The story is aflame in your brain and you know it will be the next big hit. You're ready to sell your movie script, television script, documentary, comic book or video game to the producer. You do this by selling your pitch. The pitch details what your idea is and the story that it will tell. The pitch explains why it is a good time to produce this story, what makes it unique and what the demand for the story is. It should introduce the characters, the setting, the genre and the plot.

1


Research your audience. Customize your pitch so that it appeals to the needs and style of the person who will be receiving the pitch. Pitch only those ideas that the person produces. Don't pitch a situation comedy to a producer who does only nature documentaries.



2


Create a hook. Grab the producer right away, and don't hide the gems in the middle or bottom of the pitch. Give the producer the good stuff right away. Give away the ending if you need to so long as you grab the producer's attention immediately. Write a great title for your pitch that will spark and keep interest.









3


Pack your pitch with strong verbs and vivid language. Let your voice shine through so that the pitch evangelizes for your writing abilities. Write the pitch in the same style as the work that you are trying to sell. Instill the pitch with a comic tone if the story is a comedy; make it suspenseful if the story is a thriller. Put your best writing into the pitch.



4


Instill a sense of urgency into the pitch. Convince the producer that now is the time for your story to be told. Explain how it relates to a particular trend or consumer demand. Support your story with data about why it will sell and what will make it successful.



5


Communicate what is important. Hit quickly upon the major ideas and describe the story arc. Don't clutter your pitch with too many extraneous details. Describe your story arc, what makes it unique and what is most important for the producers to know.



6


Overcome objections. Anticipate the objections that might be made to the story, and address them in a positive fashion during the pitch. Differentiate your story from the many others that are out there while still explaining why it would be a commercially successful venture.



7


Ask for the sale. Close your pitch by asking the producer to produce your work.

Read more…

Remembering people's names needs a slightly
different approach from all the others explained so far in this
section. The techniques used, though, are quite simple.
You'll find these tools helpful:

The Link Method
The Roman Room Mnemonic


Using the Tools
1. Face association
Examine a person's face discreetly when you are introduced. Try to
find an unusual feature, whether ears, hairline, forehead,
eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, complexion, etc.

Create an association between that characteristic, the face, and
the name in your mind. The association may be to link the person
with someone else you know with the same name. Alternatively it
may be to associate a rhyme or image of the name with the person's
face or defining feature.
2. Repetition
When you are introduced, ask for the person to repeat their name.
Use the name yourself as often as possible (without overdoing
it!). If it is unusual, ask how it is spelled or where it is comes
from, and if appropriate, exchange cards. Keep in mind that the
more often you hear and see the name, the more likely it is to
sink in.
Also, after you have left that person's company, review the name
in your mind several times. If you are particularly keen you might
decide to write it down and make notes.
Summary
The methods suggested for remembering names are fairly simple and
obvious, but are useful. Association either with images of a name
or with other people can really help. Repetition and review help
to confirm your memory.
An important thing to stress is practice, patience, and
progressive improvement.

Read more…

Have you ever looked up a phone number and
repeated it over and over to yourself until you dialled it
correctly?
This draws on your working memory; however, just
moments after dialling the telephone number, chances are you have
forgotten it.
This is because the telephone number was not "committed" to your
long-term memory.
And, while working memory is reliable for quick
recall of bits of information (like phone numbers), it can hold
only a few pieces of information and only for a very short time.
To remember things for a longer amount of time, you must connect
the new information with information you already have,
"committing" it to your long-term memory, which stores more
information and, for a longer period of time.
There are, of course, many 'serious' techniques for improving your
memory. (And you can find many in Mind Tools memory techniques
section .) But you can also have a bit of fun "working out" with
memory games. This article introduces several games to workout
your memory, individually or in a team.
Story Telling
One way to remember the information you need to commit to
long-term memory is to make up a story that "connects" the items
or facts you need to remember, thus making them easier to recall.
The idea here is that it's easier to remember more information
when one fact or item connects to another.
While making up the story, create a strong mental image of what's
happening. This helps to "connect" the data to an image and better
cement it in your long-term memory.

For an example, read our article on story telling technique .
It's fun to practice using this technique in a group. Practice by
laying out 20 or more objects on the table and trying to remember
them. Each member of the group takes his or her turn to add to the
story by including another object.
If the first three objects are an apple, a key and a mobile phone,
here's how the story might start:
Person 1: In the orchard, ripe apples were falling from the trees.
Person 2:But the gate to the orchard was locked and John had
brought the wrong key.
Person 3: So he called Sue from his mobile phone to see if she
could help.
...
Once all the objects have been included in the story, remove them
all from the room. See who can remember the most items. Now tell
the story again as a group, taking it in turns. The group will
probably be able to remember the whole story and so recall all the
items.
Pexeso: Matching Pairs
Pexeso involves matching pairs of like cards or tiles from a large
group, when one of each group is hidden.
You play Pexeso with a set of cards or tiles that includes pairs
of picture or numbers. You can play using half a pack of standard
playing cards – just remove 2 of the 4 suits, so you have just 2
aces, 2 kings, 2 queens and so on.
Start by laying out 24 of the cards, making sure the 24 cards
consists of 12 matched pairs. Once face down, move the cards
around so that you do not know where any single card is located.
Turn one card over at a time, take a look at the number or object,
and then turn it face down again. Repeat this process until you
turn over a card that matches a card you turned over earlier. Now
find the card's 'mate' by remembering from earlier where it is
located. As you find a matched pair, remove them from the group.
The number of cards dwindles until all the pairs are matched.
Time yourself and see how you improve (get faster) each time you
play.
As you get better, increase the number of cards you start with,
moving from the original 24 to 30, then to 36, 42 and so on.
'Blind' Jigsaw Puzzles
Another fun and inexpensive way to give your concentration and
memory a boost is the good old-fashioned jigsaw puzzle. Playing it
'blind' means without referring back to the picture on the box!
First, look at a picture of the completed puzzle. Give yourself a
few minutes to commit it to memory.
Next, mix up the pieces to the jigsaw puzzle.
Now, work to put it back together without looking at the picture
of the completed puzzle again (until you are done).
Trivia Quizzes
A great way to improve how well you recall information is to play
trivia quizzes. The trivia can be about anything – movies,
history, even about your specific business.
Whilst you can easily purchase trivia quiz board games and books,
you can also make up your own questions when you are playing in a
group.
Each person submits a list of questions (and answers!) and then to
'quiz master' takes questions from each person's list in turn.
When you play with a new set of trivia questions, you rely on your
recall of prior knowledge and experience to find the answers. If
you play with the same questions in a few days or weeks later, you
will also rely on memory of playing the game last time. Both new
questions and re-runs are good for building you memory skills.

Read more…

The Major Memory System is one of the most
powerful memory systems available.
It takes a lot of time to
master, but once learned is very powerful.
The technique often
forms the basis of some of the extraordinary, almost magical,
memory feats performed by stage magicians and memory performers.
The system works by converting number
sequences into nouns, nouns into images, and linking images into
sequences. These sequences can be very complex and detailed.
How to Use the Tool
The building blocks of the system are the
association of the numbers below with the following consonant
sounds:
0 – s, z, soft-c – remember as 'z is first letter of zero'
1 – d, t, th – remember as letters with 1 downstroke
2 – n – remember as having 2 downstrokes
3 – m – has three downstrokes
4 – r – imagine a 4 and an R glued together back-to-back
5 – L – imagine the 5 propped up against a book end (L)
6 – j, sh, soft-ch, dg, soft-g – g is 6 rotated 180 degrees.
7 – k, hard-ch, hard-c, hard-g, ng – imagine K as two 7s
rotated and glued together
8 – f, v – imagine the bottom loop of the 8 as an eFfluent pipe discharging waste (letter image of F in
alphabet system)
9 – p, b – b as 9 rotated 180 degrees.
These associations need to be learned thoroughly before going
further with the technique.
Starting to Use the Major System
The system operates on a number of levels, depending on the amount
of time you are prepared to devote to learning the system.

The first level, which involves coding single digit numbers into
small words, functions almost as a poor relation of the
number/rhyme system. It is at higher levels that you can unleash
the real power of the system. You should, however, learn to use
this first level before moving on.
The trick with converting numbers into words is to use only the
consonants that code information within the word, while using
vowels to pad the consonants out with meaning. If you do have to
use other consonants to make up a word, use only those that do not
code for numbers – i.e. h, q, w, x, and y.
At the first level we code each number into a short noun. This is
made up of the consonant coding for the number, and vowels that
turn the consonant into a word. On a sheet of paper, write the
numbers 0 to 9, and apply these rules to create your own memory
words. Some examples are shown below:
0 – saw
1 – toe
2 – neigh
3 – ma
4 – ray
5 – law
6 – jaw
7 – key
8 – fee
9 – pie
You can use these words in association much like the other peg
technique memory words.
Moving to the Second Level
Similar rules apply to creating a standard word from two numbers.
It is best not to try to use a single number word as a root, as
this can confuse the image.
Write down the numbers 01 to 99, and apply the rules to create
memory words for yourself.
A few examples are shown below:
09 – z, p – zap
17 – t, ch – tech
23 – n, m – name
36 – m, sh – mesh
41 – r,s – rose
52 – l, n – line
64 – ch, r – chair
75 – k, l – keel
89 – f, p – fop
98 – b, f – beef
Taking the Major System Further
Just using double number words may be enough to make this a
sufficiently powerful mnemonic for you. Alternatively you may
decide to use triple number words, using the same construction
rules as double number words.
Examples are:
182 – d, v, n – Devon
304 – m, s, r – miser
400 – r, c, s – races
651 – j, l, d – jellied
801 – f, z, d – fazed
Even though you can construct words from first principles each
time, at this level of complexity it may be worth writing them
down to make them easier to remember. You can then run through
them many times to strengthen the link in your mind between the
numbers and the associated words. This will help you to remember
the appropriate word faster.
Using Words to Remember Long Numbers
Once you have come up with words and images to link to your
numbers, you can start to apply the technique to remember, for
example, long numbers. A good way of doing this is to associate
Major System words with stops on a journey (see 7.1.5).
Example:
The number Pi is 3.14159265359 (to 11 decimal places). Using the
major system and the journey system (see example) together, I can
remember this as:

Passing my Ma (3) by the front door of my house.
Seeing that someone has dared (1,4,1) to sleep under the rose bush
in the garden.
Someone has tied a loop (5,9) of yellow ribbon onto the steering
wheel of my car.
I see a poster with a photo of a steaming pile of sausages and
mashed potato, with the title 'glorious nosh' (2,7) at the end of
the road.
A lama (5,3) is grazing on grass outside the garage forecourt.
Another loop (5,9) of yellow ribbon has been tied around the
railway bridge. This is getting strange!


Key Points
The major memory system works by linking numbers to consonants,
and then by linking these into words. By using the images these
words create, and linking them together with the journey system,
large amounts of information can be accurately memorized.

Read more…

The Roman Room technique, also known as the
Method of Loci, is an ancient and effective way of remembering
information where its structure is not important. As an example,
it serves as the basis of one of the powerful mnemonic systems
used to learn languages .
How to Use the Tool
To use the technique, imagine a room that you
know, such as your sitting room, bedroom, office or classroom.
Within the room are objects. Associate images representing the
information you want to remember with the objects in the room. To
recall information, simply take a tour around the room in your
mind, visualizing the known objects and their associated images.

The technique can be expanded by going into more detail, and
keying information to be remembered to smaller objects.
Alternatively you can open doors from your room into other rooms
and use the objects in them as well. As you need them, you can
build extensions to your rooms in your imagination, and fill them
with objects that would logically be there.
You can use other rooms to store other categories of information.
There is no need to restrict this information to rooms: you could
use a landscape or a town you know well, and populate it with
memory images.
The Roman Room technique is just one way of representing your
cognitive map of the information in an easily accessible way.
See the introduction to this chapter for information on how to
enhance the images used for this technique.
Example
For example, I can use my sitting room as a basis for the
technique. In this room I have the following objects:
Table, lamp, sofa, large bookcase, small bookcase, CD rack,
telephone, television, DVD player, chair, mirror, black and white
photographs, etc.
I may want to remember a list of World War I war poets:
Rupert Brooke, G.K. Chesterton, Walter de la Mare, Robert Graves,
Rudyard Kipling, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, W.B. Yates
I could visualize walking through my front door. Within this
image, someone has painted a picture on it showing a scene from
the Battle of the Somme. In the center of the picture is a man
sitting in a trench writing in a dirty exercise book.
I walk into the sitting room, and look at the table. On the top is
RUPERT the Bear sitting in a small BROOK (we do not need to worry
about where the water goes in our imagination!) This codes for
Rupert Brooke.
Someone seems to have done some moving: a CHEST has been left on
the sofa. Some jeans ( Alphabet System : G=Jeans) are hanging out of
one drawer, and some cake has been left on the top (K=Cake). This
codes for G K Chesterton.
The lamp has a small statuette of a brick WALL over which a female
horse (MARE) is about to jumping. This codes for Walter de la
Mare.

Key Points
The Roman Room technique is similar to the Journey method. It
works by pegging images coding for information to known things, in
this case to objects in a room.
The Roman Room technique is most effective for storing lists of
unlinked information, while the journey method is better for
storing lists of ordered items.

Read more…

Many of us have trouble memorizing lists.
Whether they're lists of names, dates, or product features, it's hard to remember everything that you need to know.
This is where a tool like the Alphabet Technique is useful.
The Alphabet Technique is a memory technique that's useful for remembering long lists of items – in a specific order, so that you know when items are missing. As such, it's similar to the number/rhyme and number/shape systems.
With the Alphabet Technique, you associate colorful mental images representing letters of the alphabet with the items that you want to remember, by visualizing scenes that link them together.
By doing this, you're taking advantage of the way that your brain works. It's much easier to remember colorful, memorable mental images, than it is to remember dull facts. This is particularly the case when these images are "pegged" to a sequence that you know very well – such as the letters of the alphabet.

Tip:
You will probably find it useful to write everything down as you work through the Alphabet Technique. Our


worksheet will help you to get started.

How to Use the Alphabet Technique
Step 1: Create images for each letter of the alphabet
The first thing to do when you're using the Alphabet Technique is create images representing each letter in your mind.
When you're doing this, it's useful to create images that are based on the sound of the first syllable of the letter's name. For example, you might represent the letter "K" with the word "cake," or the letter "N" with the word "entrance."
Here is one possible image sequence:



A
Ace of spades


B
Bee


C
Sea


D
Diesel Engine


E
Eel


F
Effluent


G
Jeans


H
H-Bomb


I
Eye


J
Jade


K
Cake


L
Elephant


M
Empty


N
Entrance


O
Oboe


P
Pea


Q
Queue


R
Ark


S
Espresso


T
Teapot


U
Unicycle


V
Vehicle


W
Double bass


X
X-ray


Y
Wire


Z
Zulu



If these images aren't meaningful to you or don't stick in your mind, then use other words that have a personal connection to you.
Try to choose words that are visually rich, and suggest a positive emotion. You'll remember positive images more easily than negative ones, and interesting or amusing images are often easier to recall than dull ones.

Tip 1:
In his book "Use Your Perfect Memory," Tony Buzan suggests using a system for creating clear images that you can reconstruct if you forget them. Buzan says to take the phonetic letter sound as the first consonant – and then, for the rest of the consonants in the word, use the first letters, in alphabetical order, that make a memorable word.
For instance, for the letter "S" (root "Es"), try to think of any strong images when you create a word starting with "EsA," "EsB," "EsC," "EsD," "EsE," and so on.
Buzan's approach has the advantage of producing an image that you can remember more easily if you forget it. However, you might decide that this unnecessarily complicates a relatively simple system. In any case, it's best to choose the strongest image that you can visualize.
Tip 2:
You can use the same images for every list that you want to remember. You don't need to choose new images each time.

Step 2: Link the images to the information you want to remember
Once you've firmly visualized these images, and you've linked them to their root letters, you can associate them with the information that you want to remember. To do this, you visualize a scene that links the image for that letter with the item that you want to remember.
For example, imagine that you need to remember the names of 19th and 20th Century philosophers.

First, you would decide on the order that you want to remember them in. (Remember, the Alphabet Technique is great for remembering ordered lists.)
Then, you would link each philosopher's name to a letter of the alphabet, by visualizing a scene, like so:


Letter
Image
Philosopher's Name
Scene




A
Ace
Freud
A crisp ACE being pulled out of a FRying pan (FRied)


B
Bee
Chomsky
A BEE stinging a CHiMp and flying off into the SKY


C
Sea
Genette
A ship on a stormy SEA lifting a GENerator out of the water in a NET


D
Diesel
Derrida
A DIESEL train racing through the countryside with a DaRing RIDer surfing on top of it.


E
Eagle
Foucault
An EAGLE attaching a kung FU master.


F
Effluent
Joyce
An EFFLUENT pipe being shut off by JOYful environmentalists.


G
Jeans
Nietzche
A torn pair of JEANS showing someone's kNeE through a hole.


H
H-bomb
Kafka
An H-bomb blowing up a grimy, gray CAFé.



As you can see from this example, you may have to be creative when picturing your scene for each item!

Note:
It can be quite complicated and time-consuming to start using the Alphabet Technique, and you'll need some practice to use it effectively.



Tip 1:
The Alphabet Technique is only useful for lists of 26 or fewer items. Take a look at the Journey Technique if you want to remember more things than this.
Tip 2:
For additional tips and strategies on choosing appropriate mnemonics, see our article Introduction to Memory Techniques .



Key Points
The Alphabet Technique links items you want to remember with images that are associated with letters of the alphabet. This allows you to remember a medium-length list in a specific sequence.
By connecting images to letters of the alphabet, you'll know if you've forgotten individual list items, and you'll know the cues that you'll need to use to remember them.

Download Worksheet

Read more…

The Number/Shape system is very similar to the Number/Rhyme system.
It is a very simple and effective way of remembering a list in a specific order. It is another example of a peg system based on pegword images.
How to Use the Tool
The technique works by helping you to build up pictures in your mind, in which the numbers are represented by images shaped like the number. You can then associate these with the things you want to remember using striking images.
One image scheme is shown below:

Candle, spear, stick.
Swan (beak, curved neck, body).
Bifocal glasses, or part of a "love heart".
Sail of a yacht.
A meat hook, a sea-horse facing right.
A golf club.
A cliff edge.
An egg timer.
A balloon with a string attached, flying freely.
A hole.

If you find that these images do not attract you or stick in your mind, then change them for something more meaningful to you.

As with the Number/Rhyme scheme, link these images to ones representing the things to be remembered.
In some cases these images may be more vivid than those in the number/rhyme scheme, and in other cases you may find the number/rhyme scheme more memorable. There is no reason why you cannot mix the most vivid images of each scheme together into your own compound scheme.
Example
We can use a list of more modern thinkers to illustrate the number/shape system:

Spinoza – a large CANDLE wrapped around with someone's SPINe.
Locke – a SWAN trying to pick a LOCK with its wing.
Hume – A HUMan child BREAST feeding.
Berkeley – A SAIL on top of a large hooked and spiked BURR in the
LEE of a cliff.
Kant – a CAN of spam hanging from a meat HOOK.
Rousseau – a kangaROO SEWing with a GOLF CLUB.
Hegel – a crooked trader about to be pushed over a CLIFF, HaGgLing
to try to avoid being hurt.
Kierkegaard – a large EGG TIMER containing captain KIRK and a GuARD from the starship enterprise, as time runs out.
Darwin – a BALLOON floating upwards, being blown fAR by the WINd.
Marx – a HOLE with white chalk MARks around it's edge.


Key Points
The Number/Shape technique is a very effective method of remembering lists. It works by linking things to be remembered with the images representing the numbers 0 – 9. By using it in conjunction with the Number/Rhyme system, you can build potent images that can make very effective mnemonics.

Read more…

The Number/Rhyme technique is a very simple way of remembering lists in order.
It is an example of a peg system using – a
system where information is 'pegged' to a known sequence (here the
numbers one to ten) to create pegwords. By doing this you ensure
that you do not forget any facts, as gaps in information are
immediately obvious. It also makes remembering images easier as
you always know part of the mnemonic images.
At a simple level you can use it to remember
things such as a list of English Kings or American Presidents in
their precise order. At a more advanced level it can be used, for
example, to code lists of experiments to be recalled in a science
exam.
How to Use the Tool
The technique works by helping you to build up
pictures in your mind, in which you represent numbers by things
that rhyme with the number. You can then link these pictures to
images of the things to be remembered.
The usual rhyming scheme is:

Bun
Shoe
Tree
Paw
Hive
Bricks
Heaven
Gate
Line
Hen

If you find that these images do not attract you or stick in your
mind, then change them for something more meaningful.

Link these images to ones representing the things to be
remembered. Often, the sillier the compound image, the more
effectively you will remember it – see the introduction to this
chapter to see how you can improve the image to help it stay
clearly in your mind.
Example
For example, you could remember a list of ten Greek philosophers as:

Parmenides – a BUN topped with grated yellow PARMEsan cheese.
Heraclitus – a SHOE worn by HERACLes (Greek Hercules) glowing with a bright LIghT.
Empedocles – a TREE from which the M-shaped McDonalds arches hang hooking up a bicycle PEDal.
Democritus – a PAW print on the voting form of a DEMOCRaTic election.
Protagoras – a bee HIVE being hit by an atomic PROTon.
Socrates – BRICKS falling onto a SOCk (with a foot inside!) from a CRATe.
Plato – a plate with angel's wings flapping around a white cloud.
Aristotle – a GATE being jumped by a bewigged French ARISTOcrat carrying a botTLE.
Zeno – a LINE of ZEN Buddhists meditating.
Epicurus – a flying HEN carrying an EPIdemic's CURe.

Try either visualizing these images as suggested, or if you do not
like them, come up with images of your own. Once you have done
this, try writing down the names of the philosophers on a piece of
paper. You should be able to do this by thinking of the number,
then the part of the image associated with the number, and then
the whole image. Finally you can decode the image to give you the
name of the philosopher.
If the mnemonic has worked, you should not only recall the names
of all the philosophers in the correct order, but should also be
able to spot where you have left them out of the sequence. Try it
– it's easier than it sounds.
You can use a peg system like this as a basis for knowledge in an
entire area. The example above could form the basis for knowledge
of ancient philosophy. You could now associate images representing
the projects, systems and theories of each philosopher with the
images coding the philosophers' names.

Key Points
The Number/Rhyme technique is a very effective method of
remembering lists. It works by 'pegging' the things to be
remembered to images rhyming with the numbers 0 – 9. By driving
the associations with numbers you have a good starting point in
reconstructing the images, you are aware if information is
missing, and you can pick up and continue the sequence from
anywhere within the list.

Read more…

The Link Method is one of the easiest mnemonic
techniques available.
You use it by making simple associations
between items in a list, linking them with a vivid image
containing the items.
Taking the first image, create a connection
between it and the next item (perhaps in your mind smashing them
together, putting one on top of the other, or suchlike.) Then move
on through the list linking each item with the next.
The Story Method is very similar, linking
items together with a memorable story featuring them. The flow of
the story and the strength of the images give you the cues for
retrieval.
How to Use the Tools
It is quite possible to remember lists of
words using association only. However it is often best to fit the
associations into a story: Otherwise by forgetting just one
association you can lose the whole of the rest of the list.
Given the fluid structure of this mnemonic (compared with the peg
systems explained later in this section) it is important that the
images stored in your mind are as vivid as possible. See the
introduction to this section for further information on making
images strong and memorable.
Where a word you want to remember does not trigger strong images,
use a similar word that will remind you of that word.
Example
You may want to remember this list of counties in the South of
England: Avon, Dorset, Somerset, Cornwall, Wiltshire, Devon,
Gloucestershire, Hampshire, and Surrey.

You could do this with two approaches, the Link Method and the
Story Method:
Remembering With the Link Method
This would rely on a series of images coding information:

An AVON (Avon) lady knocking on a heavy oak DOoR (Dorset).
The DOoR opening to show a beautiful SuMmER landscape with a
SETting sun (Somerset).
The setting sun shines down onto a field of CORN (Cornwall).
The CORN is so dry it is beginning to WILT (Wiltshire).
The WILTing stalks slowly droop onto the tail of the sleeping
DEVil (Devon).
On the DEVil's horn a woman has impaled a GLOSsy (Gloucestershire)
HAM (Hampshire) when she hit him over the head with it.
Now the Devil feels SoRRY (Surrey) he bothered her.

Note that there need not be any reason or underlying plot to the
sequence of images: only images and the links between images are
important.
Remembering With the Story Method
Alternatively you could code this information by imaging the
following story vividly:
An AVON lady is walking up a path towards a strange house. She is
hot and sweating slightly in the heat of high SUMMER (Somerset).
Beside the path someone has planted giant CORN in a WALL
(Cornwall), but it's beginning to WILT (Wiltshire) in the heat.
She knocks on the DOoR (Dorset), which is opened by the DEVil
(Devon).
In the background she can see a kitchen in which a servant is
smearing honey on a HAM (Hampshire), making it GLOSsy
(Gloucestershire) and gleam in bright sunlight streaming in
through a window. Panicked by seeing the Devil, the Avon lady
screams 'SoRRY' (Surrey), and dashes back down the path.

Key Points
The Link Method is probably the most basic memory technique, and
is very easy to understand and use. It works by coding information
to be remembered into images and then linking these images
together
The story technique is very similar. It links these images
together into a story. This helps to keep events in a logical
order and can improve your ability to remember information if you
forget the sequence of images.
Both techniques are very simple to learn. Unfortunately they are
both slightly unreliable as it is easy to confuse the order of
images or forget images from a sequence.

Read more…

Are you often unable to remember an important fact or figure?
Do you forget people's names at the worst moments?
Are you ever asked a question, and you should know the answer, but you struggle to form an intelligent reply?
These are common instances where a good memory is important.
Memory is more than recalling information for exams or trivia games. It's an important work skill that you can develop and
improve. Whether it's remembering key statistics during a negotiation, or quoting a precedent-setting action when making a
decision, or impressing clients with your knowledge of their product lines – your ability to remember is a major advantage.
People with good memories are often seen as knowledgeable, smart, competent, and dependable. And there are many techniques you can use to develop your own ability to remember information – and then recall it when and where you need it.
Take Care of Your Health
The basis for a good memory is a healthy mind and body. You can't expect your brain to function at its best if you don't take care of the body that feeds it. Here are some key issues that you need to address:

Eat well – Make sure key vitamins are in your diet, including folic acid, vitamin B12, and antioxidants. These improve the sharpness of the mind. If necessary, take vitamin supplements.
Drink plenty of water – Most of us are dehydrated and don't even know it. When you don't drink enough water, your body and mind become weak and tired. Water makes red blood cells more active and gives you more energy.
Get enough sleep – During sleep, your brain recharges itself. Studies have shown that your brain needs sleep to change new memories into long-term memories.
Manage stress effectively – Ongoing stress has many harmful health effects. Learn to limit and control the stress in your life. Use physical relaxation techniques , thought awareness and rational positive thinking , and imagery to reduce your levels of stress.
Don't smoke – Limit caffeine and alcohol use (excessive alcohol can seriously affect your short term memory). Get enough exercise.

These basic health tips allow you to maximize your brain's abilities.
Use Mnemonics
Mnemonics are simple memory-improving tools that help you connect everyday, easy-to-remember items and ideas to information you want to remember. Later, by recalling these everyday items, you can also recall what you wanted to remember.

There are many mnemonic techniques:

The Number/Rhyme Technique – This allows you to remember ordered lists. Start with a standard word that rhymes with the number (we recommend 1 – Bun, 2 – Shoe, 3 – Tree, 4 – Door, 5 – Hive, 6 – Bricks, 7 – Heaven, 8 – Gate, 9 – Line, 10 – Hen). Then create an image that associates each with the thing you're trying to remember. To remember a list of South American countries using number/rhyme, you might start with:

One – Bun/Colombia: A BUN with the COLUMn of a Greek temple coming out of it.
Two – Shoe/Venezuela: VENus de Milo coming out of the sea on a SHOE.
Three – Tree/Guyana: Friends call GUY and ANnA sitting in a TREE.
Four – Door/Ecuador: A DOOR in the shape of a circle/globe with a golden EQUAtOR running around it.


The Number/Shape System – Here, create images that relate to the shape of each number, and connect those images to the items in your list. Let's use the same example:

One – Spear/Columbia: The shaft of the SPEAR is a thin marble COLUMn.
Two – Swan/Venezuela: This time, VENus is standing on the back of a SWAN.
Three – Bifocal Glasses/Guyana: GUY has just trodden on ANnA's bifocals. She's quite cross!
Four – Sailboat/Ecuador: The boat is sailing across the golden line of the EQUAtOR on a globe.


The Alphabet Technique – This works well for lists of more than 9 or 10 items (beyond 10, the previous techniques can get too difficult). With this system, instead of finding a word that rhymes with the number, you associate the things you want to remember with a particular letter of the alphabet, from A to Z. This is an efficient way to remember an ordered list of up to 26 items.
The Journey System – In your mind, think about a familiar journey or trip: For example, you might go from your office to your home. Associate the things that you want to remember with each landmark on your journey. With a long enough, well-enough known journey, you can remember a lot of things!
The Roman Room System (Loci Method) – This technique uses location to stimulate your memory. Connect your list with items you see in a familiar room or location. You might find associations with things in your kitchen, in your office, or at a familiar grocery store.


Our Bite-Sized Training session Remember! will help you to review and practice some of these mnemonic techniques.

Mind Mapping
Mind maps (also called concept maps or memory maps) are an effective way to link ideas and concepts in your brain, and then "see" the connections firsthand. Mind mapping is a note-taking technique that records information in a way that shows you how various pieces of information fit together. There's a lot of truth in the saying "A picture speaks a thousand words", and mind maps create an easily-remembered "picture" of the information you're trying to remember.
This technique is very useful to summarize and combine information from a variety of sources. It also allows you to think about
complex problems in an organized manner, and then present your findings in a way that shows the details as well as the big
picture.

The mind map itself is a useful end product. However, the process of creating the map is just as
helpful for your memory. Fitting all the pieces together, and looking for the connections, forces you to really
understand what you're studying – and it keeps you from trying to simply memorize.

Challenge Your Brain
As with other parts of your body, your mind needs exercise. You can exercise your brain by using it in different ways, on a regular basis. Try the following:

Learn a new skill or start a hobby – Find activities that build skills you don't normally use in your daily life. For example, if you work with numbers all day, develop your creative side with art classes or photography.
Use visualization on a regular basis – Since much of memory involves associating and recalling images, it's important to build this skill. Get plenty of practice with this!
Keep active socially – When you communicate and interact with people, you have to be alert. This helps keep your brain strong and alive.
Focus on the important things – You can't possibly remember everything, so make sure you give your brain important things to do – and don't overload it with "waste." The "garbage in, garbage out" philosophy works well here.

Tip:
While it's important to develop a good
memory, remembering unnecessary things (such as tasks you
need to do, or things you need to buy) is hard work. What's
more, because these consume short-term memory, they can
diminish your ability to concentrate on other things. They
can also leave you stressed, as you struggle to remember all
of the things you have to do.
Write these things down on your to-do list ! This way, you don't have to remember everything. And if your memory fails, you know where to look for the information you need.


Keep your brain active with memory games and puzzles – Try Sudoku, chess, Scrabble, and Word Twist as well as trivia games, pair matching, and puzzles. These are popular ways to practice memorization while having fun. And explore brain-training sites like Lumosity as a way of pepping up
your mind.


Key Points
Your memory is a valuable asset that you should protect and
develop. Even if you no longer have to memorize information for
exams, the ability to remember quickly and accurately is always
important.
Whether it's remembering the name of someone you met at a
conference last month, or recalling the sales figure from last
quarter, you must rely on your memory. Learn and practice the
above techniques to keep your mind healthy.
You have only one brain – so treat it well, give it lots of
exercise, and don't take it for granted. You never know when
you'll need its skills to be at their best!

Read more…

The tools in this section help you to improve
your memory. They help you both to remember facts accurately and
to remember the structure of information.
The tools are split into two sections. Firstly
you'll learn the memory techniques themselves. Secondly we'll look
at how you can use them in practice to remember peoples names,
languages, exam information, and so on.
As with other mind tools, the more practice
you give yourself with these techniques, the more effectively you
will use them. This section contains many of the memory techniques
used by stage memory performers. With enough practice and effort,
you may be able to have a memory as good. Even if you do not have
the time needed to develop this quality of memory, many of the
techniques here are useful in everyday life.
Mnemonics
'Mnemonic' is another word for memory tool.
Mnemonics are techniques for remembering information that is
otherwise quite difficult to recall: A very simple example is the
'30 days hath September' rhyme for remembering the number of days
in each calendar month.
The idea behind using mnemonics is to encode difficult-to-remember
information in a way that is much easier to remember.

Our brains evolved to code and interpret complex stimuli such as
images, colors, structures, sounds, smells, tastes, touch,
positions, emotions and language. We use these to make
sophisticated models of the world we live in. Our memories store
all of these very effectively.
Unfortunately, a lot of the information we have to remember in
modern life is presented differently – as words printed on a page.
While writing is a rich and sophisticated medium for conveying
complex arguments, our brains do not easily encode written
information, making it difficult to remember.
This section of Mind Tools shows you how to use all the memory
resources available to you to remember information in a highly
efficient way.
Using Your Whole Mind to Remember
The key idea is that by coding information using vivid mental
images, you can reliably code both information and the structure
of information. And because the images are vivid, they are easy to
recall when you need them.
The techniques explained later on in this section show you how to
code information vividly, using stories, strong mental images,
familiar journeys, and so on.
You can do the following things to make your mnemonics more
memorable:

Use positive, pleasant images. Your brain often blocks out unpleasant ones.
Use vivid, colorful, sense-laden images – these are easier to remember than drab ones.
Use all your senses to code information or dress up an image. Remember that your mnemonic can contain sounds, smells, tastes, touch, movements and feelings as well as pictures.
Give your image three dimensions, movement and space to make it
more vivid. You can use movement either to maintain the flow of
association, or to help you to remember actions.
Exaggerate the size of important parts of the image.
Use humor! Funny or peculiar things are easier to remember than
normal ones.
Similarly, rude rhymes are very difficult to forget!
Symbols (red traffic lights, pointing fingers, road signs, etc.)
can code quite complex messages quickly and effectively.

Designing Mnemonics: Imagination, Association and Location
The three fundamental principles underlying the use of mnemonics
are imagination, association and location. Working together, you
can use these principles to generate powerful mnemonic systems.
Imagination: is what you use to create and strengthen the
associations needed to create effective mnemonics. Your
imagination is what you use to create mnemonics that are potent
for you. The more strongly you imagine and visualize a situation,
the more effectively it will stick in your mind for later recall.
The imagery you use in your mnemonics can be as violent, vivid, or
sensual as you like, as long as it helps you to remember.
Association: this is the method by which you link a thing to be
remembered to a way of remembering it. You can create associations
by:

Placing things on top of each other.
Crashing things together.
Merging images together.
Wrapping them around each other.
Rotating them around each other or having them dancing together.
Linking them using the same color, smell, shape, or feeling.
As an example, you might link the number 1 with a goldfish by visualizing a 1-shaped spear being used to spear it.

Location: gives you two things: a coherent context into which you
can place information so that it hangs together, and a way of
separating one mnemonic from another. By setting one mnemonic in a
particular town, I can separate it from a similar mnemonic set in
a city. For example, by setting one in Wimbledon and another
similar mnemonic with images of Manhattan, we can separate them
with no danger of confusion. You can build the flavors and
atmosphere of these places into your mnemonics to strengthen the
feeling of location.

Read more…

Bob has just had to shut down one of his department's production lines, while he re-engineers a key process to comply with new safety legislation.
This change in legislation has been expected for well over a year, and, while it's only now coming into force, other people in Bob's industry have been prepared for the change for months.
Needless to say, Bob's boss isn't happy, particularly when she hears how this is going to affect profits and delivery times.
Many of us work in changing competitive environments. If we don't keep up with news and trends, we can miss key opportunities and can be caught unawares. That's why, for some of us, it's important to keep-in-touch with news and trends in our industries.
Benefits of Keeping Up-to-Date
Although keeping up with industry news may seem to be just one more thing to add to your To-Do List, there are several important benefits.
First, you'll make better decisions, and you'll spot threats and opportunities early on, which can give you a competitive edge. This is especially important if you contribute to shaping your organization's strategy. It's also important if you're involved in sales and marketing, where it helps you identify and take advantage of the sales opportunities that come your way.
Secondly, keeping up-to-date with your industry is key for building expert power . By developing expertise in your job and your industry, you'll earn the trust and respect of the people around you. From a leadership perspective, this is invaluable!
Finally, it will alert you to changes that you need to think about. This is the sort of information that would have saved Bob his embarrassment.


Note:
Clearly, in some roles (for example, in junior roles, or where you're providing a service within your organization) there may be no need to keep up-to-date with your industry. Use your best judgment when applying the strategies in this article – if you don't need this information, don't waste your time sourcing it!

Sources of Information
To keep up with news and developments in your industry, the first thing you need to do is identify the best sources to use.
We've listed traditional and online sources below: choose the most appropriate sources depending on your industry and the type of work that you do.
Traditional Sources:
Find a Mentor
A great starting point is to find a mentor within your organization. Not only can mentors help you solve career issues and develop your career, they can provide you with a wealth of insider knowledge, as well as with the insight needed to understand it.
Trade Organizations
Your industry may have one or more trade organizations that you can join. These are useful, because they can help to keep you informed with their newsletters and publications, and they provide networking opportunities with meetings and conferences.
Trade Shows and Conferences
Trade shows and conferences are great for learning about competitors, new products, and industry trends; and they can provide ample networking opportunities.
Face-to-Face Networking
Face-to-face networking can be one of the most rewarding ways to stay on top of industry news and trends. Often, professional relationships can develop into deep friendships, especially when you meet on a regular basis.

Keep in mind that you have a wide pool of people you can network with. People directly related to your industry are an obvious choice, but so are industry suppliers, customers, and people working in related fields.
Online Sources:
Blogs
Blogs aren't just for personal journaling anymore. Many bloggers are respected for their high quality work and honest opinion.
Do a web search for keywords that are commonly used in your industry – it might take a bit of time, but you may find some high quality blogs relevant to your job and your industry. Once you've found several you like, you can sign up to receive posts through RSS , or subscribe to the bloggers' Twitter profiles for regular updates (see below).
You can also find top blogs by using Technorati , a well-respected blog ranking service. With it, blogs are ranked by their authority, which is determined by how many other sites link to them. Rankings go from 1-100: the higher the blog is ranked, the more reputable it is.
Twitter
Twitter can be a great place to find industry leaders and organizations, and to stay on top of relevant news and trends.
Use it to find people in your industry who are in-the-know, by searching Twitter for relevant keywords. (You may get more out of Twitter if you start a dialogue with those who you're following.)
LinkedIn
Using LinkedIn is a wonderful way to connect with colleagues, trade groups, and industry leaders. You can join industry-specific groups, and get the latest updates from individuals and organizations.
Google Alerts
The Google Alerts service notifies you when resources featuring certain words are indexed by Google's search engine.
For instance, if you're a pharmaceutical rep, you might want to get notified about articles containing the words "pharmaceutical industry," or the names of your clients, your organization and your competitors. You can be notified once a day or once a week. Links can be contained in one email, or you can get updates via an RSS feed.
The advantage to using Google Alerts is that you no longer have to surf the web looking for industry news. However, you might find that you simply get too much information this way – if this happens, tweak your settings or use a longer keyword-string. Also, be aware that not every new resource will be indexed by Google – this is especially true for subscription-only content.
Forums
Membership sites and discussion forums can be full of insider-information tailored around specific topics or industries; and talking with other professionals in your industry can help you network and grow your skills, especially if you're in a technology field such as IT.
If you're unsure of which forums to use, ask colleagues, have a browse online, or ask your Twitter or LinkedIn connections for recommendations.


Tip:
You may find that the most useful forums are on community websites, and you may need to pay a subscription to access these.

Making Time
Once you've identified the best sources to use, you need to schedule time to get the most from them. This can be challenging, especially if your day is already filled to the brim with regular commitments. But it's important to create time in your day to devote to staying current, where you need to do this for your job.
First, schedule time daily or weekly to devote to reading and networking. Staying up-to-date requires a regular commitment if it's to pay off, so work time into your schedule whenever you can. Some good times might be over your lunch break, or during a "low-energy" period of the day.
You can also stay up-to-date using "open time" outside of work. For instance, if you commute to work, you could listen to podcasts or audio books while you're driving. If you take a train or bus, you could read blog posts or industry magazines during your ride. You could even listen to podcasts or audio books while you're at the gym.
Once you've identified several sources that you read or listen to regularly, you need to decide if they're worth your time. If a publication or source doesn't provide real value to you, then don't be afraid to cull it from your reading list.
If you're doing a lot of reading, then make sure that you learn to use appropriate reading strategies , which help you make best use of your time. Learning to speed read , for instance, enables you to read and digest more information in a shorter period of time.
Keep in mind that you probably don't need to know everything, from every source, about your industry. Your largest time investment will be up front, but once you've found a few reputable sources, you'll learn the most important information without having to spend much time searching for it.


Note:

As we've already mentioned, you may not need to keep up-to-date with your industry in some roles. Bear this in mind when scheduling your time, and don't be afraid to minimize the amount of time that you spend gathering information.

Sharing and Using
In some situations, sharing industry news and trends with your team can create a positive learning environment, and can help everyone to grow professionally.
To share information in this way, you could devote the first few minutes of your weekly team meeting to sharing relevant news and information. You could also post articles on your organization's bulletin board or blog, or in the company newsletter.


Note:

Sharing news with your team won't be appropriate in all situations, as its usefulness will depend on people's roles, whether they're interested, and whether they can use the knowledge that you pass on. Again, use your best judgment – otherwise, you'll waste valuable time and resources.

Overall, keeping-up-to-date on your industry is only useful if you use the information that you learn. So, don't just "store" the knowledge you gain: use it to take advantage of opportunities, minimize threats, and make better decisions.


Key Points
In some roles, it's important to stay on top of industry news and trends – you'll build your expertise, you'll command the respect of your team, and you'll be better placed to identify and exploit opportunities.
In these roles, scour the Internet for industry magazines and reputable blogs. Use social networking sites like Twitter and LinkedIn to find industry leaders, and attend conferences and trade shows to make contacts and find out what's happening.
It's easy to get information overload, so schedule daily or weekly time to devote to catching up, and be ruthless when it comes to pruning low quality sources of information. Also, remember that, in some roles, it won't be necessary to keep up-to-date with industry news, so use your best judgment about what you need to know, depending on your role, and your career aspirations.

Read more…

Effective information gathering is the most basic
perspective-widening tool an effective leader requires.
Good quality information
marks out the context in which the leader operates, creates the information
patterns from which ideas emerge, and provides the criteria by which ideas are
screened and assessed.
Effective leaders gather two main types of information:

Background Data.
Task-Related Data.

Leaders gather background data to build their view of the
world in which they operate.
This information is made up of the countless facts, trends and opinions that
they encounter and the observations they make on a daily basis. The higher the
quality of background data they gather and the more effectively they prioritize
it, the more accurate their view of the world will be, and the better their
judgment and "common sense".
By contrast with the steady, slow gathering of background data, task-related
information is gathered for a specific purpose.
Perhaps you're preparing a
five-year business plan and you want a reliable growth forecast from your
country's central bank. Or maybe you want specific information about the number
and disposable incomes of a certain group of consumers. Or perhaps you need to
know projected labor market trends for people with a key skill on which you
depend.

Gathering Background Information
What is certain, however, is that task-related information
on its own is not enough: While arguments created with it can be persuasive,
they are "brittle" and can often be knocked down with previously unknown facts
that just don't fit. This is where ideas need to be tested with the common sense
that comes with diligently acquired background information.

There are a number of things you can do to build background information:

Read a newspaper or news website respected for the quality
and accuracy of its journalism (for example, "The Economist").
Where possible, talk to your customers and get a deep understanding of what they
want and don't want from you, and what they're getting or not getting from you
and your competitors.
Read industry magazines and newsletters for both your own and your customers'
industries, keeping an eye on customers, competitors, suppliers, industry
associations, activist groups, new technologies and so on.
Talk to experts in the fields in which you operate and knowledgeable people
within your organization, and understand their perspectives on the key trends
and features of interest.
Read brochures and talk to product teams to make sure you understand your
organization's products and services, their strengths and weaknesses, and what
your customers like or dislike about them.
Have a good understanding of company or business unit strategy – i.e. what your
company says it wants to do, who it wants its customers to be, and how it plans
to serve them.
Take the time to "tune in" to what's going on in your organization: Through both
the formal and informal "grapevines".

What is necessary here is to take the time to gather this information: It's all
too easy for these activities to be lost under the pressures of a hectic
schedule.
Gathering Task-Related Information
It's much easier to justify the time spent gathering task-related information:
Information-gathering actions are clearly identified steps in the projects you
undertake.
There are three key factors here:

Understanding how much research you should do.
Making sure you ask the right questions.
Gathering the information you need.

The amount of research you take depends on the scale of the decision, the time
available, and the consequences of getting it wrong. If it's a small decision,
or the consequences of getting it wrong are small, then don't waste too much
time on it. On the other hand, if the consequences are severe, take time to make
a good decision, and make sure you make an appropriate risk management plan in
case things don't work out.
Making sure you ask the right questions is of key importance. Start by
brainstorming these questions, ideally with your boss or client or with experts
in the field or within your organization. Then make sure you draw on any
predefined frameworks you can find, where people have tried to make a system or
process for solving this type of problem. For example, if you're gathering
information as part of researching a business plan, then buy a good book on
business planning from Amazon.com and adapt the framework it proposes for your
own use.
Finally, make a plan for gathering the key information needed, and think about
how much you're prepared to spend to get it.
A lot of information is relatively freely available, within your organization or
in good business, academic or institutional libraries. Some information is
packaged and for sale (for example, detailed competitor financial reports).
Other information you may need to gather yourself, for example in interviewing
clients or conducting market research surveys. And in other cases (for example,
in taking legal advice) it makes sense to pay a qualified expert to answer your
questions.
And at the end of all this research, make sure you take a step back and look at
the answers you've gained through the filter of common sense. Ask yourself if
any information seems to be missing, or if anything you've uncovered jars with
your instincts and experience.
Finally, while information gathering is an essential skill for an effective
leader, bear in mind that the information is not an end in itself. It is useful
because it serves as an input towards generating ideas and building vision.
Later on in this section, we'll look at how to process information to build this
vision.

Read more…

Have you ever taken a training course, read a business book, or learned a new skill, but then forgotten almost everything about it within a few weeks?
When you don't have the chance to apply new knowledge, it's easy to forget what you have learned. This is why it's so important not only to take notes, but also to review what you have learned regularly, so that you can remember it for the long-term.
In this article, we look at the benefits of reviewing information, and we explore several strategies that you can use to do this effectively.
Why Review Information?
When we learn new information, we remember it best immediately after we have learned it. We then forget details as time passes. Even after a few days, we may be able to recall only a little of what we initially learned.
To remember what we've learned over the long-term, we need to move information from short-term memory (what we're currently thinking about or aware of) into long-term memory.
To do this, we need to review what we've learned, and we need to do this often. It takes time to commit information to long-term memory, and reviewing information helps us do this.

Tip:
As well improving your learning, these strategies are also useful in day-to-day business situations, such as when you want to remember client details or recall information for a presentation.

How to Review Information Effectively
We'll now look at some simple strategies that you can use to remember information over the longer term.
1. Review Immediately
Begin by spending a few minutes reviewing material immediately after you've learned it. This helps you confirm that you understand the information, and reduces the time needed to "relearn" it when you review it again in the future.

As you re-read material, use effective reading strategies to make sure that you're reading efficiently and intelligently. For instance, if you've just read a chapter in a business book, you may only need to review section headings and the conclusion to start fixing information in your memory.
2. Rewrite Materials
Rewriting and reorganizing your notes is another great way to review information.
This might seem like a waste of time at first. However, rewriting can be a very effective method for reinforcing what you've learned. Research shows that the act of rewriting notes helps us clarify our understanding.
One way to do this is to put the information you have learned into Mind Maps . These are especially good for rewriting notes, because they force you to make connections between concepts and themes.
You can also simply jot down key points in bullet form, or tidy up any original notes.
3. Schedule Reviews
Remember – it takes repeated effort to move information into your long-term memory. So, it's important to review information frequently.
It's best to carry out a review after a day, after a week, and after a month; and then to review your notes every few months thereafter.
Make sure that you schedule time for your reviews, otherwise they will get pushed aside when urgent issues come up. Also, put these reviews into your To-Do List , or into your Action Program .
Again, you'll also find it useful to write notes during these regular reviews. Try jotting down what you can remember about the subject, and then compare these notes with your original ones. This will show you what you've forgotten, and will help you refresh your memory.

Tip 1:
Reviewing learned information is the final step in the SQ3R
process. SQ3R (which stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recall, and Review) is a particularly potent method for getting the greatest benefit from your reading.
Tip 2:
Sleep also helps your memory – research shows that we remember more when we get a good night's sleep .


Key Points
To remember what we've learned, we need to commit information to our long-term memory. A great way of doing this is by reviewing information regularly.
To review information, revisit learning material straight after you've learned it, using an effective reading strategy.
Also, write notes about what you've learned using tools such as Mind Maps, and then review this information one day, one week, and one month later. You can then revisit the information every few months.

Read more…

Nowadays, it's easy to access new reading material. You can read on a smartphone, tablet, or e-book reader, and you can order traditional media such as books and magazines for next-day (or same-day) delivery.
However, it's not so easy to remember everything that you've read.
SQ3R helps you do this. It helps you think about what you want to get from a document, study it in an appropriate level of detail, and remember information well.
As such, it makes your reading both more efficient and more effective.
In this article, we'll look at how to use SQ3R, and we'll see how you can make it a routine part of the way you learn.
Overview
Francis Pleasant Robinson developed SQ3R, and published it in his 1946 book, " Effective Study ." He created the technique for college students, but, even now, it's suitable for learning in almost every situation, including at work.
SQ3R is an acronym that stands for five steps that you should use when reading something that you want to remember. These five steps are:

Survey.
Question.
Read.
Recall.
Review.

By following these steps, you ensure that you spend your time reading the most appropriate document, you study the right parts of that document in the right level of detail, you integrate new knowledge with existing knowledge, and you fix information in your mind, so that you can remember it in the long term.
Applying the Tool
To use SQ3R, follow the five steps below.
Step 1: Survey
Start by skimming through the material you've identified, to decide if it will be useful and to get an overview of the topic.
For example, if you've selected a book, scan the contents, introduction, chapter introductions, and chapter summaries to pick up an overview of the text.

For a website, look at the "breadcrumbs," which indicate the relative location of pages within the site. (If breadcrumbs are used, they're usually at the top of the page.) Also use the menus or the site map to see where the article sits within the overall structure of the site.
Then, look at typographical elements of the text, such as italics, bold words, subheadings, and boxed text. These often point to words or ideas that are important.
Last, explore any images, maps, charts, or diagrams that are embedded in the text.
Use these clues to decide whether this text will give you the information you're looking for. If it doesn't meet your needs, look for a different information source.
Step 2: Question
Now note down any questions that you may have about the subject. These could be the questions that led you to read it in the first place, or ones that you thought of during your survey.
Also, think about what else you want to achieve from this reading. What do you need to find out from this material? What are you most interested in learning? And how will this information help you?
When you question the material, you engage your mind and prepare it for learning. You're far more likely to retain information when you're actively looking for it.
Step 3: Read
Now read the document, one section at a time. Make a note of anything that you don't understand – you can use these notes later on, when you explore related materials.
You may find that this read-through takes more time than you expect, especially if the information is dense or complex.
Keep yourself focused by turning every subheading or chapter title into a question that you must answer before you move on. For example, you could turn the subtitle, "The Advantages of SQ3R" into the question, "What are the advantages of SQ3R?" and run through the answer in your mind before you move onto the next part of the text.


Tip:
While you're reading, use Mind Maps® or Cornell Note Taking to take notes on important concepts, and to record your reactions to what you're reading. Alternatively (and if you own the document) you can "read actively" by underlining important passages or by using a highlighter pen to show key points.

Step 4: Recall
Once you've read the appropriate sections of the document, run through it in your mind several times. Identify the important points, and then work out how other information fits around them.
Then, go back to your questions from Step 2, and try to answer them from memory. Only turn back to the text if you're unable to answer a question this way.
Step 5: Review
Once you can recall the information, you can start to review it.
First, reread the document or your notes. This is especially important if you don't feel confident that you've understood all of the information.
Then discuss the material with someone else – this is a highly effective method of reviewing information. Explain what you have just learned as comprehensively as you can, and do your best to put the information into a context that's meaningful for your team, organization, or industry.
Finally, schedule regular reviews of the material to keep it fresh in your mind. Do this after a week, after a month, and after several months – this helps to embed the material into your long-term memory.

Tip:
If you don't have the chance to discuss your learning face to face, consider keeping a blog or creating fact sheets to outline what you've learned.

Making SQ3R a Habit
At first, SQ3R may feel time-consuming. However, the more you use it, the less you'll have to think about the process.
To turn this reading technique into a habit , use it each time you need to read something in detail. At first, allow extra time to get into the habit of using the five steps, and look for opportunities to discuss what you've learned with colleagues.

Key Points
SQ3R is five-step technique that you can use to learn more effectively, and to increase your retention of written information. It helps you to focus what you need from a document, and to create a clear structure for the information in your mind.
SQ3R's step are:

Survey.
Question.
Read.
Recall.
Review.

You can use SQ3R whether you're reading online or on paper. It can take extra time to follow the five steps at first, but you'll find that if you make the effort, you'll learn and retain significantly more.

Read more…

It usually begins as soon as you arrive at your office in the morning.
You have 68 new emails in your inbox, a podcast waiting on your iPod, two trade publications that you really need to read, a pile of company memos to address – and your BlackBerry indicates that voicemails are waiting for you.
It's going to be another 'information overload' day.
For most of us, days like this are a regular occurrence. We often feel as though we're running to catch up with ourselves – because the information never stops.
You don't need us to tell you that there's lots and lots of irrelevant, outdated, and questionable information out there. Whether that information comes from the Internet, a magazine, or a co-worker, you need the ability to sort through it all and determine what you need to keep – and what you can throw away.
So, what do you do with all this information? When does it become too much? And how can you manage it all so that you can be informed and productive – and still have some free time at the end of the day for a personal life?
This article looks at strategies to sort and manage relevant information – so the information doesn't end up managing you!
Reading Strategies
The ability to search for and find information you need, when you need it, is something that can be learned. And, since most information comes to you through the printed word, it's helpful to use effective reading strategies to identify and select what you need.
Follow these steps to manage the volume of information you need to read:

Define what you need to know – When faced with an information source, ask yourself what exactly you need to get out of it. Do this for things that you read regularly, such as RSS feeds, trade magazines, and newspapers. If you don't know what you're supposed to be learning from a particular source, you may not need to read it.
Decide how much you need to know – If you have a specific, definable reason for needing this information, how much of that information do you need? Are you reading just for general knowledge and awareness? Will this information help you make a decision? And can you 'skim' it quickly, or do you need to read it carefully and thoroughly?
Choose the most important points – Now that you know how to read it, use some strategies for picking out exactly what you need. For instance, newspaper articles usually provide the most important information at the very beginning. Magazines might have the most important points in the middle of an article. See our article on reading strategies for more on this.


Separating Good Information from Bad
Identifying good – and bad – information can be difficult, especially online. Use these tips to identify reliable information quickly on the Internet:

Make sure the source is good – If the source is a well-known newspaper, magazine, or organization, then the information is probably good. Other sites, like blogs, can sometimes be less reliable.
Check the date – If you're not sure about the source, check to see when the website, or webpage, was last updated.
Determine the author – Is the author identified? What are the author's credentials? Does he or she have the education and experience to write with credibility on this topic? To find this information, look at the 'About' page, or the author's byline.
Look for workable links – Are facts backed up with hyperlinks to original sources? Do the links work? In magazines or journals, there are often footnotes or a bibliography page to provide sources for specific facts.
Check the copyrights – Has this information been published elsewhere? One way to check for copyright infringement is to copy and paste a paragraph of text into a search engine, such as Google.

Managing Email
Many people complain about too much email. During the day, it can be a constant flow. We may feel pressured to deal with it in the evening, just so we don't start work the next morning with 50 new messages, and another 50 that we haven't answered from the day before.

So, how can we handle our email more efficiently? These tips can help:

Schedule email times – Set a schedule to check or download your email at certain times of day. Many experts say that two to three times per day is enough. Turn off your email pop-up reminders, and follow this schedule just as you would for meetings or appointments.
Skim and delete emails – When going through your email, do two skims – or quick reads – of your new messages. Immediately delete or file the messages you don't need to answer.
Create a 'response list' – When you find something that needs a reply, quickly write it down on a response list (yes, use real paper!) After you do the first skim of your list of new emails, reply one at a time to the people on your response list.
Respond briefly and effectively – Two tips can help you reply to emails.

Briefly repeat, at the beginning of your message, what you're responding to. For example, if Jon asked you if he should reserve a hotel for the group's next conference, reply to him like this:

Jon, you asked me if you should reserve a hotel for the next conference. Yes. See if the Hampton is available.

This way, Jon won't have to look further down his original email message to remind himself what question you're answering.


Make sure your response is short and to the point.


Don't necessarily respond to everything – Don't feel pressured to reply to every email that you receive, especially from people who have a habit of sending you long messages that aren't really relevant.
Schedule 'no email' times – This might sound impossible to some people, but think about scheduling times during the day when you 'lock yourself out' of your email. Set aside times when you simply don't look at emails; perhaps even close the email program. This will give you some time to do actual work – without disruptions.

Some technology companies use this strategy with their staff. They may have 'Take a Break' buttons on their email programs, or 'No Email Fridays.' Many workers love these approaches!

Limiting Your Information
If you've signed up for 30 RSS feeds, and you download multiple podcasts every day – in addition to all the emails and voicemails you receive – you're probably trying to do too much. And this could hurt your productivity.
There's often nothing wrong with limiting your information – in fact, it's often a good thing. We live in a world that's 24/7/365, and you can't keep up with everything.
So, set limits for yourself. Decide that you'll regularly read a few high-quality blogs or websites, or a few trade journals – and let the rest go.

Key Points
Many of us are overwhelmed by the amount of information we have to process each day. However, several strategies can help you take control. Set a schedule to check your email at certain times during the day, and don't feel pressured to respond to everything in your inbox. If you need to reply to an email, be brief.
When you gather information online, make sure the websites you read are reliable and up to date. And don't be afraid to set limits for yourself – you can't read everything, so determine what you really need to know, and then be selective.

Read more…

Whether they're project documents, trade journals, blogs, business books or ebooks, most of us read regularly as part of our jobs, and to develop our skills and knowledge.
But do you ever read what should be a useful document, yet fail to gain any helpful information from it? Or, do you have to re-read something several times to get a full understanding of the content?
In this article, we're looking at strategies that will help you read more effectively. These approaches will help you get the maximum benefit from your reading, with the minimum effort.
Think About What You Want to Know
Before you start reading anything, ask yourself why you're reading it. Are you reading with a purpose, or just for pleasure? What do you want to know after you've read it?
Once you know your purpose, you can examine the resource to see whether it's going to help you.
For example, with a book, an easy way of doing this is to look at the introduction and the chapter headings. The introduction should let you know who the book is intended for, and what it covers. Chapter headings will give you an overall view of the structure of the subject.
Ask yourself whether the resource meets your needs, and try to work out if it will give you the right amount of knowledge. If you think that the resource isn't ideal, don't waste time reading it.
Remember that this also applies to content that you subscribe to, such as journals or magazines, and web-based RSS and social media news feeds – don't be afraid to prune these resources if you are not getting value from some publishers.
Know How Deeply to Study the Material
Where you only need the shallowest knowledge of a subject, you can skim material. Here you read only chapter headings, introductions, and summaries.

If you need a moderate level of information on a subject, then you can scan the text. This is when you read the chapter introductions and summaries in detail. You can then speed read the contents of the chapters, picking out and understanding key words and concepts. (When looking at material in this way, it's often worth paying attention to diagrams and graphs.)
Only when you need full knowledge of a subject is it worth studying the text in detail. Here it's best to skim the material first to get an overview of the subject. This gives you an understanding of its structure, into which you can then fit the detail gained from a full reading of the material. ( SQ3R is a good technique for getting a deep understanding of a text.)
Read Actively
When you're reading a document or book in detail, it helps if you practice "active reading" by highlighting and underlining key information, and taking notes as you progress. ( Mind Maps are great for this). This emphasizes information in your mind, and helps you to review important points later.
Doing this also helps you keep your mind focused on the material, and stops you thinking about other things.

Tip:
If you're worried about damaging a book by marking it up, ask yourself how much your investment of time is worth. If the book is inexpensive, or if the benefit that you get from the book substantially exceeds its value, then don't worry too much about marking it. (Of course, only do this if it belongs to you!)

Know How to Study Different Types of Material
Different types of documents hold information in different places and in different ways, and they have different depths and breadths of coverage.
By understanding the layout of the material you're reading, you can extract the information you want efficiently.
Magazines and Newspapers
These tend to give a fragmented coverage of an area. They will typically only concentrate on the most interesting and glamorous parts of a topic – this helps them boost circulation! As such, they will often ignore less interesting information that may be essential to a full understanding of a subject, and they may include low value content to "pad out" advertising.
The most effective way of getting information from magazines is to scan the contents tables or indexes and turn directly to interesting articles. If you find an article useful, then cut it out and file it in a folder specifically covering that sort of information. In this way you will build up sets of related articles that may begin to explain the subject.
Newspapers tend to be arranged in sections. If you read a paper often, you can quickly learn which sections are useful, and which ones you can skip altogether.

Tip:
You can apply the same strategies to reading online versions of newspapers and magazines. However, you need to make sure that you don't get distracted by links to other, non-relevant material.

Reading Individual Articles
There are three main types of article in magazines and newspapers:

News Articles – these are designed to explain the key points first, and then flesh these out with detail. So, the most important information is presented first, with information being less and less useful as the article progresses.
Opinion Articles – these present a point of view. Here the most important information is contained in the introduction and the summary, with the middle of the article containing supporting arguments.
Feature Articles – these are written to provide entertainment or background on a subject. Typically the most important information is in the body of the text.

If you know what you want from an article, and recognize its type, you can get information from it quickly and efficiently.

Tip 1:
Nowadays, you probably read many articles online. You can easily save links to these in a bookmark folder to reference later. Make sure that you title folders so that you can easily find the link again. For instance, you could have separate folders for project research, marketing, client prospects, trade information, and professional growth. Or, it might be helpful to title folders using the website or publication name.
Tip 2:
Remember that there are many online articles and electronic documents that weren't originally designed to be read on a screen. (This will also include documents that are emailed to you.) If you find it hard to read these on screen, print them out. This is especially important for long or detailed documents.

Make Your Own Table of Contents
When you're reading a document or book, it's easy to accept the writer's structure of thought. This means that you may not notice when important information has been left out, or that an irrelevant detail has been included.
An effective way to combat this is to make up your own table of contents before you start reading. Ask yourself what sections or topics you are expecting to see in this document, and what questions you want to have answered by the end of the text.
Although doing this before you start reading the document may sound like a strange strategy, it's useful, because it helps you spot holes in the author's argument. Writing out your own table of contents also helps you address your own questions, and think about what you're expecting to learn from the text.
Use Glossaries with Technical Documents
If you're reading large amounts of difficult technical material, it may be useful to use or compile a glossary. Keep this beside you as you read.
It's also useful to note down the key concepts in your own words, and refer to these when necessary.
Further Reading Tips


The time when you read a document plays a role in how easy the reading will be, and how much information you'll retain.
If you need to read a text that is tedious, or requires a great deal of concentration, it's best to tackle it when you have the most energy in the day. Our article, Is This a Morning Task? , helps you work out when this is, so that you can schedule your reading time accordingly.
Where you read is also important. Reading at night, in bed, doesn't work for many people because it makes them sleepy (which means that you may not remember the information). Everyone is different, however, so read in a place that's comfortable, free of distractions, and that has good light – this is important even if you're reading from a screen.
It can be helpful to review the information when you've finished reading. When you're done, write a paragraph that explains, in your own words, what you just learned. Often, putting pen to paper can help strengthen your recall of new information, so that you retain it more effectively.


Key Points
If you want to read more effectively, identify what you want to learn from each resource you read, and know how deeply you want to study the material. And, consider "active reading" by making notes and marking-up the material as you go along. It's also useful to know how to study different types of material.
Making your own table of contents before you read material, and using glossaries for technical resources, are other useful reading strategies.
Remember that it takes practice to develop your reading skills – the more you use these strategies, the more effective you'll become.


Tip:

For more on how to select the most appropriate reading strategy in a specific situation, take our Bite-Sized Training session Read Smarter!

Read more…

Speed Reading
Learning to Read More Efficiently


Learn how to speed read, with
James Manktelow & Amy Carlson.


Think about how much reading you do every day.
Perhaps you read the newspaper to catch up with what's going on in the world. You browse countless emails from colleagues. And you then read the books, reports, proposals, periodicals, and letters that make up an average day.
When you look at it, reading could be the work-related skill that you use most often!
It's also a skill that most of us take for granted by the time we reach the age of 12. After all, it seems that if we can read and comprehend textbooks, then, surely, we must be good readers?
Maybe not. And, given the time that reading consumes in our daily lives, it may be a skill that we can, and should, improve.
But what does becoming a better reader involve?
It means getting faster and more efficient at reading, while still understanding what you're reading. In this article, we'll look at how you can do this, and how you can unlearn poor reading habits.
How We Read
Although you spend a good part of your day reading, have you ever thought about how you read?
How do your eyes make sense of the shapes of the letters, and then put those letters together to form a sentence that you can understand?
When you actually think about it, reading is quite a complex skill. Previously, scientists believed that when you read, both of your eyes focused on a particular letter in a word. Recent research shows this isn't the case.
Scientists now believe that each of your eyes lock onto a different letter at the same time, usually two characters apart. Your brain then fuses these images together to form a word. This happens almost instantaneously, as we zip through pages and pages of text!
Advantages of Speed Reading
Many people read at an average rate of 250 words per minute. This means that an average page in a book or document would take you 1-2 minutes to read.
However, imagine if you could double your rate to 500 words per minute. You could zip through all of this content in half the time. You could then spend the time saved on other tasks, or take a few extra minutes to relax and de-stress.
Another important advantage of speed reading is that you can better comprehend the overall structure of an argument. This leads to a "bigger picture" understanding, which can greatly benefit your work and career.

Note:
Speed reading is a useful and valuable skill. However, there might be times when using this technique isn't appropriate. For instance, it's often best to read important or challenging documents slowly, so that you can fully understand each detail.

Breaking Poor Reading Habits
If you're like most people, then you probably have one or more reading habits that slow you down. Becoming a better reader means overcoming these bad habits, so that you can clear the way for new, effective ways of reading.

Below, we cover some of the most common bad reading habits, and discuss what you can do to overcome them.
Sub-Vocalization
Sub-vocalization is the habit of pronouncing each word in your head as you read it. Most people do this to some extent or another.
When you sub-vocalize, you "hear" the word being spoken in your mind. This takes much more time than is necessary, because you can understand a word more quickly than you can say it.
To turn off the voice in your head, you have to first acknowledge that it's there (how did you read the first part of this article?), and then you have to practice "not speaking." When you sit down to read, tell yourself that you will not sub-vocalize. You need to practice this until this bad habit is erased. Reading blocks of words also helps, as it's harder to vocalize a block of words. (See below for more on this.)
Eliminating sub-vocalization alone can increase your reading speed by an astounding amount. Otherwise, you're limited to reading at the same pace as talking, which is about 250-350 words per minute. The only way to break through this barrier is to stop saying the words in your head as you read.
Reading Word-by-Word
Not only is it slow to read word-by-word, but when you concentrate on separate words, you often miss the overall concept of what's being said. People who read each word as a distinct unit can understand less than those who read faster by "chunking" words together in blocks. (Think about how your eyes are moving as you read this article. Are you actually reading each word, or are you reading blocks of two, or three, or five words?)
Practice expanding the number of words that you read at a time. You may also find that you can increase the number of words you read in a single fixation by holding the text a little further from your eyes. The more words you can read in each block, the faster you'll read!
Inefficient Eye Motion
Slow readers tend to focus on each word, and work their way across each line. The eye can actually span about 1.5 inches at a time, which, for an average page, encompasses four or five words. Related to this is the fact that most readers don't use their peripheral vision to see words at the ends of each line.
To overcome this, "soften" your gaze when you read – by relaxing your face and expanding your gaze, you'll begin to see blocks of words instead of seeing each word as distinct unit. As you get good at this, your eyes will skip faster and faster across the page.
When you get close to the end of the line, let your peripheral vision take over to see the last set of words. This way you can quickly scan across and down to the next line.
Regression
Regression is the unnecessary re-reading of material.
Sometimes people get into the habit of skipping back to words they have just read, while, other times, they may jump back a few sentences, just to make sure that they read something right. When you regress like this, you lose the flow and structure of the text, and your overall understanding of the subject can decrease.
Be very conscious of regression, and don't allow yourself to re-read material unless you absolutely have to.
To reduce the number of times your eyes skip back, run a pointer along the line as you read. This could be a finger, or a pen or pencil. Your eyes will follow the tip of your pointer, helping you avoid skipping back. The speed at which you read using this method will largely depend on the speed at which you move the pointer.
Poor Concentration
If you've tried to read while the TV is on, you'll know how hard it is to concentrate on one word, let alone on many sentences strung together. Reading has to be done in an environment where external distractions are kept to a minimum.
To improve your concentration as you read, stop multitasking while reading, and remove any distractions . This is particularly important, because when you use the techniques of chunking blocks of words together and ceasing to sub-vocalize, you may find that you read several pages before you realize you haven't understood something properly.
Pay attention to "internal distractions" as well. If you're rehashing a heated discussion, or if you're wondering what to make for dinner, this will also limit your ability to process information.
Sub-vocalization actually forces your brain to attend to what you're reading, and that's why people often say that they can read and watch TV at the same time. To become an efficient reader, you need to avoid this.
Approaching Reading Linearly
We're taught to read across and down, taking in every word, sentence, paragraph and page in sequence.
When you do this, though, you pay the same attention to supplementary material as you do to core information. (Often, much more information is presented than you actually need to know.)
Overcome this by scanning the page for headings, and by looking for bullet points and things in bold. There is no rule saying that you have to read a document in the order that the author intended, so scan it quickly, and decide what is necessary and what isn't. Skim over the fluff, and only pay attention to the key material.
As you read, look for the little extras that authors add to make their writing interesting and engaging. If you get the point, there's no need to read the example or anecdote. Similarly, decide what you need to re-read as well. It's far better to read one critical paragraph twice than it is to read another eight paragraphs elaborating on that same concept.
Keys to Speed Reading Success
Knowing the "how" of speed reading is only the first step. You have to practice it to get good at it. Here are some tips that will help you break poor reading habits and master the speed reading skills discussed above.

Practice, practice, practice – you have to use your skills on a regular basis. It took you several years to learn to read, and it will take time to improve your reading skills.
Choose easy material to start with – when you begin speed reading, don't use a challenging textbook. Read something like a novel or travel writing, which you can understand and enjoy with a quick once-over.
Speed read appropriately – not everything you read lends itself to speed reading.
Legal documents, the draft annual report, or even the letter you receive from a loved one in the mail – these are better read in their entirety, sub-vocalizations and all.
If you need to understand the message completely, memorize the information, discuss it in detail, analyze it thoroughly, or simply enjoy the prose the way the author intended, then speed reading is the wrong approach. (Here, it helps to choose an appropriate reading strategy before you start.)
Use a pointer or other device to help push your reading speed – when you quickly draw a card down the page, or run your finger back and forth, you force your eyes and brain to keep pace.
Take a step back and use the material's structure – this includes skimming information to get a feel for the organization and layout of the text, looking for bolded words and headings, and looking for the ways in which the author transitions from one topic to the next.
When you start speed reading, it's wise to benchmark your current reading speed. This way you can tell whether your practice is paying off, and you can impress your friends and family when you tell them that you can now read faster. There are many speed reading assessments online. One such assessment can be found at ReadingSoft.com .


Tip:
There are many other strategies that you can use to improve your reading, as well as your comprehension.
See our articles on SQ3R and Review Techniques to learn how to improve your reading retention; that is, how long you remember the information you're reading.
Also, having the right information is just as important as knowing how to read it. Learn how to gather information more effectively in our article, Information Gathering .


Key Points
Speed reading is a skill that can be learned. It mostly involves breaking poor habits that you may have developed since you learned to read. Simply becoming a faster reader isn't the point, either – you want to become a more efficient reader.
There are some great techniques that you can use when practicing speed reading, including reading blocks of words, and breaking the habit of sub-vocalization.
Whichever techniques you apply, you must always be aware of the purpose of your reading and decide whether speed reading is the most appropriate approach.
When applied correctly and practiced diligently, speed reading can significantly improve your overall effectiveness, as it frees up precious time and allows you to work more efficiently in other areas.

Read more…