Moonwalking with Einstein
I have a crappy memory. I tried med school for a year. In all my pre-med and medical courses, they constantly warned us to understand, not memorize. I gladly took their advice, tried to understand rather than rote-memorize, and I ended up flunking 5 exams, which finished my medical career. The fact is, in many fields of human endeavor, you need to memorize before you can think. Would we have better physicians if they weren't required to memorize and spit out so much rote information? Not sure about that. I think a good doc not only has great personal and intuitive skills, he or she…
I liked her point of repetition being the main problem. It makes sense as we strengthen the new synopsis that are made. Josh Foer author of moonwalking with Einstein proposed an interesting theory that, essentially fucked up imagery of any kind helps increase and strength synaptic connections. Interesting watch (first 5mins gives good context) http://books.google.com/books/about/Moonwalking_with_Einstei...
Interesting, this reminds me of a quote from Josh Foer's book about memory: "Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next-and disappear. That's why it's important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our…
It helps distinguish them. Seeing all numbers as e.g. black vinyl makes them blend together in my memory. Visualizing something lets you leverage visual and spatial memory, but even then: if I were really running past N real giant numbers which all looked identical, I'd lose track just the same. Distinguishing them visually makes them all unique and memorable. The color infuses the entire track and the sky, actually, so it requires little focus, because it's right there in the background. Basically like the memory palace from Moonwalking with Einstein, but less work, because they don't have…
Good article. I've been studying Dominic O'Brien's techniques for a while now, he's the world memory champ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_O%27Brien It takes some time to get the system down, but it's really handy for memorizing numbers, a pack of cards, or any other structured information. Basically, I've got a journey with 52 stages memorized along with a person and an associated action for each two-digit number from 00 to 99. When I was practicing regularly before I was able to memorize a pack of cards in 3 minutes. It may seem weird practicing this, but it turns out to be a pretty…
A new book called "Moonwalking with Einstein", by Joshua Foer covers the Memory Palace technique and others. Check out the review at the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-m...
regarding 10,000 hours ... from Moonwalking with Einstein "What separates experts from the rest of us is that they tend to engage in a very directed, highly focused routine, which Ericsson has labeled “deliberate practice.” Having studied the best of the best in many different fields, he has found that top achievers tend to follow the same general pattern of development. They develop strategies for consciously keeping out of the autonomous stage while they practice by doing three things: focusing on their technique, staying goal-oriented, and getting constant and immediate feedback on their…
You linked to artofmemory.com. Did you ever read Moonwalking with Einstein? The author, Joshua Foer, was a skeptic of memorization parlor tricks. So he decided to try it for himself and actually became the USA Memory Champion, accomplishing memorization feats that he thought were impossible. The book debunks many myths, most prominently that of photographic memory. The author also expresses his opinion about some famous characters known for their supposed memorization skills. For example, he explains how one guy who claimed to be reciting pi from memory was actually using his hands in a way…
Forget about the spammy title, this is an amazing book on copy writting: Cashvertising: http://amzn.to/nrwKnf (all links have my affiliate link. On my way to richness baby! ;) I'm currently reading this one, so far so good: Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything http://amzn.to/nGEnkv This is a small list of books I want to read: The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us http://amzn.to/oiEIDs Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength http://amzn.to/qTNpgB Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your…
I also found this passage about mammographers from "Moonwalking with Einstein" interesting: For most mammographers, practicing medicine is not deliberate practice, according to Ericsson. It’s more like putting into a tin cup than working with a coach. That’s because mammographers usually only find out if they missed a tumor months or years later, if at all, at which point they’ve probably forgotten the details of the case and can no longer learn from their successes and mistakes. One field of medicine in which this is definitively not the case is surgery. Unlike mammographers, surgeons tend…