One of the most sought after knowledge is on how to understand the human mind. It takes hundred of years for people to get a grasp of its true potential and yet we are still scratching the surface. That being said, I’m going to introduce you to one theory of mind utilization which is The Theory of Three.

Just like a radio that will only produce clear sound when you tune it specifically to, let say, 100.1MHz, the mind will also work at its best efficiency if you know how to finetune it. And in this specific case, one way of finetuning your mind is via The Theory of Three.

What Is Theory of Three

Basically the theory states that our mind works best when it is associated with the number three.

The best way to explain the theory is by examples. Just have a look at the world’s famous three; “The Three Stooges”, “The Charmed Ones”, “Do Re Mi”, “The Three Musketeers”, “Location Location Location”, “Just Do It”, “As easy as A B C”, “On the count of three 1 2 3″. These are a few of phrase and title that comes in three.

All of them are very catchy, very easy to remember and very popular. Imagine changing the phrase to “The Stooge”, “Re”, “Do It”, “As easy as B C” and “On The Count Of 56″. The phrase will not be appealing now wouldn’t it?

This is how The Theory of Three works. By changing the form of your thoughts into another form that is associated with the number three, you are actually finetuning your thoughts making it more catchy and more effective.

How To Apply The Theory of Three

1) Change your life motto. Motto like “I’m going to be the no 1 student of this class” will not work. Use motto such as “No 1 Student”

2) Repeat important keywords three times. If you are going to remind yourself to study, Repeat the words “Study Study Study”. It will have more impact than just the one word.

3) Reorganize your subject in three. Always read three chapters of your subject every day. And rearrange the notes in each chapter into three different groups. Do this until you can actually see your three chapters in your head with all the three branches. Memorizing three chapters? Not a problem anymore

4) Better headline for reports. If your assignment require you to come up with a title. Try to adjust it to utilize this theory of three. Instead of “The Complete Study of Human”, try “The Mind, Body & Soul - A Study”. Your assignment will immediately stand out from the crowd.

Conclusion - Applying The Theory of Three is only limited by your imagination. You can always find other ways to utilize this technique and make everything in your life comes as easy as A B C

- I Wonder -
Anything else comes to your mind that utilizes The Theory of Three?

———- Personal Note ———–
One of my favorite books during my childhood (10 years old) is a local book “3 Penyiasat” (3 Investigators). It is a story of 3 teenagers that often come across a crime case and successfully solve it. I still remember their name - Jalil, Gopal and Ah Meng.

Somehow the books had inspired me to start my own investigating club. We were supposed to investigate the claim that there was a ghost in our school. But of course in the end, the club just got deactivated because everyone was equally scared

Photo Credit - SweetGirl

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Summary - 10 important message to all students

If you can go back in time to meet your past self, What year will you go? And what will you say to him/her. Will you go to the day you get married and stop yourself from marrying? Or will you go to yesterday, and tell your past self what happen today?

Imaginative, yes. But it is still an interesting question to ask yourself occasionally. We have grown wiser over the years and sometimes there is this urge to share what you have learnt to someone else who may very well repeat all your mistakes.

Personally, I will go back to the first day I became a college student. And I will pass these 10 messages to my past self.

1) Backup all your notes in your hard disk.
I graduated from my college with almost no notes from my study. Somehow I lost almost all of them. It’s as if I had never been to one. What a waste. Some of them might not be very useful and relevant but still, I paid for the course, and I had to work hard to pass all of them. They are my asset and I lost half of them.

Word of advice - Scan your paper based note, or maybe snap some pictures of the notes with your digital camera. Don’t forget to organize them properly. You may forget which goes to which if you procrastinate.

2) Choose wisely which textbook to buy
This is another mistake I made when I first started college. I bought every textbook recommended by the lecturers. It turned out, some of them were not being used at all. That money can be put to better use.

Word of advice - Check with your seniors on what books to buy. Some may prove more useful than another. For the less useful ones, maybe you can share with a couple of friends to buy it. More money saved for you.

3) Money to be spent is money left at the end of the month.
I learnt this the hard way. Whenever I get my allowance early in the month, I will usually spend it immediately. I went ice skating (it was a new thing back then) or go to internet cafe. And I was living neck to neck from month to month financially.

Word of advice - Money received early of the month should be used in life and death situation ONLY. For example, you don’t eat, you die. So then it’s OK to eat. You should only use the extra money saved at the end of the month for leisure.

4) Save money for your job hunt
After I graduated, I just realized that I have no money to job hunt. No money to buy newspaper, or to go for interview, or to buy stamps or print resume. I had to work as a gift wrapper at a mall just to pay for my job hunt.

Word of advice - Spending money is fun. I know, I’ve been there. But you will need some money to get you started after college. Start saving some every month. You will not regret it. I wonder how many job interview I had to turn down just because I don’t have enough money to go to the interview.

5) Listen to the lectures the first time
Believe me when I tell you this. For a college student, there are only about 10 hours per day. You are busy going to class, doing assignments and projects, maintaining student organization, sports. And if that’s not all, you are dating a few girls at the same time. Seriously where will you find the time to restudy.

Word of advice - Listen to your lectures the first time. Listen carefully and try to understand them IN CLASS. You will never need to study them again. Imagine the time you saved.

6) Identify your destructive addiction
I was addicted to chatting over IRC back then. I almost failed a few subject just because I couldn’t find the time to do them. That’s me. You may find another form of addiction.

Word of advice - Identify your addiction. It’s actually easy to do. If you notice you are not doing your assignment, you miss deadline, that’s the signs that you are addicted to something. It can be blogging, IM or even stumbling interesting sites. Deal with that immediately. If not, it may be too late when you realized what has happened to you.

7) Enjoy your long holiday
I think I can say this on behalf of everyone that is currently working. Please enjoy your holiday. When you are working, there are no more long holiday for you. The boss will be smiling disapprovingly if you apply for leave longer than 4 days.

Word of advice - Enjoying holiday doesn’t mean that you need to be in your bed the whole time. Do everything you want to. Go travelling. See the world.

8] Try to know as many people possible.
Now that I am working, I found a lot of my college batch. I don’t even know the name of some of them but they know my name and instantaneously we become friends. Imagine if I made the effort to know more of my college batch. I will then have a bigger network of friends which will help each other out in any situation. For example, I can ask them if they are any vacancy in their company, etc.

Word of advice - You don’t need to be best friend to everyone. You just need to be able to say hi occasionally to everyone. At least after college, they will know that you used to study in the same college when you bump into each other.

9) Be in contact with your lecturers.
Your lecturers are basically your real live wikipedia. Whenever you have a problem later in your work, you can always give them a call asking for help. It’s like free lifetime consultation. It’s a priviledge given to you since you are their student. Term and condition apply of course. The TACs are that you must keep in touch with all the lecturers, and more importantly you must be nice to them during your college years.

Word of advice - lecturers are not enemies. They are not going all out to get you. They are actually really good people wanting to teach you all they know. And when you appreciate this, they will appreciate you even more.

10) Enjoy your student life
Word of advice - This is my last message to my past self. It can be stressful, depressing sometimes. You may feel like running to another country sometime from all the boredom. Still, college life is one of the best time in your life. Enjoy.

- I wonder -
What will your message to your past self be?

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The life of a student has always been like a tug war between being motivated and plain lazy. I know. I’ve been there. Some time, we become so motivated, we even seek for extra work just to enhance our learning. Another time, there are no motivational speech in the world that will make us wake up from that comfy bed.

When that laziness attacks and you have so many things to do, what would you do?

These are a few tricks that I tried as my last resort to get things done. Most of the time they worked. Try them and tell me how it goes.

1) Read standing up
Sometimes I have trouble waking up when I read my notes. So what I did was reading the notes while standing up. If you can walk that would be even more effective to combat those drowsiness. However I found out that my concentration deteriorates even faster walking.

2) One page at a time
This is my last resort to almost anything. If I have to read 20 pages of notes, I will force myself to read 1 page. That’s it. I promise myself that after that 1 page is done and I fully understand or memorize the page, I can stop studying altogether.

Usually by the time I understand the subject, I will be more in the studying mode and thus page 2

3) Report your failure to other people
This also should be used as the super last resort. Make yourself accountable. Not to anyone but to your parent. I know.. it may sound very childish reporting yourself to your parent but believe me it work.

All you need to do is to write an email (if your parent read email of course) reporting every assignment need to be done, and notes to be studied. And each day, you should HONESTLY write a progress email detailing your progress. If you didn’t touch anything on the subject, confess to your parent and give reason why.

If the shame of not doing anything didn’t move you to finish your work, I don’t know what will.

4) Bet with your lecturer
How about if you prepare one letter signed by you and give that letter to your lecturer when you started the semester.

Put it in writing that everytime you are unable to deliver your assignment in time, you will wash his car FOC. The lecturer will definitely make use of this offer. He will look for your assignment first everytime. And you will feel more driven to do your assignment.

5) Red card of wealth
This is a system I created just to give me an extra push with money. However, being a student I don’t have money. Not much anyway. So what I did is creating about 20 red cards per month. I put value to the card at about $10 per card. So if by the end of the month I still have 20 cards, that is like an extra $200 in my pocket.

Whenever I want to push myself to work, I will just warn myself that 1 card will be burnt down (literally burnt) if I didn’t do the work.

Where will the money come from, my current salary of course. Once I start working, I am entitled to spend the red cards guilt free

6) When motivated, do extra
There will be times when you just super motivated for no apparent reason. How? Still a mystery to me. What I did when I’m in that state is to do extra work. Maybe study those subject not yet covered by lecturers, do past year questions etc.

Why I do this? Because there will be times when I’m just super lazy and all the above will not change it. By doing extra work when I’m motivated, I will feel less guilty being lazy sometime later.

- I wonder -
What do you do as your last resort to get things done?

——– Personal Note ———
I still have a few more techniques, but a bit abstract to describe here. Maybe next time

Now that I work, I actually still practise some of the methods. I honestly give report to my manager on what I have done and what I still don’t do. He may not even care, but I am so ashame to report on task not completed, I usually will finish them all. Well most of them anyway

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A few days back, one reader by the nick SilentReader had asked me one question to be discussed here - How to improve long term memory. Shall we?

First of all, allow me to interest you with some articles I’ve actually written on the subject.

• How SpongeBob Improves Memory
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To tell you the truth, I actually did quite a lot of thinking on the matter. And at the end of the day, I’ve concluded that there is only one way to be able to memorize something and remember it for the rest of your life.

You must want to remember.

Seriously, I can list down every technique known to mankind - Chinese One Syllable Technique, Association, Repetition, Funny Images, House Mapping etc. But they will prove ineffective if you just don’t want to remember.

However trying to make yourself want something is not an easy thing to do. Why? It’s because the mind is always behaving like a child.

What will happen if you ask a child to work instead of playing? He will first disapprove and will try to wiggle his way out of the task. If that didn’t work, he will do the job lazily, hoping that you will give up impatiently. What would you do?

The same goes to the mind. It will goes exactly through the same phase as the child, disapprove, wiggle and lastly do the job lazily.

How to negotiate with the mind? Well treat it like a child of course.

1) Always slow talk
Never raise your voice to your mind. The more you force yourself, the more reluctant the mind will work for you.

2) Visualize what will be achieved.
Just like a child, you must describe how they will benefit visually. Maybe draw a car that they will be able to buy if the child gets good grade and be successful. For the child, the word successful doesn’t mean much.. but if he knows that with good grade, he will get to be a pilot and buy a car. That will push him in the right direction.

Research where your graduated seniors are working now. And how much are their salary. Imagine your dream laptop that can be bought easily with your one month salary should you follow their foot steps. In short, motivate yourself (visually)

3) Join in to do the hard work.
If you put a child to work under the hot sun while you sip cold drink under the shade, the child will immediately realize he is being bullied and may stop working altogether. If you work with him under the hot sun, he will do the work more willingly.

Work together with your mind. How? for a start, when you read, you read. Don’t read with your mouth while you are thinking about how hot your girlfriend is.

4) Reward
Every child demand some reward if they do a good job. They may not say it out loud, but they really want it. Some would settle with a pat on the back, some may want cash.

Figure out the reward for your mind. It can be as simple as a 30 minutes nap or $50 to be spent on anything.

5) Make it fun
Cleaning up the house is never fun for children. But if you assigned each child to a room and whoever can clean up the fastest will win one week of no work, I’m sure the work will be done in no time.

In the case of your mind, make it fun by maybe substituting the character described in the history book with your real life friends and family. Of course don’t let yourself be the hero. Hero always get killed in history books

6) Don’t plan too far ahead.
Children hate it when you gave them 20 things to do. Most probably they will just drag the first task to avoid doing the other 19.

For your mind, try to implement this trick. Only plan to do two things at any time. It is a great Getting Things Done (GTD) tools.

- I wonder -
Any other resemblance between a child and the mind?

———- Personal Note ———–
I just love children. Just watching them play can make me smile. They have no idea what they’re playing, what’s the rule or the goal but they can still make the game looks insanely fun

I guess one of the price we have to pay growing up, is losing that sense of having fun. What do you think?

Photo Credit - Hamed Masoumi

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