I’ve bet you’ve used that excuse before! They say, don’t they, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
I admit, sometimes it feels easier not to bother because after all remembering stuff takes effort.
But if you put the effort in, you might be very surprised by what you can achieve, no matter what age you are.
Take JB, the subject of a study by John Seaman at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. In his 70s, JB started training his memory aged 58. He famously now can recite the whole of John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise lost, with very few errors.
JB didn’t use any particular techniques, the sort I encourage you to use to help shortcuts the process of learning. He simply stuck at it, and stuck at it, tenaciously going over it time and time again, every day, totaling around 3000 hours of practice.
He wasn’t particularly predisposed to memorisation and it’s not something he had attempted before. And I guess you’ve got to be pretty determined to learn all 60,000 words, and in the right order!
So what do you think? Do you still think you’re too old to learn?
