P.I.G
Here is a familiar situation:
You are visiting your friend who lives in a huge apartment complex. With more than 10 buildings, couple of wings, a dozen floors. As you have already visited your friend couple of times you know exactly which building - which wing - which floor your friend lives. But there is a small problem! The security guy at the main gate stops you and asks for your friend's apartment number! Bummer! The security guys will not allow you in unless you call up your friend from your mobile and get the apartment number.
Now the same thing might get repeated again -- with the same friend in the same complex! Because you never bothered to remember the apartment number. It was just to trivial thing to remember.But as you already had the mental map, your brain never bothered to register the apartment number.
That is where P.I.G comes to rescue. P.I.G is short for Preemptive Information Gathering. PIG's philosophy is to gather (store) crisp information within a device that you always carry with you (viz your cell phone), in advance, in anticipation that you might need it some time in future. Stress is on word crisp. In the above scenario you don't need to store the apartment name, you don't need to store the area name or the pin-code. All you need to store is the apartment number (something like F-206) in your cell phone's address book along with his phone number. You store it because you anticipate that you will be visiting your friend again and will be faced with similar situation all over again.
PIG approach can be applied in various other scenarios. For e.g. your dry cleaner has put phone number of sofa and carpet cleaning agency in his shop. Just store the numbers while you are waiting for the delivery of clothes. You don't need the number today or even tomorrow but you never know when you buy a carpet! You see a plumber's advertisement stuck on a tree near your grocery shop. Just note it down. You never know when your sink starts to leak. PIG says, store the numbers of the restaurants that you go for lunch/dinner. You can use those numbers next time someone asks you for a restaurant suggestion.
PIG can also be applied in remembering anniversaries and birthdays of neighbors and colleagues (i.e. people who are not your relatives or close friends). Save the dates in your phone's calendar the moment you come to know about them and put a yearly repeat. They will really appreciate it when you wish them cos they would never have anticipated that you are going to remember the date.
I have been using PIG for couple of months now and it has really helped me to get hold of that odd number that the brain thinks is too dumb to remember.
You are visiting your friend who lives in a huge apartment complex. With more than 10 buildings, couple of wings, a dozen floors. As you have already visited your friend couple of times you know exactly which building - which wing - which floor your friend lives. But there is a small problem! The security guy at the main gate stops you and asks for your friend's apartment number! Bummer! The security guys will not allow you in unless you call up your friend from your mobile and get the apartment number.
Now the same thing might get repeated again -- with the same friend in the same complex! Because you never bothered to remember the apartment number. It was just to trivial thing to remember.But as you already had the mental map, your brain never bothered to register the apartment number.
That is where P.I.G comes to rescue. P.I.G is short for Preemptive Information Gathering. PIG's philosophy is to gather (store) crisp information within a device that you always carry with you (viz your cell phone), in advance, in anticipation that you might need it some time in future. Stress is on word crisp. In the above scenario you don't need to store the apartment name, you don't need to store the area name or the pin-code. All you need to store is the apartment number (something like F-206) in your cell phone's address book along with his phone number. You store it because you anticipate that you will be visiting your friend again and will be faced with similar situation all over again.
PIG approach can be applied in various other scenarios. For e.g. your dry cleaner has put phone number of sofa and carpet cleaning agency in his shop. Just store the numbers while you are waiting for the delivery of clothes. You don't need the number today or even tomorrow but you never know when you buy a carpet! You see a plumber's advertisement stuck on a tree near your grocery shop. Just note it down. You never know when your sink starts to leak. PIG says, store the numbers of the restaurants that you go for lunch/dinner. You can use those numbers next time someone asks you for a restaurant suggestion.
PIG can also be applied in remembering anniversaries and birthdays of neighbors and colleagues (i.e. people who are not your relatives or close friends). Save the dates in your phone's calendar the moment you come to know about them and put a yearly repeat. They will really appreciate it when you wish them cos they would never have anticipated that you are going to remember the date.
I have been using PIG for couple of months now and it has really helped me to get hold of that odd number that the brain thinks is too dumb to remember.