Steven Mnuchin with Lou Dobbs

Mnuchin is part of Trump's economic team. He is Secretary of Treasury in Trump's cabinet. Here he reiterates the current status of relations between U.S. and China.

But Chip, how can we keep all these guys straight? Huh? There are so many names to remember. And they come and go as Trump pleases. It's insane.

Yes, it is, and don't you forget it. From Trump's point of view all these people are there at his pleasure. When their usefulness is used up then bang, they're outta there. After all, he is known for the catchphrase "you're fired." 

And what joy that brought to our hearts. Every time he said that we laughed. Because the whole thing is ridiculous. All of those jobs are not permanent. For important people to invest their full attention to their present temporary job, make the jobs their whole life in that moment then have the rug snapped from under them is hilarious. And I say that as a person who's had the rug snapped over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Air Force dependent. It's like that. And each new rug-snapped situation is fine.

But certain administration principals are more important than others for longer and their names are worth remembering. So apply a mnemonic device, which is itself a word that can be spelled correctly by mnemonic device. 

They're all personal. You have to think them up yourself and see them. The more ridiculous the better because outrageous things are much more easily recalled than ordinary sane things.

As a yute I impressed my older friends with this simple trick. 

At age twenty-one, a person much older than myself introduced me to all of his friends. That person was introduced through deaf associations, but he and all his friends are hearing. But they were still all interested in that original deaf guy and his other deaf friends. The deaf kids put on a puppet show through the kitchen window into the living area, and made up from kitchen implements. It was a creative and entertaining spontaneous play. But they needed an interpreter for a few finer points. That was how these new people accepted me. I had them all completely faked out. I didn't know what I was doing, I was just doing my regular thing. 

Later without the deaf people around I told them to give me a list of twenty-five things and write them down. And I will recall the list next week when I see them again. So they did. They thought that was impossible. They thought it was odd, and funny.

The thing is, the number twenty-five is irrelevant. So I told them to double the list to fifty. So they did. Now they were certain this was not going to work and I will certainly fail. Fifty is a lot to them for a list of unrelated things to remember but the number is irrelevant to this system. It could easily be a thousand. Two thousand. Three thousand.

Then I told them to double the list to one hundred. At this point they were incredulous. And already tired of the game. It wasn't so easy for them to think up fifty more things. It's a bit wearisome.

Come on!

So they did. 

I applied this simple trick of visualizing ridiculous things. They listed all ordinary things but I recalled them as outrageous things. I saw all the things doing outrageous impossible things to the next thing. In that way they are linked. It's a chain of ridiculous things. 

Then when I left them I wrote all that crap down so I certainly wouldn't forget them. Just writing them reinforced the visualization string. The next week I reviewed the list and recalled the string of ridiculous outrageous things doing impossible things to the next item. This was on my mind, not theirs. When I saw them again they had forgotten the whole thing. I reminded them of their list. They retrieved their list. I spilled out the entire list of 100 things without any difficulty, with their list in front of them. And I'll tell you that made an enduring impression. It created a halo effect, in that I could do stupid crap but that memory trick superseded all the dumb things I did. Forever. I never told them the trick as I'm telling you. But this method was immeasurably useful in college. If the information is worthwhile then it stays without the help of the ridiculous visualization. And it stays for as long as it's useful. And when it's no longer useful poof it disappears. So your mind is not cluttered. 

Steven Mnuchin; Even-Steven. See him balanced on a see-saw with himself.  New chin. This guy has a weak chin and could use a new one. This is mnemonic so that "mn" thing is going on for mnu-chin. Check out the visualization for Mnuchin's new chins. A Dudley Do-Right chin or a Jay Leno chin would be great ones. See? A whole cloud of ridiculousness surrounding his name. And now the name is more easily recalled.

Take a test. Get an A.

It doesn't have to be a good visualization. It has to be ridiculous.