The man whose memory allows him to play four games of chess blindfolded
is good for nothing else.
Book-keepers who can name every folio page and every customer's balance
are good for little else.
There is nothing in mental gymnastics from the dollar standpoint.
The good lawyer or the good business man does not rely on his memory,
but rather his ability to find out things and get at results.
If you remember only the customers who are slow pay or shaky, it will
be a lot easier than to remember the names of all the customers who pay
promptly.
If your wife wants you to get something down town tomorrow, write her
request on a little piece of paper, roll it up in a ball, put it in
your pocket with your loose change. Forget the incident, let the paper
do the memory act.
Next day when you reach in your pocket for change you will find the
little ball with the reminder on it.
If there is something you want to attend to at home, drop yourself a
postal card.
Carry a little pad of paper in your pocket. Write down the little
things you are to do. Don't store your mind with these temporary
matters. Let the tab remember for you.
Let your mind be like a sieve, and have the meshes coarse enough to
keep in the big things and let the little things go through.
Have your business figures written down, your comparative sales,
increases or losses. Study the written figures. Have system. Do things
methodically. Don't trust to your memory. If the thing you see or hear
is worth keeping, write it down on the little tab.
The orator who commits his speech to memory is in a sorry plight if he
forgets a sentence.
If you are to speak at a dinner, lay out your plan, divide your topic
into several parts. Jot down the catch lines, and just before you speak
look over the ticket. Charge your brain with the points or ideas and
build the words around them.
Don't remember things with verbatim correctness. Remember the skeleton
thought, the idea.
When you quote a price or figure, jot it down. Confirm the verbal
statement by a written memorandum.
Memory is a bad servant sometimes. You remember a thing one way and the
other fellow remembers it another way. You are both honest, but one of
you is wrong. If you had made a memorandum in duplicate or jotted down
the figures, what trouble it would have saved you.
Where dollars are concerned it is good sense to trust to a written
memo., and not to any mental memo.
No use to cram your brain with transient things, when lead pencils and
paper are so cheap and so easily obtainable.
The employe who trusts to his memory hurts the business, and after he
quits a lot of misunderstandings will come up.
Insist on your employes making memorandums of things and prices, for
when the employe goes he takes his memory with him. If he has a
memorandum you know the facts.