By Kelvin Loh
URL: www.MightyMemory.com
Although you can do certain things at the same time, there are certain tasks that will pose a challenge, but studies have shown that we can ultimately overcome this with practice. For instance, try to imagine the noise made by a train or the sound made by a piano. Now close your eyes and imagine the picture of a dog. How did you do? For most people, it is quite easy to form a mental picture of the dog while holding to the sound made by the train or the piano. Now repeat the experiment with your eyes open. In this instance, it may prove to be a little more difficult. You see, it is difficult for us to combine seeing with other actions. Both seeing and imagining a picture of something involves similar perceptive skills. In general, it is easier for us to perform two activities if they are somewhat unrelated.
Psychologist have confirmed, in a number of studies that it is surprisingly easy for people to do completely different kinds of actions at the same time – but only after enough practice. But if the actions are similar and there isn’t enough practice, it is quite difficult to perform both simultaneously.
You don’t have to be a stage performer to be able to do many things at the same time. With just a little practice, you can improve your own abilities and very soon, you’ll be very good at multi-tasking. Try this experiment. Have a friend read a book and you write down what she is dictating. At the same time, you read the newspaper. You will notice that this task seems almost impossible. Either your reading speed suffers or the quality of your handwriting deteriorates. After about 35 hours of reading however, you can successfully combine reading and taking down dictation. This fact has been confirmed by experiments.
The key to the whole point of multi-tasking is practice. Anyone wishing to read a book while knitting should spend more time practicing. The same goes for cooking a dinner while talking on the phone. I’m sure you have seen outstanding performers doing seemingly impossible things like juggling balls while playing a trumpet or one-man band playing more than one musical instrument.
Some people can astonishing remember more than a hundred telephone numbers in five minutes. This is done by a surprisingly simple memory technique of association where numbers are changed into images and then a mental link is formed. Thus a completely abstract notation like numbers or any scientific symbols can be changed into a mental picture in a blink of an eye. All these happens in seconds because memory performers spend hours practicing their memory training.
However you can put this mental tool to good use. For example to remember a shopping list, you can use the parts of your own body, for example your toes, your ankle, your knee, your hips, etc. Make a mental association to the item you wish to remember. For example butter, fish, pancake, and milk. Imagine your wriggling toes with melted butter, all slippery. Imagine a shark(fish) nipping at your ankles, wearing pancakes for knee pads and a cow (milk) licking you at the side of your hips and making you all giggly. You now have a simple method to remember a ten or twenty shopping and errand list on the fly. Quite useful when you can’t find a pencil or paper.
And remember, it takes a little practice with your memory training and memory techniques which you can come out with on your own. And you can always find time to practice, while waiting for a friend or queuing up at the bank. It is not surprising therefore that some people have been known to memorize long speeches or whole books with the power of association as a memory tool. And when you are really good at it, you can use it as a neat party trick.
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For more information on human psychology and how to improve your memory skills and enhance your concentration for better perfomance at work or school, you'll probably want to take a look at the Mighty Memory system. It’s a complete, detailed system to boost your brain's performance and covers everything from memory techniques to leveraging on your subconscious mind for better mental capabilites. Well worth checking out!
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