Mental Filing System that Really Works

You WERE NOT born with a poor memory. Remembering is a process that must be learned, just like walking, talking, eating, telling colors apart, distinguishing sounds, and telling time. You learned these when you were a child, and now you can perform them without effort, without being conscious of the mental processes involved. You can learn the process of using your memory just as thoroughly and when you do you will have in your power a hundred times the knowledge and experience you actually put to use now.

Anyone can do it. If you want to make your experiences stick, in order to help you make later decisions and meet later problems, and if you hate the waste of relearning what you have forgotten, it will be worth your while to develop a good memory.

This book will show you how, for it is simply a logical, tested plan for training you to index your memory scientifically, much along the lines of a filing system. I call it The Mental Filing System.

There is nothing new in the idea of a memory system; men have been developing methods of remembering since the days of Cicero. I have based my method on the fundamental principles laid down by these earlier systems, modifying them by the practical application of twenty years of actual teaching and use. You can start using it immediately, applying it to everyday situations.

Why do you forget? The reason for most of the annoying instances of forgetting is that you do not take the trouble to connect new information with some fact you already know. Isolated facts drop out of the mind quickly, but if you file new knowledge in relation to something already established in your mind, you will retain it and be able to refer to it whenever you need it. It is simply a matter of making a special use of your power of association, which is the beginning of all learning processes. William James said, "In mental terms, the more other facts a fact is associated with in the mind, the better possession of it our memory retains. Each of its associates becomes a hook to which it hangs, a means to fish it up by when sunk beneath the surface." Association is making mental hooks from which you may fish facts out of your mind as you require them. This Mental Filing System will provide the mental hooks upon which to hang, or file, anything you want to remember.
Certain selected words, called KEY WORDS, are the mental hooks in your filing system. Each one represents a vivid image. Here is the system. Try it for yourself.