The task actually has three parts. First it is likely that you’ve never even seen some of the flowers. So the first part is to get familiar with the flowers. The second part of this memory task is to link the flowers to their latin names. So here’s what to do:

1. Go round the garden/country side/garden center – places where you can see flowers and then give them all your own name for them. (Why? Because you need an association that you created that translates the flower – something that was seen – into the medium of words.)
2. Now get a list of all the latin names and become familiar with the words. You’ll notice that these latin words were not chosen by accident as they are used to divide flowers into specific classes. However, you don’t actually have to learn the meaning of the words, just their sound. But learning the classes – that’s important – and you’ll discover that there isn’t many.
3. Finally, you associate the Latin words with the name you gave.

To understand the power of this, you have to do it. But note the important thing here. When I mention getting familiar with something I mean using QCEP; Quality, Class, Event, Part. So the method was get familiar with the plants, then get familiar with the Latin and then link them.

So when we think about shortcuts, we want there to be a basic alphabet of what we’re doing. You can improve your speed by learning a few shortcuts and if you pick on useful ones it’ll take you quite far. But if you want to crack the whole problem, then you want a set of classifications that cover all possibilities and an ample set of associations to make the remembering of it all reasonably easy. There needs to be a complete alphabet.

That’s something I’m currently working on.

For more postings in the Mac Productivity Series go to PDQMAC.

«- 1 2 View All -»