexus is the symbol of today's world. At the Lexus factory in Tokyo, 300 sedans are produced daily using 66 human beings and 310 robots . Each Lexus is sold as a top dollar item, super sleek and ultra modern. Thomas Friedman explains that all countries need something akin to a Lexus if they are to survive and thrive in a globalised world. The great quest is to ensure we don't throw out our Olive Trees at the expense of trying to create our Lexus. In today's world, every country, organisation and individual needs to find a balance of Olive trees and Lexus cars.

5. The FISH HOOK
   In your imagination, take yourself back to the river with the yacht and the swan and see yourself fishing from a little jetty. As you sit, you feel a sudden tug on your line and think you've hooked a fish. You reel it in to find you've only caught some seaweed but in the weed you see a piece of paper. As you take the weed and paper from your HOOK, you notice the paper has something written on it and the quote says:
   In today's world we have learned that
   The past will be a poor guide to the future
   And that we shall forever be dealing
   with unanticipated events.
   Given that scenario, organisations will need individuals who delight in the unknown.
   --- Charles Handy

   Individuals who delight in the unknown , the MYSTERY, yet many people fear the unknown. Each of us has a choice of moving towards being one who delights in the unknown and thinks on their feet!

6. Our memory peg for 6 is an ELEPHANT. We now need to link the image of a SUMO wrestler to the image of the elephant. Perhaps you can imagine the elephant's name is 'Sumo' or you can picture a sumo riding an elephant or maybe an elephant riding a sumo!. Whatever way you imagine it, the Sumo Wrestler image is the one to recall. Let's explore some of Tom Friedman's ideas a little further and imagine the world prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This was a world marked by the kind of thinking associated with the Cold War. It was a world where bigger seemed better; the more you weighed, the more powerful you were both as a country and as an organisation and in a cold war you needed plenty of fat to keep you warm. In 1946 Winston Churchill made a speech where he stated 'an iron curtain is coming down over Europe'. By 1961 that metaphoric curtain had become a real wall dividing East and West Berlin. The walls and curtains of the cold war represented a world divided into two major super-powers, The Soviet Union and The USA, each somewhat akin to a giant sumo wrestler, each trying to out buffet the other. The super-powers of the Cold War world divided the planet into regions of ownership and fought hard to protect their turf

7. Now think of an ARROW speeding through the sky and peg into your memory the concept of SPEED. Where the defining measurements of a Sumo World were size, the defining measurement of the world that has developed since the Cold War is speed, today it is a Sprinters world. How fast can we process an order, how swift and accurate is the supply chain, how rapidly can we deliver ? Speed is the necessary function for today's world and the essential foundation of tomorrow's. A survey about Internet web sites conducted by US company Netsmart revealed that 84% of users who quit out of a web site didn't do so because the content was boring but because the site information was too slow in appearing. But what is considered too slow? The Netsmart survey found that if the opening page, otherwise known as the splash page, takes more than 30 seconds to appear on screen then the site is considered too slow by most users. Likewise, if it takes more than 75 seconds to read the information stored on a page, the user will leave the site. Translate this speed into the pace at which you do everything else then think about the need for the Swan, the peaceful, slower time. In a Sprinters world there's a greater need for times of serenity, gentle times, slower times, time to replenish and allow the sprinters muscles and mind to relax and recuperate.

8. Now, think of your SNOWMAN. Using your imagination think of your snowman as a boy lost in the snowfields. All the other boys are snowboarding together but your snowboy is isolated from the crowd. All the other boys are wearing the designer sports clothes that have become the global uniform for youth on the planet, but your boy is different. Think of your snowboy as a LOST BOY. I have recently finished reading James Garbarino's book the Lost Boys – Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them. Garbarino has worked throughout the USA with young men and boys who have committed violent crimes and is part of a team working with the boys who perpetrated school shootings across America. He has collated much evidence and information trying to ascertain the causes of such madness and violence. Garbarino believes the lost boys are characterised by rejection, neglect, shame and depression These boys have taken the pain of their rejection, usually from their parents, and turned it outwards to damage others. They have never learned to manage anger and have no concept of Emotional Intelligence. In the fast paced world some are left behind and the Lost Boys Garbarino writes about are perhaps only the tip of a very large iceberg. If we don't teach and learn the way of the arrow – sprinting and the way of the swan –peacefulness, then we will easily revert to the way of the elephant - sumo and forcefully demonstrate our power. Some people are moving so rapidly in the fast paced world, they feel they are going out of control. Most school teachers can identify the young boys and girls who are in danger of being lost and classrooms, schools and health care centres need funding for preventative education programs and resources to help the potential lost before they damage themselves and others.

9. Think of the strings of your TENNIS RACKET as being the strands of a WEB. The defining symbol of the Sprinters world is the web and everyone is connected to everything. Sometimes world events seem distant to us but we are all a part of what happens around the world and each of us is affected by those events whether we realise it or not. We cant have a major economic downturn in neighbouring countries and not feel the repercussions of it in our own, we cant have extreme levels of violence and destruction across the planet and not be influenced by it. Nothing works in isolation in a global world. We are an ecology of interconnectedness – we are a web.

10. For our final number 10, picture your BAT AND BALL. Something we know about this global, sprinters, webbed, lexus building world is that it is very difficult to simply pack up your bat and ball and say 'I don't want to be a part of this game any more. I'm TAKING MY BAT AND BALL AND GOING HOME.' The game is everywhere. Some years ago I was working in a region of Australia where a large community of Plymouth Brethren lived. From my limited understanding of their faith, the Plymouth Brethren are linked to the Pilgrims of early eighteenth century England. The Plymouth Brethren believe in the values of their forefathers and deliberately limit their access to the influences of the modern world. They have strict rules about dress codes and the use of contemporary inventions and technologies. Like the Aimish, the Plymouth Brethren have tried to create themselves as a village, walled off from the rest of the world. They have endeavoured to protect themselves and their children from the ways of the Lexus and have stuck with the customs of the Olive Tree. In some ways I think we can sympathise with their view because its true there are features of today's world that we don't wish in our children's lives. However, I believe building walls around ourselves, our organisations, our countries and our children is not going to protect us from the outside world. The web has ways of bringing down the walls. We need the knowledge, understanding and strategies to survive and thrive, with values intact, in our world as it is. We must learn to live in it and embrace the changes, the mysteries (the hook), and blend the Olive Tree thinking with the Lexus thinking and ensure that we make time for some daily health and peace in our lives (the swan). We need to learn how to bend and blend – to be flexible, adaptable and to flow and change - in otherwords we need to learn how to enjoy the sometimes painful process of learning itself.

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