Many people really don't understand the full importance or impact of colour. Sure, we all love to see colourful things, to (hopefully!) match our clothing with subtle use of colour, to watch movies and television in vivid colour.

In different cultures colours have very different symbolic meanings. Red is the colour of danger in the West, yet it is the colour of luck in the East. Black is the colour of mourning in the West while, in some Eastern cultures, white is the predominant colour at funerals.

However, we might not understand just how important colour can be to the workings of our mind - especially the all-important memory function.

Our memory works with images. We remember more vivid images much more readily than bland or insipid scenes. Colour plays a major role in helping us when it comes to recall. We remember the house with the bright yellow trim among a line of dull brick buildings.

The IN YOUR RIGHT MIND program explains the importance of colour and encourages participants to use colour in their working life and also in memory enhancement exercises.

One participant explained that, for some reason which he had not really thought about, he started to use colour while studying at university. When making summaries of his lecture notes, he decided to use different colour pens for different headings. He found that this tactic helped him immensely when it came to recalling the information.

The pen, pictured above, is a little gift we give each course participant. It is a four-colour pen and serves as a simple reminder to use colour and bring more colour into the way we work.

When using creative tools such as mind maps, colour is essential. When committing specific items to memory, colour is a great help. When setting out work of any kind: time tables, lists, product descriptions etc etc, colour makes the mundane memorable.

One CHILAB trainer was discussing this importance of colour with the CEO of a major company. The CEO said: "Just a minute", before going to his desk drawer and taking our four fountain pens: one green, one black, one red and one blue.

Colour your life and your work!