Anyone can do it!

David Thomas failed all his math exams and left school with no qualifications, yet this 30-year-old fire fighter has just gone into the Guinness Book of Records by reciting from memory 22.500 digits of the mathematical constant. After five months of training, in which he spent ten hours a day memorizing a quarter of a million digits, David Thomas took part in a 16-hour mental battle. Witnesses watched in awe as Thomas set a new European record, earning the title "Most Powerful Memory in the Western Hemisphere".

Thomas became fascinated by O'Brien's theory that anyone can improve their memory by using specialized techniques. These techniques involve linking everything to familiar people or objects. If you want to remember a phone number for example, you have to give the numbers life. Sometimes I associate a number with a person. Number 10 for me is always the Prime Minister Tony Blair (who lives at number 10 Downing Street) and 50 is my uncle John who died at that age.

FINANCIAL TIMES

World business newspaper

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Famous couturiers

They were twenty-eight when it happened – the chance that every dress designer dreams. The Princess of Wales, still «Lady Diana», asked them to make her wedding dress. David and Elizabeth Emanuel were famous. Born in ordinary families, the Emanuels had had to work their way to the top. He met Elizabeth, daughter of an English mother and American father, at Harrow College of Art. The two young students liked each other at once, and they liked each other’s work. The next step for the young married couple was the Royal College of Art. The fashion show at the end of the M.A. course is a big chance for young designers. The Emanuels were lucky.

A new world of romance was being born in the small building the couple had rented in fashionable Mayfair. Actress Susan Hampshire wanted something extra-special that people would notice and remember. The Emanuels were becoming well-known. It wasn’t always easy. People took their designs home to study, then had them copied more cheaply. The Emanuels had to learn from their mistakes. But then came the royal wedding. For weeks they worked in secret, hiding their designs from the cameras of the many curious newspaper men. But when at last they stood in St Paul’s Cathedral and watched the Princess walk down the aisle to marry her Prince, they knew they had reached the top.

FINANCIAL TIMES

World business newspaper

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How to select the best candidates – and avoid the worst.

Choosing the wrong candidate may leave an organization paying for years to come. Few companies will have escaped all of the following failures: people who panic at the first sign of stress; those with long, impressive qualifications who seem incapable of learning. Less dramatic, but just as much a problem is the person who simply does not come up to expectations, who does not quite deliver; who never becomes a high-flier or even a steady performer; the employee with a fine future behind them.

Most people like to think that personality can change, particularly the more negative features such as anxiety, low esteem, impulsiveness or a lack of emotional warmth. But data collected over 50 years gives a clear message: still stable after all these years. Extroverts become slightly less extroverted; the acutely shy appear a little less so, but the fundamentals remain much the same. Personal crises can affect the way we cope with things: we might take up or drop drink, drugs, religion or relaxation techniques, which can have pretty dramatic effects. Skills can be improved, and new ones introduced, but at rather different rates. People can be groomed for a job. Just as politicians are carefully repackaged through dress, hairstyle and speech specialists, so people can be sent on training courses, diplomas or experimental weekends. Better to select for what you actually see rather than attempt to change it.

From The Economist

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