The Power of Forgetting (29 page)

Once you start playing this game repeatedly with new numbers, you’ll start to feel your brain working harder and harder and picking up speed. It’s an excellent game to use in the car or when you just want to kill time with someone. The
swift movement of constantly changing information in your brain—some of which you need to remember, some of which you need to forget—is a hard-core training session for your brain. Similar to the burn you feel when you work a set of muscles intensely, you’ll probably feel a “burn” here in the form of fast breathing, racing thoughts about numbers, and a higher level of energy!

Did you get that? Let’s switch gears here and consider another exercise that’s good for developing the art of forgetting but that involves words and letters rather than numbers. The letters in the heading above are the letters of the phrase “alphabetizing words” put in alphabetical order. As you know from
chapter 2
, this is one of my favorite pastimes, and I do it all day long—as I drive, read mail, and even listen to people talk. (I confess, I also like to count how many letters are in the sentences people say, but that’s another game I’ll save for later.)

What I didn’t touch upon in that earlier chapter, however, is the fact that this exercise is very effective for building your forgetting muscles. How so? Like the previous tasks that compel you to work with constantly changing information and focus squarely on the critical data at hand in order to arrive at a correct solution, this one calls for a clever allocation of mental space throughout the procedure. As your mind works through the process of alphabetizing a word (without pen and paper!), it has to “forget” which letters have already been taken care of and which ones are left to put in order. Take, for example, the word “alphabetize.” This one starts off easy because we have the first letter of the alphabet already
in place. But there are two
a
’s in this word, so we have to drag that second
a
to the beginning and put it next to the first
a
. Once that is done, your mind has to “forget” about the
a
’s and move on to seek letters further down the alphabet. In addition to the
a
’s in the word, we have a
b
, then
ee
,
i
,
h
,
l
,
p
,
t
, and finally
z
. Note that having the
z
, the last letter in the alphabet, close to the end of this word also makes it slightly easier to alphabetize. In fact, from a visual standpoint, when we look at the word “alphabetize” as a whole, our eyes coordinate with our brains so we can instantly see that there’s an easy
a
at the start already and a
z
close to the end, which follows the pattern of the alphabet. But did you find it more difficult to think through the exact placement of the middle letters, especially the
h
,
i
,
l
, and
p
? Perhaps you didn’t even notice that I made a mistake above when I listed
i
before
h
in alphabetizing the word “alphabetize.”

It turns out that certain sections of the alphabet are much harder than others to break down in our heads and recall their letters’ exact order in relation to one another. We are really put to the test knowing on the spot whether
i
comes before or after
h
or even if
g
precedes
h
. It’s quite amusing to think we can struggle with knowing the precise order of our alphabet’s twenty-six letters—an alphabet that allows us to create intricate words and sentences, including lyrical poems and compelling stories. Yet it’s a harmless weakness of the complex human mind.

There are three characteristics that make some words easier to alphabetize than others:

Is there a trick or shortcut to alphabetizing words in your head automatically? Actually, there isn’t. You have to figure out what works for you. I give you full permission to use your hands if you have to. One way that works for many people is to count on their fingers: The letter
A
is the left pinkie finger, and the rest of the alphabet follows, moving left to right, over and across the right hand. Each finger can stand for a letter, or you can designate one finger for a certain section of letters. Your left pinkie finger, for example, could be
A
through
E
, and so on.

Another strategy is to first assess how many letters are in
the word you’re trying to alphabetize. Let’s say the word is “Washington.” That’s a total of ten letters, which can be represented by your ten fingers. As you work your way through the alphabet and knock off the letters you’ve placed in order, you can follow along with your fingers so you know where you are and whether or not you might have missed a letter or two.

Yet another technique that seems to work really well these days among the texting-savvy younger generation is to consider the letters on a keypad or telephone that reflect certain numbers. The letters
ABC
, for instance, represent the number 2 on a phone keypad. The lower numbers are closer to the beginning of the alphabet, whereas the higher numbers are closer to the end. For the older folks who haven’t gotten used to the art of manipulating keypad letters on a telephone, I don’t suggest trying this method. It takes some “built-in” experience and is best left to those who are already extremely deft with those keypads.

I’ll give you one more tactic to consider: Don’t think about the actual word you’re trying to alphabetize in your head. If the word is “automobile,” you don’t have to think that you’re spelling “automobile” every time your mind goes back to the whole word to figure out what letters are still left. Just look at the word as a collection of letters in a certain order. You have to unscramble them so they are in order from
a
to
u
.

Ready to try this yourself? Following is a list of 10 eight-letter words that go from easiest to most difficult in terms of alphabetizing. See how fast you can put the letters in each of these words into correct order. Perform this exercise as often as you can when you’re out in the real world. When you come across a road sign or a menu at a restaurant, try to whip those letters into alphabetical shape before they leave
your field of vision. Next time you’re waiting in line at the supermarket, take words on a magazine rack and alphabetize them before it’s your turn to pay.

Self-Test 3

Here are some additional challenges that up the ante:

If you haven’t figured it out by now, these exercises require that you try hard to organize your mind efficiently. You’re constantly going back and forth, working with the information that’s left and still needs to be organized. That is why these mental gymnastics are such excellent workouts for becoming an expert note taker and studier. How can multiplying two-digit numbers and alphabetizing words have anything to do with the tasks of note-taking and studying? They have everything to do with each other.

I cannot reiterate the importance of making a habit of noticing patterns in the world and of forgetting where doing so is essential to retain the critical information and make room for even more data. The brain is an incredible machine with an enormous capacity, but if it’s not groomed for superior processing, it cannot function at its highest level. Pattern recognition has been a theme throughout the book, but let’s take a moment here to examine more patterns and see how they tie into the art of not only creating associations but also forgetting. As it turns out, pattern recognition lies at the heart of all the skills in this book and provides the ultimate foundation for making a habit out of forgetting.

To start, let’s try a few patterns to get your brain churning:

That was an easy one: The pattern is a series of even numbers. How about the following?

Here’s how that one works: 7 times 7, the two digits in the first number, equals 49, which is the second number in the series. Now do it again: 4 times 9 equals 36, which is the third number in the series. Repeat: 3 times 6 equals 18, which is the fourth number in the series. Repeat: 1 times 8 equals 8, the missing number at the end of the series. Cool, huh?

Sometimes we can find patterns in other, subtler ways. Now I’m going to show you a series of solutions to math equations. See if you can figure out a pattern in the way they are solved. You might not “see” it right away, so take your time with this one. The exercise in itself is a mighty good one for waking up your brain.

Hint: This pattern works only for multiplying two numbers between 100 and 109. All answers must be five-digit numbers.

Answer: The first digit in the answer is always a 1. The next two digits in the answer, or the “middle” number, are found by adding the ones digits in each problem. Hence, in
105 times 107, you add 5 plus 7 to get 12; in 102 times 104, you add 2 plus 4 to get 6. But wait: The “middle” number must have two digits, so you have to place a 0 in front of the 6. In 109 times 106, you add 9 plus 6 to get 15. Finally, to arrive at the final two digits in each answer, you multiply the ones digit in each equation. So in 105 times 107, you multiply 5 times 7, which equals 35; in 102 times 104, you multiply 2 times 4 to get 8. Again, this number cannot be a single digit, so place a 0 in front of the 8. And in 109 times 106, you multiply 9 times 6 to get 54.

You can try a few more on your own below. This exercise is less about knowing how to perform the shortcut for multiplying numbers between 100 and 109 than it is about forcing your brain to work through patterns that have you mentally jumping through hoops. (Remember, solutions are found at the end of the chapter.)

Okay, let’s take it up a notch.
Below is a pattern in squaring a number in the fifties. Can you find it?