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If you are interested in the topic I recommend the book “Moonwalking With Einstein” mentioned in the article. It's both entertaining and informative. I particu

If you are interested in the topic I recommend the book “Moonwalking With Einstein” mentioned in the article. It's both entertaining and informative. I particularly liked the parts about mastering a skill as efficiently as possible. I tried some memorizing techniques. It's a great feeling to improve 10x at a (specific) memorizing tasks in very little and effort time by using one weird trick©. I used to try to remember random words during my commute and recall them when coming back. I took a list of random words from /usr/dict and set myself a timer of a few minutes to remember 30 words using memory palace. I used various places from the commute itself to store words. It was fun to see the words pop-up automatically in specific places on my way back. My performance declined after a while because I wasn't able to erase the previous words.

drivers99 12y ago
A how-to book like The Memory Book[1] is good for getting started on the techniques. When I read Moonwalking With Einstein it sounded like more and more techniques are being invented all the time, but it didn't go into as much "how-to" detail. If there's a more up to date how-to book out there, I'd be interested. [1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Memory-Book-Classic-Improving/dp/0345337581 http://www.amazon.com/The-Memory-Book-Classic-Improving/dp/0...
b_emery 12y ago
I read this book two months ago and can still recall most of his 'to do list' from the example. Was inspired by it to use the techniques to memorize collections of facts for a recent exam and they work wonderfully. I'm not saying it's easy to create vivid/unique/unusual images - it's certainly not. But if you invest the time and energy they really do stick. Great idea to use the commute as the memory palace! Interestingly, my daughter is learning to read and write by taking a word that she finds interesting, drawing a scene involving the word, then writing the word below it. I'm not sure if her preschool teachers are aware that they are using memory techniques to some extent.
RohanAlexander 12y ago
I agree with Monkeyget - it takes very little effort or time. Using the memory palace technique I taught myself to be able to recall the order of a deck of cards. Took only 10 min a day for a couple of weeks. Could have done it in less time by devoting more time per day.

drivers99 12y ago

A how-to book like The Memory Book[1] is good for getting started on the techniques. When I read Moonwalking With Einstein it sounded like more and more techniques are being invented all the time, but it didn't go into as much "how-to" detail. If there's a more up to date how-to book out there, I'd be interested. [1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Memory-Book-Classic-Improving/dp/0345337581 http://www.amazon.com/The-Memory-Book-Classic-Improving/dp/0...

b_emery 12y ago

I read this book two months ago and can still recall most of his 'to do list' from the example. Was inspired by it to use the techniques to memorize collections of facts for a recent exam and they work wonderfully. I'm not saying it's easy to create vivid/unique/unusual images - it's certainly not. But if you invest the time and energy they really do stick. Great idea to use the commute as the memory palace! Interestingly, my daughter is learning to read and write by taking a word that she finds interesting, drawing a scene involving the word, then writing the word below it. I'm not sure if her preschool teachers are aware that they are using memory techniques to some extent.

RohanAlexander 12y ago

I agree with Monkeyget - it takes very little effort or time. Using the memory palace technique I taught myself to be able to recall the order of a deck of cards. Took only 10 min a day for a couple of weeks. Could have done it in less time by devoting more time per day.