MEMORY SYSTEM FOR SCHEDULES ANDAPPOINTMENTS.

As with telephone numbers, many people find appointmentsand schedules hard to remember. They employ similarsystems for coping with their problem, the most common, ofcourse, being the diary. Unfortunately many people don'talways keep their diaries with them!In this chapter I introduce two systems, the first of which isfor immediate daily use, the second for remembering schedulesand appointments for an entire week.The first involves your basic peg systems. Simply equate thenumber in your system with the hour of your appointment.Since there are 24 hours in a day, you can either join theshorter system together, with an appropriate total of 24, oruse the first 24 peg words in one of the larger systems.Let us assume you have the following appointments:7—Early morning training10—Dentist1—Luncheon6—Board meeting10—Late filmWe will assume that you are using the Skipnum system toremember these appointments. At the beginning of the day,which in this case will certainly be no earlier than 5.30 a.m.,you run through the list and check for words with associations.7 a.m., represented by the word egg, is the time for yourEarly Morning Group Athletic Practice. Imagine your wholeteam running on eggshells, or enjoying a breakfast of eggbefore or after.At 10 a.m. (toast) you have an appointment with the dentist.Imagine all your teeth sinking into a piece of toast whichcauses pain.Your next appointment, at 1 p.m. (13.00) is for lunch. Thekey word is 'tea'. Imagine the rather depressing prospect of alunch at which nothing but tea is served.At 6 p.m. you have a Board Meeting. The Skipnum memoryword for 18 (18.00 hours equals 6 p.m.) is 'tape'. The associa-tion here is not difficult—imagine the confidential matters ofyour Board Meeting being tape-recorded on an enormousmachine.Finally you have an appointment at 10 p.m. (2200 hours) tosee a late film. The Skipnum key word is 'troop'. Imagine theaudience of which you will be a part as a well organised militaryforce!The second system for remembering schedules and appoint-ments may be used for an entire week. As with the memorysystem for dates, take Sunday as day 1 of the week andascribe a number to each of the other days:
Sunday— 1
Monday— 2
Tuesday — 3
Wednesday— 4
Thursday — 5
Friday— 6
Saturday — 7
Having given a number to the day, we treat the hours as theyare treated in the small system discussed above, and as theyappear in railway, shipping and airline schedules. The day isconsidered to have 24 hours, from 2400 (midnight) through1 a.m. (0100), noon (1200), 1 p.m. (1300) and back to midnight(2400).Thus for any hour and day ofthe week a two- or three-digitnumber is formed—day first, hour second. All that is necessaryis to transfer the number into the word of the major systemlist. Having arrived at the word we link it with the appropriateappointment.Supposing you had an appointment to see a car you wantedto buy at 9.00 a.m. on Tuesday. Tuesday is represented by thenumber 3 which in the major system translates to the letter 'm'.The hour, 9, translates to the letter 'b,p'. Referring to the basiclist we see that the key word for Tuesday at 9.00 a.m. is 'map'.To remember this appointment you might imagine the car youare going to see either bursting through a giant map, wrappedin a giant map, or driving across a giant map.As another example, suppose you have an appointment fora guitar lesson at 5.00 p.m. (hour number 17) on a Thursday(day number 5). The number we derive from Thursday at5.00 p.m. is 517, the word for this being 'leading'. To remem-ber this, imagine yourself leading an entire orchestra withyour solo guitar!You may think this system a bit cumbersome, because itrequires a fairly thorough knowledge of the larger numbers inthe Major System, but this can be overcome by 'rotating' thehours of the day to suite those hours in which you have mostappointments. If, for example, your day does not usually startuntil 10.00 a.m., then 10.00 a.m. can be consideredtobenumber1 in your appointment memory system. In this manner themost important and often-used hours in your day will nearlyalways be represented by only 2-digit numbers, i.e. thenumbers from 10 to 100 in the Major System.