SMART TIME MANAGEMENT AND THE ALPHABET AS A PEGGING LIST

BY MARY ANN SLAVCHEFF

       Today as I walked my dog Tiki, I decided to try something different. Instead of memorizing the license plates numbers in order as I sometimes do,  I reviewed the NATO alphabet.  

I had never put a lot of effort into memorizing this alphabet and I had not thought of it for some time. But it was time for a review; I looked at the letters on a license plate and converted them to Nato words. 

For those not familiar with the NATO alphabet it is an international phonetic  alphabet. When someone in the armed forces or a police officer wants to spell out say a license plate he does it with:

Alpha, Brava, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Limo, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee, Zulu

So a  license plate with the letters MAS (my initials) would read: Mike Alpha Sierra.

As I walked and reviewed, I was doing several things correctly as a learner. Time spent walking a dog or doing any mindless task like dish washing or driving a familiar route or folding laundry can also be spent testing ourselves on our knowledge.  I was using my time smartly. 

Using time for two compatible projects is called layering. It is different from multitasking which does not work because with multitasking, focus is difficult to impossible.  I can’t, for instance, give  a caller directions to my home, look up a pasta recipe  and balance my checkbook all at the same time. Each activity needs focus and they are being short changed.

What else was I doing right as a learner as Tiki and I walked? I was Pegging. One of the reasons the NATO alphabet was easy for me to memorize because it it an alphabet.  I already had the order down.  I just had to learn a list of associations.

Associating new learning with something already learned like the alphabet is called Pegging.   It has many forms, but let’s take one of its more basic forms which is a simple list like the alphabet. 

If the alphabet sounds too simplistic for those of us beyond kindergarten, then make it fun.  Create fun alphabets  or use one already created like the NATO alphabet. 

Okay, so the NATO alphabet isn’t fun.  What is a fun alphabet anyway?

I grew up in the 1950’s and early 60’s and like a lot of adolescents and teens, I loved certain recording artists. I bought their records and put the long playing records  in alphabetical order according to the singer’s name. To this day I remember that order.

Paul Anka, Pat Boone, Chubby Checker, Bobby Darin, Everly Brothers, Fabian, Leslie Gore, Johnny Horton, Burl Ives, Stonewall Jackson, Kingston Trio, Brenda Lee, Johnny Maestro, Rick Nelson, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Que Sara Sara,  Bobby Rydell, Neil Sedaka, Johnny Tillotson, Leslie Uggams, Bobby Vinton, Andy Williams, X-Ray , Kathy Young and Zippidy Doo Dah.

Note that where I did not have a singers name I made a substitute, songs for Q and Z and then the reliable X-Ray for X.  I also selected only one singer for each letter of the alphabet.  Having too many names could confuse me.

This list was easy to learn by just imagining my record collection. Later when I had a nice collection of DVD’s I could do the same thing with titles.

I have an actors list too.  Alan Alda, Dan Blocker, Jack Cassidy, Johnny Depp, etc. We could also create lists of sports stars, fictional character, words associated with a hobby or historic period.  We can create dozens of alphabets. I suggest working with just one fun alphabet until you get more practice.

You might get stuck on some letters like I did with my singers.  For those words that start with difficult letters have something that can be unrelated nonsense ready to plug in.

X = Xena, the Warrior Princess; Xanth, a fantasy land created by author Piers Anthony;  X Men, X Box or Xmas.  Z could stand for Zorro, Zipper, Zip codes, Zoey  or Zippidy Do Dah

If you get stuck too often  often enlarge your topic. Instead of names of boats, have transportation as your main category. Then you can include cars and even airplanes. When you get to “Q” you have the Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth both legendary ships, or you can also choose an aircraft type for which there are designation codes for most letters of the alphabet. 

What a great excuse for memorizing aircraft designations. It is now a fun alphabet.

The alphabet can be a great learning tool. Too bad it is often dismissed as too simplistic.  It has an easy order and it has already been learned; it is easy to tack new information onto it.

Create your own special alphabet, use the NATO  alphabet, or my list of singers circa 1960.  Now we all have at least one pegging list. In my next blog, I will show you how to use a pegging list.  Over the next several weeks, we will create other pegging lists. 

Pegging lists are as simple as ABC. The alphabet is not the only type of pegging lists. There is even a simpler method of pegging.  We will learn that too.

Then we will learn another technique.

Chaining the Presidents

In my last blog, I discussed chaining, one of the methods that ancient scholars and today's mental athletes use to memorize long strings of numbers, decks of cards and nonsense poems. I suggested that readers practice chaining by making up short shopping lists and chaining the items together. That way they  don't have to bother with written shopping lists and they don't forget any items.  

Remember that chaining is telling a silly story with several items exaggerated.  Some students tell me that they aren't very good at inventing stories.  Give it a try and practice.  With Chaining students not only learn easily, but become more creative. Chaining uses more parts of the brain.

Today we will try to chain a more challenging list.   Suppose you wanted to memorize a list of U.S. Presidents in chronological order.  There were 44 presidents starting with George Washington and moving on to to Barack Obama.  Let's do the first seven now. We can get to the others later or better yet, now that you have learned the technique you can chain them on your own.

The first seven U.S. presidents were:

George Washington

John Adams

Thomas Jefferson

James Madison

James Monroe

John Quincy Adams

Andrew Jackson.

I will start.

I am WASHING a TON of clothes. By GEORGE, I am WASHING a TON of clothes. I hear a knock on the door. It is Gomez ADDAMS and he wants to use the JOHN. (Watch the spelling here. The Addams family on television was different from the Adams family in the history books.)  Gomez sees me WASHING a TON of clothes and he says, “By GEORGE, you need to visit JEFFERSON cleaners.. The clerk there is  a TOM cat named TOM.

I visit JEFFERSON Cleaners to see the cat clerk TOM and I tell him Gomez ADDAMs sent me when he came over to use my JOHN.

I note that JEFFERSON cleaners is on MADISON avenue. I go outside after talking to TOM, and the streets are slippery filled with strawberry JAMS and all the people are wearing CHAINS.  I slip on the  JAM and pull on someone's CHAIN  to  break my fall. Whose CHAIN was it? Marilyn MONROE.  She is wearing several CHAINS.

As Marilyn MONROE helps pull me up.  Along comes Gomez ADDAMS. “You made it,” he says. I notice he is now wearing a big “Q” on his sweater.  He is again looking for a JOHN.  Who is that with him?  He introduces me to QUINCY, the medical examiner.

“I hope you guys find a JOHN,” I say. Instead they turn around and there is  Michael JACKSON. He has a sketch pad. “What are you doing, Michael?”  He says, “I DREW a JACK.” He shows us the JACK of diamonds on his sketch pad. Is that all he DREW? “No,” he says . He DREW AND DREW AND DREW.

So now we chained the first seven presidents of the United States. We have a silly story and concrete images to help us remember the items on the list. Repeat the story several times. Imagine it is your story. You are WASHING the clothes and talking to Gomez ADDAMS and the others. Note that I use a lot of television imagery.  This worked very well for me in the classroom. My students were familiar with television characters and popular actors. You may use friends.

The eighth president was Martin Van Buren. You could use MARTIN Sheen, the actor, or a purple MARTIN bird or someone named MARTIN that you know.  For the last name use a VAN, a type of automobile or a chest of drawers BUREAU.

Let your imagination take wing. Repeat the story a few times.  You won't have to repeat it as many times as you would without the chaining. The story will help you remember the names. The story is more memorable than just a list of names. Remember the story has to be fanciful. It has to be exaggerated to make it more memorable.

Let's see how you can do chaining a list of presidents. Start out where I left off in the story. Or start your own story. Here are the names of all 44 presidents. Note Grover Cleveland is mentioned twice. That is because he was both our 22nd and our 24th president.

1. George Washington, 2. John Adams, 3. Thomas Jefferson, 4. James Madison, 5. James Monroe, 6. John Quincy Adams, 7. Andrew jackson, 8. Martin Van Buren, 9. William Henry Harrison (Tippecanoe),  10. John Tyler, 11. James K. Polk, 12. John Tyler, 13. Millard Fillmore, 14. Franklin Pierce, 15. James Buchanan, 15. Abraham Lincoln, 17. Andrew Johnson, 18. U.S. Grant, 19. Rutherford B. Hayes, 20. James Garfield, 21. Chester Arthur, 22. Grover Cleveland, 23. Benjamin Harrison, 24. Grover Cleveland, 25. William McKinley, 26. Theodore Roosevelt, 27. William Howard Taft, 28. Woodrow Wilson, 29. Warren Harding, 30. Calvin Coolidge, 31. Herbert Hoover, 32. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 33. Harry Truman, 34. Dwight David Eisenhower, 35. John F. Kennedy, 36. Lyndon Johnson, 37. Richard Nixon, 38. Gerald Ford, 39. Jimmy Carter, 40. Ronald Reagan, 41. George herbert Walker Bush, 42. Bill Clinton, 43. George W. (Dubya) Bush, 44. Barack Obama.

Learning anything new seems difficult at times, but it is not as hard as it looks.  Chain seven eight nine or ten presidents' names at a time. It will seem easier if you learn them in smaller groups.  

Also look for patterns. While teaching a class how to memorize the names of presidents, I had a silly moment and I joked that “Tyler poked Taylor.” (This would be the 10th, 11th and 12th presidents, John Tyler, James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor.) I was surprised to discover that the students liked my little joke and later in the semester they would still say “Tyler poked Taylor.”  They used it as a fun way to remember the order of these three presidents.

I also note the initials of the first seven. WAJ M MAJ. There is a pattern.

See what you can do  with your chaining.

CPR for a Great Memory

The ancients memorized entire texts. In the days before the printing press, books were difficult if not impossible to duplicate. A scholar went home with a head full of knowledge, no textbooks. The Bible was among the early books  passed on by memory. But there were many other books in the sciences, history and genealogy that were passed down orally. Scholars memorized the material.

So how did ancient scholars do it?  They had three  techniques. I don't know what they were called then, but I call them CPR.

Chaining

Pegging

Repetition

Chaining

Say I have a list to memorize. Perhaps it is a to-do list or a grocery list. Perhaps my instructor expects me to know all 44 presidents of the United States in order or he wants me to memorize the periodic table.

If I  want to use chaining, I  tell myself a ridiculous story and chain the elements of what I need to memorize into the story.  

Say I have the following items on my errand  list.

Buy lettuce, Pepsi, paper towels, dog food and ketchup. 

Pay the light bill.

Here is one way I could chain them together and remember them.

I imagine myself  waking  up in the morning and it is snowing lettuce. Big heads of lettuce are falling out  of the sky. (Make the story as exaggerated and as ridiculous as possible so you will remember it.) The  lettuce is pounding on the roof of my home and piling up outside, so I can't even see out my bedroom window anymore.  I roll over in bed and there is a huge bottle of Pepsi lying in the bed beside me. I am so startled that I kick the bottle and break it. There is Pepsi all over. I get out the paper towels and start mopping it up.  The dog runs over to help.  But he starts eating the Pepsi- saturated paper towels.  “You need dog food,”  I tell him. “What kind should I get you?  Alpo?” The dog runs to get his bowl, but he brings back a bottle of ketchup instead.   Yuk, The ketchup is dripping. there is Pepsi and dog food and paper toweling in the ketchup.  And it is all in my bed. Disgusting. 

The lights start blinking on and off. I have to pay the light bill.

And there are hundreds of other stories I can make up with the items in the list.  After I make up my story I visualize the scene .  What color are my sheets and bedspread? How do they look soaked in Pepsi? What kind of a dog is it? I have a beagle, but when you tell your story, you will have your own details.  Specific details will make the story more memorable. 

Repetition helps so I  go over the story a few times.  It is raining heads of lettuce, the Pepsi is in my bed, I get paper towels. the dog food is in the ketchup bottle and the lights are blinking on and off.

Practice chaining for about a week. Make up a new grocery or errand list each day and memorize it.  Practice whenever you can. Perhaps you already know a list.  How would you chain a list of your five best friends?

The more you practice the easier it will be when you have to make up a more difficult list.

Pegging

Ready for something a little more challenging? And more fun.

Make yourself a longer list to memorize.  Perhaps the names of the  thirteen original colonies.  Maybe you want to memorize state capitals or the names of the kings and queens of England. 

In my next blog, we chain the U.S. presidents.

After that we will get to pegging.

Introduction

Can we learn faster and with less effort?  Can we discover smarter ways of doing things? We live in a world where new information constantly assails us. New technology often requires retraining.  Our children come to us with help with their school work. Do we remember the algebra, the history, the chemistry?

Can we learn faster? The answer is yes. We can learn more, learn it faster and keep up longer and we can enjoy the learning.

For many years, I taught study skills. Many of of my students already had  difficult experiences in school, and some felt they could not become good learners.  But all they needed was to learn a few simple techniques.  They also needed to believe that they could learn.  Our self confidence is often shaken in school. We sometimes learn more about how difficult it is, when learning is really easy. Even the toughest subjects can come faster and easier.

The techniques I showed my students and that I will show my readers  were used by ancient scholars who needed to memorize every word and detail of some very complicated material. 

When books were rare and very expensive to reproduce, knowledge was handed down orally by poet singers.  History, science, literature, mathematics and all branches of learning were shared by memorization.

The Bible, the Illiad, the Odyssey and much of ancient history and astrology came down to us because people memorized it.

The best teachers including Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, advised against using textbooks.  They wanted their students to have the knowledge in their heads, not on a piece of paper.   These teachers also knew how easy learning could be.

Over the years, however, we have learned to depend on books to supplement and preserve our knowledge. Books and online databases seemingly have made it easier to access information. This is not learning.

We still need to put some of this knowledge in our heads and keep it there. We must also know how to access that knowledge from our heads when we need it.  The book or database may not always be available. 

How many of us can list the presidents of the United States in order, recite the state capitals or recite pi to tenth?  Do we know the order of the planets from the sun or the classification of animals and plants?

It is a shame not to learn when learning is so easy.

Real learning means not only knowing what book or website to go to  to look up the answers.  If we are going to be respected in our fields, we also have to have many facts in our heads. We can all have encyclopedic minds if we want them.

Memorization is still the core of learning. But too many people think it is tedious and boring. The only method some students have for memorization is repetition. And while some repetition is necessary, it is not the only memorization technique.  It is just the only technique that most people can name.  

Not knowing that there are other techniques, we are forced to over use repetition which many of us hate.

Yet senators in Rome were able to memorize long speeches with very little effort or repetition.  I can show you how they did it.  Remember when you were a preschooler. Learning was fun then, and it can be fun again.

The ancients knew lots of great tricks.  When it came to learning, they were practically magicians. But the ancients were not the only ones who showed an interest in learning faster. and easier.  

Some of today’s top scientists studied accelerated learning techniques. They discovered, for instance, that playing baroque music, doing deep breathing exercises and using positive self talk could boost learning speed.

Other scientists studied hundreds of the world’s greatest geniuses including Leonardo Da Vinci, Mark Twain, and even Vince Lombardi and Walt Disney.  One thing that all these people had in common was that they kept diaries.  I will even write a column about  keeping a diary and how it can assist in learning and  creativity.

Who knew there were so many ways to learn faster and think better?

The techniques themselves are all simple. Kindergarteners can learn them. And those who want to keep or rediscover the  the joy of learning should want to know them.

Of course, not all of us are in school. Some of us are looking for a job, learning a new job or working to keep up with the job or hobby that we already have.  I can give you some tips here. Learning is a lifelong activity and the more we know about how to do it and the more we believe that we can do it, the better off we will be.

I hope that students of all ages will let me help them learn better and with less effort.