Special personal problem solving techniques

Problem solving concept structures: Special personal processes - Memory techniques

Use of indexed memory

Process is a series of steps with a purpose. It is obviously more complex a concept structure than either a rule or a rule set. Routinely we follow many processes. The process of brushing the teeth, placating an angry spouse, handling happy new year - all are routine processes however frequent or infrequent these may be. But occasionally, you may discover by accident a process that helps you to come out of a tight spot. 

This special process you remember because it helped you in solving a difficult problem. We call this type of process as a special personal process of problem solving kind. 
This then acts as an additional resource in your Problem Solving Armory resources. In future whenever you encounter the same problem context, you recall the effectiveness of the process you had used in the past to solve the seemingly unsolvable problem and use it again to solve your problem. With repeated successful use, belief on the process increases as well as its refinement.
We will now go through an example.

Story of a trick to remember a name

I became quite confused when it happened the first time. I was about to make an urgent call to a person on my mobile. Just when I was going to start dialing, I found that I couldn't remember the name of the person at all. In confusion I tried hard to remember the name. I knew the call was important and it was in my own interest. But however much I tried, the desired name remained elusive. In today's world nobody remembers the mobile numbers of contacts in address book, one searches in the address book by the name of the person to be called, and then makes the call.
Unless I remember the name of the person I needed to call, I will miss something important. Even that I couldn't remember - the purpose of making the call.

Then it occurred to me, why not start from the first letter A in the alphabet and consider for a few second, whether I can remember the name in case it starts with letter A. If the first letter fails to produce a result, try the method on the second letter B. I carried on this way till suddenly, while on a particular letter, like a flash I remembered the desired name. Surely the name began with the particular letter. Oh yes, this is the name I wanted to remember -I said silently and completed my urgent call. I may have a bad memory, but still I survived due to an unusual process that came to my aid.

Once is not enough for you to believe the applicability of a new process. When you get the opportunity to use a special process again, you reuse it to test its sustainability.

In subsequent years I had used this special technique many times and it never failed to give me desired result.

Repeated successful use of this special process finally made me a firm believer of the process

Now It is ingrained in my mental problem solving framework.

For some days my surprise lingered on - how the process really worked! Then I started analyzing. My conclusion was: "the names in my address book must have been indexed in my memory." That was the first time I got an idea of how contents are organized in our memory. 
Indexes are small snippets or codes representing a particular piece of content. While storing a content in the memory its index also to be formed. Searching the memory must be on indexes. After selecting a particular index, its corresponding content is fetched to the upper memory for use. In simple terms, this is my visualization of how memory works. 

Technique of Summarization

When I was a student, after finishing the preparation of a subject paper just before the exam, I used to write a summary of important relevant points in the subject. This way I attempted to capture the whole subject in my mind, but in compressed form. While answering the questions during the exam, I found it very easy to recall the right answer to a question. I felt quite comfortable and confident as far as memorization of the content was concerned. I have a firm belief that just this process of writing the summary points made recall so easy. Later when I came to know about indexing mechanism, my understanding got a firmer support. 

Still later after going through the book Future Shock by Alvin Toffler, I set out to summarize its contents in handwritten four pages. Those four pages contained the gist of the whole book and going through the summary later was nearly like the experience of reading the whole book for me. That was also an Index.

If you know that your memory works on indexes, you may resort to creation and use of different types of external indexes. Summarization forms one such type. 

Abstracts though seem to be similar to Summarization, lack the point by point details of Summarization. Abstract is usually smaller than summaries. Though an abstract gives an idea about a piece of information, it does not usually contain enough information for use as a recall mechanism for the whole piece.

Finally, to sum-up this three post series on special concept structures:
Personal Rules, Rule-sets and Special processes are all classified as special concept structures and form a highly useful set of problem solving armory resources.  Also we are fairly certain that our memory works on indexes. Accordingly we can create and use various types of short form indexes of main matter for easy recall and effective use.

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