How to get into Second Life without really trying
Selby Evans is Thinkerer Melville in Second Life
‘I give myself such very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.’ So Alice (in Wonderland) sings in Disney's movie version. Of course, Alice is a child, a fictional child. And there wouldn't have been much of a story if she had followed good advice instead of following the rabbit into the hole.
Adults don’t have this problem. Adults give themselves good advice and always remember to follow it. Adults never find themselves wishing that they had given more thought to something before they took action. Adults never find themselves asking “How could I have done that?” Adults are never surprised to discover that they did not do what they fully intended to do. Which adults are these? Well, adults who are as fictional as Alice. And lead less interesting lives.
Forgetting is not a memory problem.
It is a cue problem.
Let’s look at this story another way. Real people can’t even remember to get up at the right time. Real people set alarm clocks to remind them to get up. Now, being psychologists, we could make up a long story about how people have this deep-seated, unconscious wish to stay in bed. We could embellish the story with speculation about hidden fear of facing the day. We could devise a new therapy to cure these problems.
Nobody would take us seriously. You can’t read the clock with your eyes closed. Or, to put it in our terms, the parts of your brain that you turn on while you are sleeping don’t pay careful attention to clock time. You know that. You don’t wonder why you can’t remember to wake up at 6:25. You just set the alarm clock and forget about it. You leave remembering to your alarm clock.
You tell yourself you’re going to pick up the cleaning at lunch tomorrow. You may remember that plan tomorrow evening when you get home and don’t have the cleaning to put away. Why are you surprised? You told your language channel about the cleaning. But at lunch, your language channel was probably busy talking to someone. Or maybe you were listening to music and didn't even turn on your language channel. Your music channel uses a different part of your brain. You wouldn't expect it to know about the cleaning.
Remembering is mostly arranging to get the right cue at the right time.
The right cue is the cue that will get through to a brain channel that will be running when you need to remember. Your best bet is your visual channel.
To remember the cleaning, turn on your imagery channel and call up images of what you will see just before you have to start the action. You have to turn off your usual route. What will that turn-off look like? What will you see on the side of the road? Image the intersection and hang a huge bag of cleaning right in front of it.
You have a good memory. And don't you forget it.
This story is not really about how to remember your cleaning. We do hope you will try something like this so you can see how it helps you remember. But you may want to remember to use this method for other things. Including things that are more important than the cleaning.
If you want to remember this method,
don’t expect your language channel to do the job.
See: Tools: Memory
Your Storyboarder
Your Engineer
Strengths you might use.
Curious
Creative
Humor, Sense of
Imagery, Good
Imaginative
Organized
Writer, Good