The Alphabet Trick
26 Jan 2010Your subconscious is much more powerful than you may realize. It remembers everything and it can make quick judgments based on millions of experiences.. It’s a super computer right in your head. The only problem is that it can’t be accessed in normal ways. It tells you things in dreams and fragments and feelings. However, I have discovered a specific trick that helps access the subconscious.
Let’s say you are trying to remember the name of a particular actress in a movie you saw long ago. It’s right there, on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t remember it exactly. It’s…It’s…Argh!
Here is what you do:
- Go through the alphabet and pretend that her first or last name starts with that letter.
- A – Ahhhhh, B- Bbbbb.
- Give each letter about 3-5 seconds.
- Eventually you will get to a letter and N – Nnnnnn NICOLE KIDMAN!
Your brain likes games and it loves associations. Playing this little game gives your subconscious a way of shining through. It has the information, you just need to give it a way to say it.
Next time you want to brainstorm a particular name for a product, or remember the company name of that guy, or remember the name of the restaurant, or a song, or book, or whatever….Just go through the alphabet and see if your hidden brain will help you out.
- Tags: UX
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About commadot.com
Started in 1996, Glen Lipka has been been randomly publishing about User Experience, Technology, Human Psychology and other subjects.
3 Comments
Dan
January 27th, 2010 at 7:36 am
I have been thinking more and more about how the brain works, and it is a little unnerving. For example, if you have an random itch, seemingly on your arms, whatever is causing the itch might not be on your arm at all. It just might be some kind of random electrical stimulus in your brain that is touching the nerve that controls your arm feelings. So it is really your brain that has the itch. And by scratching you are sending a new electrical signal to that same part of the brain that had the itch and maybe that distracts it from the itch. I also have been thinking about different streams of consciousness. I can have three different through processes at the same time (kinda in different voices in my head, although one voice is clearly the strongest), but I think there are even more streams, just I can’t access/connect to them with one of the streams that is in my active conscious. I also heard an interview on NPR about Glia, which was fascinating. I think this will be my next non-fiction book, http://www.amazon.com/Other-Brain-Schizophrenia-Discoveries-Revolutionizing/dp/0743291417
Anyway, I think the alphabet trick is learned. I do it too (and our father before us). Whether we learned to file our memories according to the alphabet or we just do that naturally and were lucky enough to realize a way to easily access the information, I don’t know. But I don’t think it works for everyone. Just like people learn differently, people probably remember differently. However, it will be really interesting when brain scan technology can pinpoint thought and memories.
hsi
February 9th, 2010 at 7:28 am
well it’s not that of a trick
kids do it all the time
what is a real trick?
Glen Lipka
February 9th, 2010 at 9:29 am
Kids remember things by going through the alphabet? I have three kids. I can’t get them to remember to put on their clothes in the morning. You must have smart kids.