Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

For example my mom asked who the angry chef on TV is and somehow I immediately knew "Gordon Ramsay!" even though I don't have cable TV, never purposely worked on remembering his name, and am generally terrible at remembering names. Being able to remember things without trying is what most folks would really want when considering improving their memory.

I have found success with methods that call for imagining a 3d space and placing objects in that space and using it to recall things... However, designing such a space takes time/effort which is difficult when you're trying to learn and comprehend stuff on the fly.

I do wonder if it is a memory issue or a recall issue here...perhaps I actually know the information but can't access it as necessary.

Highly recommended for anyone looking to expand their vocabulary in a variety of languages, including Mandarin.

But there's still ‘inner speech’, which appears to slow down meaning recall. It seems to be a habit of many people, although I don't have hard data to support this. I've heard that unlearning sub-vocal reading in favor of visual reading helps increase reading speed and remember the information. Haven't had much success with this myself so far, it needs some patience.

(I suppose phonetic writing system also adds to the problem. How cool it would be if you could read the meaning from symbols, instead of doing letter combination matching.)

This isn't true. I've used this technique to memorize and recite the alphabet backwards. I also use it to memorize trig identities (I keep them in my silverware drawer, mentally). It's not "easy", but it only took one (entire) night of practice to recite the alphabet backwards. If I can, then almost anyone can.

Imagine the biggest house/apartment you've lived in. The only important criteria is that you've spent enough time there to have a clear, crisp picture of every room without physically being there or looking at photos.

Now look around. Take note of each "container" -- bins, cabinets, drawers, and even furniture like chairs, tables, and couches (because you can set things on them).

Memorize a specific path through your house. It sounds hard when I phrase it like that, but it's not. Just start at your front door and mentally walk through your house, opening cabinets/drawers and visiting rooms in a specific order. The order is all that matters.

As you go along, imagine what it would look like if there were literally an alphabet in your house. Starting from the front door, a big red hairy "A" is blocking your path, so you go around it. Then as you pass your hallway closet, you notice a shiny blue "B" isn't doing a very good job of being inconspicuous. And so on. (It helped me to make them distinctive, so I use a lot of color and tactile imagery like hairy/furry/velvety/shiny. Even smelly. Just use your imagination.)

Remember -- you have to make sure you always are traversing in a specific order. The room with the "A" to the room with the "B" etc.

Since most of us don't have 26 different rooms, you'll have to use your containers too, and also cram a few letters together into one area. (Never more than three in a bin, though, unless you're better at this than I am.) So in your livingroom, maybe S T and U are siting on your couch watching The Office, whereas X Y and Z are getting freaky in your bedroom. (Shocking imagery is easier to remember than the mundane, and you can use this to your advantage.)

So. Got your path memorized? A to B to C etc...? Good. Now it's very easy: walk the path backwards. Z to Y to X...

Speak the letters out loud as you go, and presto, you now possess a new (entirely useless) talent.

It becomes much more useful for pretty much anything that benefits from rote memorization. (Just don't apply it to math very much otherwise you won't have more than a superficial understanding of the underlying concepts and connections.) It's quite handy for presentations.

http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_...

After seeing this I actually was able to use his technique to help remember all the parts of a long wedding toast I had to deliver. It definitely worked in this situation, though I'm not sure how applicable it would be for cataloguing every day information you may or may not need to recall.

walk down a path in your mind, that you can recall well from your memory and then place images of the items/words you try to remember along this path.

in general: the more numerous the set of associations you have with a certain word the more likely you are going to remember it. For example, when trying to remember the name Baker of a person, don't think of it as a surname but rather as the profession "baker".

Here's what I remember, for the record: pickled onions, cottage cheese, peat smoked salmon, six bottles of wine, three pairs of socks, hula hoop, scuba diver, dry ice(?), Sofia Lauren.

I know there are a few more, but I think I covered a pretty considerable number of them.

[1] http://climbformemory.com/blog/ Oh, it's moved, I guess that explains that.

For describing the various schemes let us consider a sentence with five words having indices 1 2 3 4 5.

Let !! - represent a termination sequence. We'll not get into technicalities, but take it as is.

1) Krama Paatha - This is relatively easy and each of the indexed word will be chanted as follows.

1 2

2 3

3 4

4 5

5!!

Notice that a given word is clubbed with the next word. (Forward chaining). There are two words in a sequence

2) Jataa Paatha - This is bit more complicated since it involves backward sequences as well.

1 2 2 1 1 2

2 3 3 2 2 3

3 4 4 3 3 4

4 5 5 4 4 5

5!!

The complexity is due to the fact that the words will have to be chanted in reverse sequence as well. (backward chaining) For e.g. {1, 2} {2, 1} {1, 2}. There are a total of 6 words in each sequence.

3) Ghana Paatha - This is the most complex chanting mode (also called the bell mode of chanting). The chanting sequence is as below.

1 2 2 1 1 2 3 3 2 1 1 2 3

2 3 3 2 2 3 4 4 3 2 2 3 4

3 4 4 3 3 4 5 5 4 3 3 4 5

4 5 5 4 4 5

5!!

Phew!! Each sequence has 13 words made from three words. There are two word forward/backward sequences as well as three word forward/backward sequences. For e.g. {1, 2} {2, 1} for two word sequence. {1, 2, 3} and {3, 2, 1} for three word sequence. The astute reader will observe that the penultimate sequence is the same as Jathaa Paatha (and also the first six words of any sequence constitute the same).

There are several intracacies that are involved. One is compounding of words. Word compounding introduces changes to the pronunciation. Another is the change of phonetic intonation due to the modified sequence of chanting the words in a given scheme. These repetition techniques enabled the scholars to get a "feel" for how words would be intonated and pronounced phonetically in various circumstances.

I had always wondered why such elaborate schemes were devised by the Vedic seers. I have come to realise that the seers knew that when knowledge was transmitted in the oral form, it inevitably introduced corruptions in the words. In Vedic Sanskrit, purity of syllable (both phonetic pronunciation and intonation) is of utmost importance. Even a slight change in a syllable (either phonetic or intonation) would completely change the meaning of the sentence.

These techniques not only aided in error detection in chanting, but also error correction (specifically error correction in syllable intonation). If someone were chanting a sequence of words, one could verify if the words are being intonated correctly (of course it would take an expert to do that). There was a document that I read quite some time back which resorted to some abstract algebra (group theory) based arguments for explaining the error correction mechanism of some of these techniques.

Of course, many of these schemes (and also other linguistic aspects like word compounding) always kept one thing in mind - the ease with which humans are able to cognize and generate the sounds representing given syllables in a sequence of words.

In conclusion, these methods ultimately enabled scholars/priests to be able to: a) remember entire bodies of verses/compositions with relative ease. b) transmit such knowledge to students with zero word corruption (yes, although I am neither a linguistic nor a Vedic expert, I can go out on a limb to make this claim - zero corruption).

Edit :- Minor edits for readability/spelling.