Make an A-B-C List for Memory Improvement

by Pete Bisonette

A powerful technique from Vera Birkenbihl’s Memory Optimizer course is the ABC List. When you build an ABC list, your conscious mind asks your nonconscious resources to share part of its enormous wealth.

If you’re already a good associative thinker, you will get great results from the get-go. Otherwise you may want to build a half dozen or so ABC Lists to get the juices flowing and get it activating the contents of your memory web.

I’ve found it to be a great tool for activating books that I’ve PhotoRead. I’ve also used it to help recall what I’ve learned at conferences. I’m not going to teach you the intricacies of building ABC Lists in this post, because it would take too much time and it’s handled quite well on the second CD of the course. Instead, I would like to share with you an actual ABC List that I made after PhotoReading a couple books.

I want to digress, however, and talk about 1) Outlining, 2) Mind Mapping, and 3) ABC Lists, because they all relate.

When Paul and I first started offering PhotoReading seminars, he was really big on Mind Mapping. I wasn’t too keen on it, but I did it anyway. I even began mind mapping meetings. A couple of years later a funny thing happened.

I needed to pull out notes from a series of meetings. My notes from the first couple of meetings were in the typical outline form. Notes from the subsequent meetings were mind maps. I could read through the outline notes and reconstruct the meeting quite well. What amazed me was that when I looked at the mind maps, everything came together almost instantly. There was a significant difference between the usefulness of the two types of notes. Mind mapping was clearly the best approach. 

I often mind maps books and keep a copy of the mind map in the book itself. When I pull the book from my shelf, I merely need to look at the page of mind maps and the entire book floods back.  I found the same to be true when I build ABC Lists when activating a book. Which one do I like most? Hmmmm… not sure. If you have a preference, leave a comment to this post.

Here’s the ABC List I built after reading Stewart Emery’s Success Built To Last: Creating a Life that Matters:

A – Audacious Accountability
B – Be a Great One
C – Call it learning
D – Dream
E – Enduringly Successful
F – Flow
G – Give what is needed
H – Harvest Failure
I – Innovation
J – Jerry Porras, co-author
K – Keeping Score
L – Love Work
M – Make a Difference
N – New Ideas
O – Overrated Self-Esteem
P – Passion into Action
Q – Quest for Meaning
R – Redefine Success
S – Search for Meaning
T – Thought
U – Use Core Incompetencies
V – Values
W – Weakness
X – Xtreme Makeovers
Z –

Again, I am amazed at how this book all came flooding back to me by simply typing the ABC List into the blog! My list may be different from your list. It depends on your purpose, interest, and a variety of other variables.  The following could very well be the ABC List for the same book:

A – Alice Waters
B – Bono
C – Carl Lewis
D – Deepak Chopra
E –
F – Firehawk
G – Gloria Steinem
H –
I –
J – Jeff Bezos
K – Ken Blanchard
L – Lance Armstrong
M – Maya Angelou
N – Newt Gingrich
O –
P – Peter Drucker
Q – Quincy Jones
R – Robert Dole
S – Steve Jobs
T –
U –
V – Vernon Hill
W – Warren Buffett
X –
Z –

Do you see how a person’s interest or purpose could come up with a completely different ABC List? The two lists certainly tell the story of the book. Vera encourages multiple lists.

Here’s an ABC List that I built on the topic of PhotoReading about five years ago:

A – Activate
B – Breathing
C – Consistency
D – Dreams
E – Efficient
F – Flow State
G –
H – Hunch
I – Intuition
J – Just Do It
K – Knowing
L –
M – Memory
N – New Neural Networks
O – Open Mind
P – Photofocus
Q – Quick
R – Rapid Reading
S – Super Reading & Dipping
T – Trigger Words
U – Use often
V –
W – Words
X – “X”
Z –

Building ABC Lists – your Inner Archive – does three things for you. First, it helps you find out what you already know or think about a subject. Second, it helps you know if you understand the subject. And thirdly, it allows you to use ABC Lists as a take-off point for further thinking, analytically, creatively, whatever.

You can also use a form of ABC Lists called the Anchorman List to memorize material. It’s all explained on the CDs of the Memory Optimizer with detailed examples.

If you’ve done the course in the past, see if you can find a few of your ABC Lists. If everything floods back as I say it will, then recommit yourself to using them.

If you’re new to the Memory Optimizer, play with the ABC Lists and notice how it supports your memory.