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Brett and Kate McKay<br />

3. A more interesting personality. I’ve always been impressed by that<br />

very rare man who can weave a snippet of a great speech or poem into a<br />

conversation. Being able to throw some inspiration from Wordsworth<br />

or a bit of wit from Twain into your conversations can definitely distinguish<br />

you as a gentleman of letters. The trick is to be discriminating<br />

when you start reciting stuff. If you do it too much or at the wrong<br />

times, you’ll just make yourself look like a pompous ass.<br />

4. A strengthened backbone. The most important benefit of memorizing<br />

passages from great works is that you’ll be storing up a treasure trove<br />

of wisdom and knowledge that you can immediately access when you<br />

need extra motivation to man up. Feeling a little nervous while you’re<br />

waiting in the lobby for a job interview? Recite Theodore Roosevelt’s<br />

“Man in the Arena” to yourself. Perhaps you’ve been put in a leadership<br />

position and need to get psyched up to lead your group to success.<br />

Mull over the words to the “St. Crispen’s Day” speech. There’s<br />

probably a poem or a great speech that can be used to motivate you<br />

for any facet of your life.<br />

Tips on Memorizing<br />

When I was in law school, I often had to memorize 40 pages of a class<br />

outline. So I was always looking for new ways to improve my ability<br />

to memorize.<br />

I’m a big fan of the peg system, the link system, and mindmaps.<br />

Unfortunately, I found these techniques useless for memorizing 40 page<br />

law school outlines filled with abstract legal doctrine. So I came up with<br />

my own system, which I call “brute force memorization.” It ain’t pretty or<br />

efficient, but it gets the job done.<br />

The Brute Force Memorization Process<br />

While reading the sentence I want to memorize aloud, I’ll type it into my<br />

computer. I repeat this process five times with each line of data I want to<br />

65

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