12
USE TITBITS AND MNEMONICS
When I had discovered the power of making notes with my pen and paper, I took to it trying to do what my peers were doing. I did not like the idea of recopying my notes like some of my other friends were doing because I wasn’t good with keeping notebooks. I carried along short papers so these papers had to contain enough information in them to keep my brain cracking.
Though I used little fonts while writing, I wouldn’t have being able to carry all the ideas in the book. I desired to be a highflying student but the reading style applied by my classmates wasn’t making me work at my very best. There was no me around them. I needed a system that just suited me and I could do best with my lifestyle.
My major problem, which still is today is that of studying for so long. I hardly spent more than one hour on my books at one time. I read, take a walk, rest, read, play a bit, and read. I wasn’t and I am still not a book worm. I’m sharing these because you don’t have to be a book worm to be the best in class or pass any examination. I knew a couple of book worms who read their books from cover to cover and were not part of the top half of the class. What they never knew was actually how to study to pass examinations.
I knew that I did not need to be a book worm to pass my examination. I just needed to know what worked for me. I needed to know how to balance work, play and rest in such a way that would suite me. My friend Amos never read during the day, another friend Lagos never read during the night. They knew where their strength laid and seized it.
Because I made use of little notes, I learnt to use tidbits and mnemonics. I leant the principle while studying a book by Brian Tracy “the psychology of learning”. I learnt how to make a letter mean so much more than it is by placing images around it with a key word. I actually asked myself series of question. One of the question was “how did our teachers in nursery school teach us that we remembered so much without any notes?” They’d teach us A for apple, B for ball etc. and anytime A was mentioned, what came to our head immediately was apple.
I thought that I could lesson a full note into just a word. I did this. Every topic has keywords. I noted the keywords and wrote them out then I used the first letters of the keywords to make a new word with each letter of the word representing the key word.
Take this text below for example.
Every time I drive, I check my spare tires and fill them to strength . While driving towards my hometown some time ago, I came to a barrier made by men of the road safety to check for spare tire and other necessities. I had forgotten to replace my spare tires
We are familiar with having spare tires in our vehicles. We are always anticipative of a breakdown and make preparations to ensure in a case when our tire loses strength, when there is no possibility for an immediate refill, the tires can be replaced. It is no problem if tire fail and it is replaced. The problem however is that we have carried that mentality with us.
Too many persons today live their lives with the spare tire mentality. We think our lives have spares so we run recklessly living our lives like it does not matter
Key words: spare, tire, vehicles, lives, mentality, road safety, hometown
Mnemonic: STVLMRH
After reading the text and noted the keywords, I memorize the keywords and then write the mnemonic on my paper. The mnemonic is what I write on my paper and go about trying to remember the words the mnemonic represents.
It worked for me and as many people who have applied it have shared wonderful testimonies of its great help. Mnemonics helps you remember so much by having to remember just a little.
In the case of tidbits, the whole text is summarized in one sentence like this one.
People run their lives with the spare tire mentality thinking that like cars have spare tires, they have spare lives.
Using tidbits and mnemonics helps you remember for so long what you have studied for years. It may make you seem like a genius but you did not put in more in input than those who are spending the night reading from text to text.
Try this principle and you’d begin to share your testimonies too.