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There is a great TED talk about this: http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_an

• dagurp 11y ago
  And a great book called Moonwalking with Einstein
  • pixelHD 11y ago
    Yes, it is a great read. I heard about the "Memory Palace" on BBC's Sherlock. Holmes says that you can theoretically remember everything (I think this was in the episode The Hounds of Baskerville). I then happened upon this book via gatesnotes[0], and picked it up. The author is quite successful in learning and putting this technique to use. He reaches the finals of the USA Memory Championship. However, he says this at the end - "For all the memory stunts I could now perform, I was still stuck with the same old shoddy memory that misplaced car keys and cars. Even while I had greatly expanded my powers of recall for the kinds of structured information that could be crammed into a memory palace, most of the things I wanted to remember in my everyday life were not facts or figures or poems or playing cards or binary digits." It seems this method can help in memorizing things you consciously put effort to remember. This becomes easier as you practice. But if you were thinking of using this to remember every point of your life, as in where you placed your car keys this morning, or where you left your phone, things get murky - like what the Author mentioned. Although I do wonder how many people would try doing that. 0: http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Moonwalking-with-Einstein http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Moonwalking-with-Einstein
    • gohrt 11y ago
      I can't find a reference now, but I read about a women who had a debilitating mental illness -- she could remember very many of the mundane details of her days, and it crowded out her ability to perform other mental tasks.
      • schoen 11y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia#Cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia#Cases The person you heard about might have been https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Price These cases remind me very strongly of the Borges story "Funes the Memorious" ("Funes el Memorioso"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funes_the_Memorious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funes_the_Memorious Edit: It was interesting to hear that Price rejected the interpretation of her condition that was given in the Wired story about her (which was how I'd heard about her).
  • brianobush 11y ago
    Yes, I second (or third) this book. I used the method to chain Japanese kanji onyomi (the Chinese reading) together. Even went so far as to build out the location in minecraft so I could walk around and "study" Took a while to build and stopped after 20 groups, but still an amazing way to leverage your memory skills.
    • pixelHD 11y ago
      Minecraft eh? I did the same with GTA San Andreas. I played that game so much when I was young, that I have the whole map memorized. Given the fact that the map is huge, I use that as my Palace. I've even bought the game for my iPad so that I can traverse it time to time to refresh my Palace!
      • brianobush 11y ago
        Good idea, bonus for not having to build it out like I did in Minecraft.