How You Can Be a Memory Champion | Hacker News Reader

How You Can Be a Memory Champion

motyar.blogspot.com

26 pointsmotyar10 comments

I read Moonwalking with Einstein recently, and although there aren't many specific memory exercises to practice, the notion it incepts into your brain that to recall information better you need to encode it in the first place has changed my ability to remember on a daily basis. To remember a name, you need to first listen to what the person actually says instead of anticipating when you get to say your name.

I've specifically been using the mneumonic talked about in the book for remembering names and it has been working great. The idea is to turn Billy Baker into a visual image of that person riding a BILLY goat dressed in a BAKER's outfit. Then the next time you see Billy, you can recall your mneumonic and therefore his name.

Sidenote: Ed Cooke, the mneumonist who mentors Joshua Foer, is now working on a startup called Memrise which teaches language through memory techniques.

I am memorizing Barron's word list which contains around 3500 words. My experience is it is not realistically possible to use mnemonics when volume of memorization is as much as 3500 terms which you have to do in as short as three months.

I used a book "Remembering the Kanji" by James Heisig, which employs a special mnemonic technique, to learn to write 2000 Japanese kanji in three months, which was a leisurely pace (twenty-something a day). Many people did the same in a much shorter time, like 100 a day. It works beautifully. If you have problems learning those words, you are most probably either using the wrong technique, or using it incorrectly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembering_the_Kanji

And it works! I have been using this method since 2009 and am quite comfortable with Kanji. When I started, I did 20 characters per day and was done in a little over 3 months. Though the real acquisition was in the years that follow.

> mneumonic

If you want to research things, it's helpful to spell them correctly. This, for example, is spelled 'mnemonic'.

>If you want to research things, it's helpful to spell them correctly.

Here is a chance to point out how Google and omnipresent spell checkers have drastically reduced the need to remember how to spell words. Your phone will autocorrect you, your browser will spell check input fields, and Google will ask you "did you mean?" I used to be an ace speller who took great interest in knowing how to spell words, but I've noticed that's declined drastically over the years.

These techniques seem to be getting a lot of attention lately, but they've been written about extensively for a long time now. You don't hear much of these older books, but they're well worth looking at if you're interested in this topic:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Memory-Book-Classic-Improving/dp/0...

http://www.amazon.com/Use-Your-Perfect-Memory-Techniques/dp/...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Memory-Book-Remember-Anything/dp/1...

There are many others as well.

I like this book: Improve Your Memory Skills http://www.amazon.com/dp/0746001622

A longer interview with Joshua Foer on the same subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=jg3lUpYZ9g8

A generic speech about how our brains are spectacular in many ways. I honestly don't see any value in these things and I've really tried to. I guess they're just another bunch of motivational stuff that plague the world nowadays.

And what's the fuss about these TED meetings? Don't seem to get their value at all.

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