The Power of Storytelling
Storytelling is a powerful learning tool. People use stories every day to share information, convey emotion and remember important events.
Think about how many stories you can hold in your mind simultaneously. Maybe you watch three or four television shows. You remember the backstory and events of the characters so you can make sense of the latest episode. You might catch up with friends who tell you stories about their weekend adventures or overseas holidays. You could be reading a great novel and each night you pick up where you left off easily. These are just a few basic examples of stories that are part of our lives each day. It’s the narrative that runs through each one that allows us to join the dots.
When information is presented like this with a narrative structure, it can be a powerful way to help you remember new information. Todd Sampson demonstrated this technique in the first episode of his series Redesign My Brain. Todd’s goal was to remember the sequence of 52 randomly arranged playing cards. To heighten the stakes, he set himself the goal of competing in the World Memory Championships just a couple of weeks later.
With help from an experienced World Memory Champion, Todd used narrative to remember the sequence of playing cards. The method he followed was to separate the cards into easy to remember sequences of three and create a narrative for each set. These smaller chunks of information were easy to recall individually, but linking each of them together with a narrative was the key to remembering the sequence of 52 cards.
To create the narrative, he used the card numbers and symbols. For example, the queen of diamonds might be your mother who has a diamond necklace and the four of clubs is her favourite golf club and the three of hearts means she kisses your cheek three times.
Associating a narrative with each set of cards meant that he could link them together into a somewhat unusual, but nevertheless cohesive story. When it came time to recall the order of the cards, Todd could simply go through the narrative in his head and reverse engineer which card came next. He competed in the World Memory Championships and successfully remembered the sequence both written down and spoken aloud.
Harnessing the power of story like this will allow learners to become engaged in a narrative and subsequently retain information longer. Stories capture our attention and can even make learning fun and entertaining.
You can watch Todd recall his deck of cards here.
