I talked previously about how I enjoyed listening to the audio book “100 Ways to Motivate Yourself” by Steve Chandler. I really liked how much I learned from listening to a tape while driving. So I recently bought another audio book called “Develop a Super Memory Auto-matically”. I didn’t know about it previously, but I saw it when I was at Barnes & Noble. I’m interested in learning how to remember things more consistently and clearly.
This audio book, however, was not one I should have bought. Here is a break down on how the tape runs:
- “Hi, welcome to the tape. First, to increase your memory, stop saying you have a bad memory. You need to believe you can have a good memory.”
- Lame music with positive affirmations you’re supposed to repeat to yourself.
- “Forgetting someone’s name isn’t because of bad memory but because you weren’t paying attention or focused.”
- Lame music with positive affirmations you’re supposed to repeat to yourself.
- Fake conversation with other host: “I can remember student names within the first hour of a new class.” “Wait a minute, Bob, are you blah blah blah blah seriously?” “Why, yes, Diedre, blah blah blah I’ll give you the secret but first let’s have more positive affirmation time.” “Ok!”
- Lame music with positive affirmations you’re supposed to repeat to yourself.
- “The secret…No, wait, just a description of the secret’s results. Let’s take an affirmation break.”
- Lame music with positive affirmations you’re supposed to repeat to yourself.
And so on. I plan on finishing the tape, even though the big secret isn’t really a secret. I’ve read about associating a number with a specific item, such as 1=T/Tea, 2=N/Noah, 3=M,May, etc. And I’ve read that making absurd images and using other senses help you to remember. If anything redeems itself, it is the fact that the tape talks about this “memorizing lists” technique in a more natural pace than what I’ve read. I can actually see myself making use of this technique.
Still, it’s an audio tape. If I feel the need to reaffirm that I have the ability to remember things, I’ll rewind to listen to an “affirmation break” from the beginning. I don’t need it strewn throughout the tape, interrupting the flow of learning. What really ticked me off was hearing the author say something like, “We usually use 30 items, but due to time constraints, we’ll only use 16.” Time constraints?! Maybe if you didn’t waste most of the tape with affirmations, you would have more time!
I’m fairly upset about it, but I have to realize that it is my fault that I wasn’t informed. In an age where reviews of any product by anyone in the world are easily available, I made a reckless purchasing decision. I would have seen that other people were also turned off by the repeated and mostly unnecessary affirmation breaks. I say mostly because I can see why the affirmations would be useful. Believing you can remember things well is necessary to learn how to remember things well. Still, did we really need to go through the affirmation breaks so many times?
I will no longer make impulse purchases without knowing something about the product first. I will probably pick up Mega Memory next time.