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The best way to store your ideas is to memorize them. This is the ultimate goal. If they are baked into your consciousness, they become an automatic part of eve

by toomim 8y ago

The best way to store your ideas is to memorize them. This is the ultimate goal. If they are baked into your consciousness, they become an automatic part of everything you do. Humans have a long evolved history of memorization. Before we had writing, we had to memorize the things that mattered. Don't forget that this practice is baked into your genes. To get there, it helps to write down your ideas, and to organize them together, reflect on them, find patterns in them. But the actual medium doesn't matter as much as the practice you follow. Remember that when you are writing down your ideas, you aren't dumping them into an offline store -- you are making them nice and pretty and well-organized for your brain to remember them as you write them down. Write them down to fill in your brain; not to offload.

PacifyFish 8y ago
Could not agree more with this, especially for creative ideas or knowledge that is most useful when instantly accessible (ie mental models and facts/concepts that help with making decisions when you can’t do a bunch of research beforehand). To help with this internalization I made a chrome extension that lets you review your ideas using spaced repetition in new browser tabs. Check it out if you’re interested https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/forgetmenot/nncbpjiiekiakcifiiomalecfnipahbj?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/forgetmenot/nncbpj...
dj-wonk 8y ago
I appreciate some of what you say, but: 1. I'm skeptical of a claim such as "But the actual medium doesn't matter as much as the practice you follow". I recall hearing about studies that show tactile experience (physical writing for example or being physically present during a lecture) forms better memories, at least in many people. 2. I strongly disagree that the best way to store your ideas is to memorize them. First, memorization isn't feasible, information-wise. Second, memorization is not most people's general goal. I would suggest a more general goal is to recall the salient features of your ideas and connect them to your task at hand. This suggests a mix of storage mechanisms: some memorization (i.e. for indexing, summarization, and connecting) with other higher-bandwidth, less-error-prone storages. To prove my second point with a counterexample: I highly doubt that visual artists can remember every brush stroke on their favorite canvases. It is more important, arguably, that they organize their work in a way that they can refer to it. And, for the purposes of creating future work, I doubt that memorizing exact details of previous work is the most important. Remembering the inspiration and the techniques is probably more important.

by toomim 8y ago

PacifyFish 8y ago

Could not agree more with this, especially for creative ideas or knowledge that is most useful when instantly accessible (ie mental models and facts/concepts that help with making decisions when you can’t do a bunch of research beforehand). To help with this internalization I made a chrome extension that lets you review your ideas using spaced repetition in new browser tabs. Check it out if you’re interested https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/forgetmenot/nncbpjiiekiakcifiiomalecfnipahbj?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/forgetmenot/nncbpj...

dj-wonk 8y ago

I appreciate some of what you say, but: 1. I'm skeptical of a claim such as "But the actual medium doesn't matter as much as the practice you follow". I recall hearing about studies that show tactile experience (physical writing for example or being physically present during a lecture) forms better memories, at least in many people. 2. I strongly disagree that the best way to store your ideas is to memorize them. First, memorization isn't feasible, information-wise. Second, memorization is not most people's general goal. I would suggest a more general goal is to recall the salient features of your ideas and connect them to your task at hand. This suggests a mix of storage mechanisms: some memorization (i.e. for indexing, summarization, and connecting) with other higher-bandwidth, less-error-prone storages. To prove my second point with a counterexample: I highly doubt that visual artists can remember every brush stroke on their favorite canvases. It is more important, arguably, that they organize their work in a way that they can refer to it. And, for the purposes of creating future work, I doubt that memorizing exact details of previous work is the most important. Remembering the inspiration and the techniques is probably more important.