Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ PhotoReading, Memory Optimizer Memory Tip regarding ABC lists

We'll be sending this email to people who have the Memory Optimizer if they've opted in to receive email from us. But, you get it first!

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Dear xxxx,

I thought the ABC lists were dumb, silly at best.

But, when Paul Scheele and Vera F. Birkenbihl were working together to develop the Memory Optimizer I carefully read their notes and scripts and jottings for the course manual. I tried different tricks and strategies and was quite impressed.

But, not with the ABC lists. Nonetheless, I did them. After all, I had heard so much about the brilliance of Mrs. Birkenbihl long before we did a course with her. I had to try it.

After most books I read, after watching interesting documentaries, after attending lectures, I create an ABC list.

A year later I went back and looked at the ABC lists I had created. They were stuck in the back of books and in the corner of my desk at home. I became amazed. Truly amazed.

As I reviewed the ABC lists of books, the contents of the books came flooding back. Immediately and instantly. Better than when I looked at the table of contents of the books.

You see, the ABC list comes from MY knowledge web, whereas the table of contents came from the authors'. It all makes sense.

Mrs. Birkenbihl was right that memory is all about construction and reconstruction. I think that because of the memory threads I constructed when I created the lists in the first place. My brain was able to do the rest--automatically. The ABC Lists Worked!

It works as well, maybe even better than mind mapping the books. (Mind mapping, if you are not aware, is a spatial method of note taking. We teach it in the PhotoReading course.) And, it took less time.

When I mind map, I add structure so that I can hang important points and ideas from the book. I don't have to create the structure when doing ABC lists, which is more like free association.

I found it hard to regularly mind map books, because I was so concerned about "getting it right." I often did not want to put in the added effort. I never once had that concern about creating ABC lists. Remember, I thought it was a silly exercise.

Well, I am here to tell you to create your ABC lists. You will remember more when you create them.

* After each nonfiction book (or fiction book that you want to remember), create an ABC list.

* After any class or lecture, create an ABC list.

* After watching a documentary, create an ABC list.

* After learning anything, create an ABC list.

I either do the ABC list as I am learning the material, or afterwards, like just before bed when I review my day.

I know it will help your memory. Mrs. Birkenbihl says it will also stave off the ravaging effects age and disease can have on memory.

And, then periodically pull out the ABC list and review it. Reflect on what comes to you. How has what you learned effected your life since you created the ABC list? Has it made a difference?

You might want to write notes on the back of the ABC list of your thoughts and date it.

Reviewing the ABC lists helps in two big ways: 1) it helps reinforce what you learn, and 2) it builds your confidence in your ability to learn and remember.

I sent this email to Mrs. Birkenbihl to review. She asked to pass on that you do not have to do an ABC list in the order of the alphabet. You can do the letters in any order. The order is only important when doing lists mentally. Plus, it is all right to have multiple words for a single letter, like 5 S's and no J's. She says you will get more benefit doing multiple shorter ABC lists on a subject that you will receive spending more time on a single longer ABC list. I'll have to try it myself.

So, have you personally used the ABC lists? How? What have you noticed?

Please share your thoughts on the Discussion Forum. I'd like to know what may have happened for you. I created a post called "Memory Tip regarding ABC lists." (Remember, the password for the forum is: tricks.)

I will take the thoughts and ideas from other Memory Optimizer users to create a report that I will mail to everyone who has the course. I am sure it will help you get more benefit from your investment.

I will send everyone who posts a message on the Discussion Forum in the next 20 days a tablet of blank ABC lists. You can tear off a list and stick it in a book. (Actually, I've made two ABC lists of many books: the first is one I create as I read the book, and the second is made when I finish the book.)

I hope you find this information useful, and I hope you add your experiences to the Discussion Forum.

For your personal best,

Pete Bissonette
President and Publisher

Thanks, Pete. I agree wholeheartedly w/ this post. I also think ABC lists are the most amazingly simple yet utterly effective technique to come along. It's almost like telling someone stuck on the pc to hit "enter" and you're home free.

Try using ABC lists for Journaling, for Dreams, for Problem Solving. They are totally amazing.

Try even MMing off some important words on an ABC list.

Make up or take a main sentence from a book and then use the letters of the sentence as an ABC list. The thing about this is that there will be more repeted letters w/ fewer peculiar ones.

Take PhotoReading the Whole Mind System. Probably all the needed info for PhRing could be put in this title. I can just notice that by looking at the letters, every main point can be included here from tangerine, super read, dip, mind mapping.

And, say take the letter T in system. Going up you can use the word TANGERINE and going down you can use the word TRAIN as illustrated in the manual.

The ABC concept is vast.

Although I even did not complete the course completely yet, I'm already using the ABC list concept with great success.

For example : I always had problems remembering todo-lists. I tried to make lists on paper, but I always lost those or had no pen when I thought about something that had to be added to one of the lists and when I found a pen, I had already forgotten what I had to add, ...

I now use the ABC list method for that with great success.
For example, every sunday I'm visiting my parents. During the week, when I think about something that I have to remember for the visit, I connect it to my list. I use the word "moeder" (Dutch for "mother") and when I need more than 6 things to remember, I add the word "vader" (Dutch for "father").
I use more than 1 ABC list to connect to (my Anchorlist, my list of professions, my animal list), so when a letter appears more than once in the same word, for example two "e"'s in the word "moeder" and one extra in the word "vader", I use the second list for the second "e", the third list for the third "e", etc.

Now I can successful remember todo-lists, shopping lists (use the name of each different shop you need to go to), etc.

The more I think about it, the more applications I start to find for the ABC list concept.

Patrick

[This message has been edited by PatrickW (edited October 02, 2002).]

[This message has been edited by PatrickW (edited October 02, 2002).]

thanks!!!

I was never sure when to make ABC lists, I also think I was spending to long with letters that did not come with ease as well as i never let myself have more than one word at a time.

For some reason there was no fun in it for me because I made it so serious. Wow, you have opened my eyes, Thankyou

Tonight i will study with an ABC list, I will now make it apart of my life.

Thanks for showing me how to make it fun again.

The more I use the ABC list trick, the better and faster it works : this is quiet obvious of course.

But yet, yesterday I was really amazed how fast and how good it worked.
I had to learn 13 words by heart.
It was enough to read the list of the 13 words once and while reading I made the associations with my anchorlist.
In about 1 minute, I was finished (that's about 5 seconds per word) and to my surprise, I could repeat the 13 words without mistake and I still can reconstruct them without any error.

In the past, learning to remember these words (and in the right order, which was important in this case) would be a real pain for me.
In many cases, I would not even think about starting to learn something by heart, because of the pain associated to that action.

When I started using the ABC lists, I was somewhat scared that when I would use the same ABC list to remember different things at the same time, they would all start to mix.
For one reason or the other, it does not happen.

I was already enthusiastic about the ABC lists, I'm even more now.

Patrick

Hi

To the point explanation on how to use ABC's lists, thanks a stax, it was mentioned that there were blank ABC tablets available? could you please be so kind as to forward me these templates.

e-mail: morgan.mcarthur@btopenworld.com

To Your Health & Success

Morgan McArthur

Dear xxxx,

I thought the ABC lists were dumb, silly at best.

But, when Paul Scheele and Vera F. Birkenbihl were working together to develop the Memory Optimizer I carefully read their notes and scripts and jottings for the course manual. I tried different tricks and strategies and was quite impressed.

But, not with the ABC lists. Nonetheless, I did them. After all, I had heard so much about the brilliance of Mrs. Birkenbihl long before we did a course with her. I had to try it.

After most books I read, after watching interesting documentaries, after attending lectures, I create an ABC list.

A year later I went back and looked at the ABC lists I had created. They were stuck in the back of books and in the corner of my desk at home. I became amazed. Truly amazed.

As I reviewed the ABC lists of books, the contents of the books came flooding back. Immediately and instantly. Better than when I looked at the table of contents of the books.

You see, the ABC list comes from MY knowledge web, whereas the table of contents came from the authors'. It all makes sense.

Mrs. Birkenbihl was right that memory is all about construction and reconstruction. I think that because of the memory threads I constructed when I created the lists in the first place. My brain was able to do the rest--automatically. The ABC Lists Worked!

It works as well, maybe even better than mind mapping the books. (Mind mapping, if you are not aware, is a spatial method of note taking. We teach it in the PhotoReading course.) And, it took less time.

When I mind map, I add structure so that I can hang important points and ideas from the book. I don't have to create the structure when doing ABC lists, which is more like free association.

I found it hard to regularly mind map books, because I was so concerned about "getting it right." I often did not want to put in the added effort. I never once had that concern about creating ABC lists. Remember, I thought it was a silly exercise.

Well, I am here to tell you to create your ABC lists. You will remember more when you create them.

* After each nonfiction book (or fiction book that you want to remember), create an ABC list.

* After any class or lecture, create an ABC list.

* After watching a documentary, create an ABC list.

* After learning anything, create an ABC list.

I either do the ABC list as I am learning the material, or afterwards, like just before bed when I review my day.

I know it will help your memory. Mrs. Birkenbihl says it will also stave off the ravaging effects age and disease can have on memory.

And, then periodically pull out the ABC list and review it. Reflect on what comes to you. How has what you learned effected your life since you created the ABC list? Has it made a difference?

You might want to write notes on the back of the ABC list of your thoughts and date it.

Reviewing the ABC lists helps in two big ways: 1) it helps reinforce what you learn, and 2) it builds your confidence in your ability to learn and remember.

I sent this email to Mrs. Birkenbihl to review. She asked to pass on that you do not have to do an ABC list in the order of the alphabet. You can do the letters in any order. The order is only important when doing lists mentally. Plus, it is all right to have multiple words for a single letter, like 5 S's and no J's. She says you will get more benefit doing multiple shorter ABC lists on a subject that you will receive spending more time on a single longer ABC list. I'll have to try it myself.

So, have you personally used the ABC lists? How? What have you noticed?

Please share your thoughts on the Discussion Forum. I'd like to know what may have happened for you. I created a post called "Memory Tip regarding ABC lists." (Remember, the password for the forum is: tricks.)

I will take the thoughts and ideas from other Memory Optimizer users to create a report that I will mail to everyone who has the course. I am sure it will help you get more benefit from your investment.

I will send everyone who posts a message on the Discussion Forum in the next 20 days a tablet of blank ABC lists. You can tear off a list and stick it in a book. (Actually, I've made two ABC lists of many books: the first is one I create as I read the book, and the second is made when I finish the book.)

I hope you find this information useful, and I hope you add your experiences to the Discussion Forum.

For your personal best,

Pete Bissonette
President and Publisher[/B][/QUOTE]

Hi Pete, I just purchased this course earlier today. Yeah!! I have been interested in this course for months. Send it out right away!! I'm anxiously waiting for it. LOL!!! Can I ask this question while I'm waiting for the course. I've been reading the posts here. Could you just clarify for me by what you said about it's beter to have multible shorter ABC lists than 1 longer one. I'm just guessing, but do you mean having more memory webs?? Toby

It's a bit like mixing cement. If you have to do it by "hand" you do smaller lots because it's easier to work with. Same principle really.

Or I could say How does one eat an Elephant? = One bite at a time, usual answer it would also be correct to say, 'one day at the time.' It's chunking the task into manageable bits.

Alex

Thanks Alex!! Toby

I've used the ABC List for the PhotoReading Book. It was interesting to see which words came to my mind first, & which words didn't show up. For some missing letters, I looked in the index to find the correct word. That served in reinforcing/reconstructing that word for me.
I've done the ABC List for foods in the past, but I never knew how use it after it was done, since I was just playing with word association. I did another food list yesterday, with only a few letters that didn't have a word for it. I think that I'll get more specific & write a fruit list, etc.
I find that doing the ABC Lists addicting. Once you start, you just have to finish that list. It's alot of fun. Toby