Hacker News Books

> Woolmer was inspired by Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, which suggests brain training, rather than naturally gifted people, account for most USA Memory Championship finalists.

This is an incredible book which changed my opinion on how a “photographic memory” works.

There is a pretty good book that covers some of this called Moonwalking with Einstein:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6346975-moonwalking-with-...

I picked it up because it was on a list of books that Bill Gates had read one summer:

http://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Books-I-Read-This...

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. Chapter about memory palace is especially amazing!

Which technique did you use? I made it to around 150 using the memory palace technique from the excellent book Moonwalking with Einstein.

Joshua Foer (author of Moonwalking with Einstein) has a great TED talk too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6PoUg7jXsA

Another good one is called “Moonwalking with Einstein.” Very interesting and entertaining, I highly recommend it.

The article did not do a thorough job pointing to the new book: http://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise-ebo...

Also, I would recommend Moonwalking with Einstein which has fair bit of information on how to learn.

Looking at my Kindle Keyboard, I have one book (Moonwalking with Einstein) that is ragged-right and another (On Intelligence) that is full justified. Perhaps it's the formatting of the e-book and not the device?

It's been on my list after watching this great lecture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVQJdIrDJ0

I plan to follow it with Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.

And a great book called Moonwalking with Einstein

+1 It's a shame that Moonwalking with Einstein didn't get to the top. Great book.

The book "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foyer has some really good insight about how to retain more of what you learn!

Isn't that premise of Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer? http://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Rememberi...

Either way - I do little tricks like that too. This is a very good suggestion.

In no particular order:

- So Good They Can't Ignore You
- Deep Work
- Hackers by Steven Levy (perhaps my favorite book)
- Learning How To Learn
- The Person and the Situation
- The Art of Money Getting
- Make It Stick
- The Algorithm Design Manual
- Moonwalking With Einstein
- Extreme Ownership

Memory Palace, as in used for memorization, is covered in Moonwalking with Einstein (a book). It's certainly an interesting way to memorize things, in this case competitions for memorizing a deck of cards.

"Moonwalking with Einstein" is a great book on memory and memory competitions, and actually featured an overview of people who have "photographic" memory, people who can memorize the longest sequence of numbers, and a person whose temporal memory is only 15 minutes.

If you find this interesting, I recommend the Moonwalking with Einstein

This is described in the book Moonwalking with Einstein. It's mentioned that one way to remember things would be to "put them" somewhere you are familiar, like where you run, for example.

FYI if you read the book Moonwalking with Einstein the author explains the methods of memorizing a deck of cards. The author learns the techniques himself to participate and win the US World Memory Championship. The author's coach in the book is Ed Cooke who is a co-founder of Memrise.

Marked to read, thanks for the recommendation! Moonwalking With Einstein is also a good read, albeit more for pleasure and insight into our brains than any practical applications.

Moonwalking with Einstein. Not particularly new but a pretty entertaining book on the Art of Memory. Not particularly useful (the book kind of says so itself) but insightful and methods of loci is still a marginally useful skill to have.

Interestingly (or perhaps not) the book that introduced me to all this was Moonwalking with Einstein by Josh Foer, who was apparently coached by Ed Cooke, one of the co-founders of Memrise.

I think what he means to say is to fix the root cause of bad memory, as against using to-do lists. I tend to agree. According to the book - Moonwalking with Einstein, anyone's memory can be fixed. So there's that :).

I like "Your Memory : How It Works and How to Improve It" by Higbee in addition to the Foer book. It is a little more pragmatic and thorough in description of the techniques discussed in "Moonwalking with Einstein."

I would recommend Joshua Foer "Moonwalking with Einstein" for those interested in memory. Spaced repition is effective to an extent, but I find the techniques explored in his book to be much more effective. The tl;dr is that you are much better off constructing "memory palaces" in your head. You pick a place you know extremely well (like your family home), and you imagine yourself navigating that space and "placing" reminders of the things you'd like to remember along the way.

It's like inventing a very surreal dream to help you avoid forgetting things. I use variants of it for things like people's names and ideas I'd like to explore all the time, it's super helpful.

A new book called "Moonwalking with Einstein", by Joshua Foer covers the Memory Palace technique and others.

Check out the review at the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-m...

There is a book called "Moonwalking with Einstein" that talks about memory techniques in a very readable and entertaining way.

This site looks to be based on the same techniques (Memory Palace AKA Method of Loci) that are described in the book.

After I read “Moonwalking With Einstein”, I pretty much think it’s a gimmick and still a lot of work. Spaced repetition is probably a better technique.

The main idea that seemed to work is the visual association. The visual of Moonwalking with Einstein, for example, was one of his mneumonics.

The book "moonwalking with Einstein" is about this very concept and how it's used in memory competitions

Moonwalking with Einstein is a good read. I found it worth the time I spent on it. But it's on an altogether different league.

Currently reading 2 books - Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer; The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor

Ah yes the method of loci[1], the book Moonwalking with Einstein explains this and other techniques very well

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

That is more remembering things and not for 'quick thinking' per se - OP's goal.
There is a very interesting book on the concept of 'Memory Palace' (on which 'artofmemory.com' is based on):
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
http://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Rememberi...

Very very cool! Interested? Read 'Moonwalking with Einstein'

I recall being surprised (the whole class) by a surprise test for some people who wanted to study us. We had 5 minutes to memorize 50 random words. I just read Moonwalking with Einstein so I learned how to use loci. The average that people could recall (N=25) was around 20 words. I was able to recall 49! 49! That's almost perfect! I was pretty fucking baffled. I still know most of them ...

A JAMAICAN person jumped off a RAMP on the TITANIC and then flew in to SPACE on the ISS where he saw a DOG which was playing the VIOLIN which then bit TESLA, GHANDI was playing CHESS and then the iss crashed down into MILAN which was covered in a huge OMELET, we flew over mount FUJI and ... etc

Bolded words are words that were on the list. It's pretty awesome for hardcore memorization!

I highly recommend "Moonwalking with Einstein" to anyone curious about what our memories can do and how we can make better use of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonwalking_with_Einstein

The author won the US Memory Championship after just a single year of learning and practicing mnemonic techniques.

I read "moonwalking with Einstein" and can relay what it said in the book about this.

You mentally walk through your memory palace and clean it out. You walk through every room and look at every nook and cranny and imagine them clean.

As far as I understand you don't do this every day, but every once in a while or before competitions.

Exactly! He's the author of Moonwalking with Einstein, the book Bill Gates raved about in the parent article.

This. I wanted to make this comment. I was quite interested in improving my both long and short term memory and I came across "Moonwalking with Einstein" book. While the methods such as "menomics" and "memory palace" presented in this book were quite interesting, I learned over a period of time that it doesn't help much.

There is quite a lot of information out there and we need to compress it in someway, intelligently so that we could retrieve it in when the need arises. The important part of the retrieval process, I believe, is getting all the relevant information along with the required ones and I honestly don't see how menomics and memory palace could help.

I'm not sure it's possible to not use a mnemonic device. Our brains record information by association, which, by definition, is a mnemonic device.

I highly recommend reading Moonwalking with Einstein. It's about a journalist who got interested in memory competitions and, with a lot of practice, ended up winning the US memory championship. Anyone can do it.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Rememberi...

- Baddeley, Alan, Michael W. Eysenck, and Michael C. Anderson. Memory. NY: Psychology Press, 2009.

- Cat, Jordi. "On Understanding: Maxwell on the Methods of Illustration and Scientific Metaphor" Studies In History and Philosophy of Science Part B32, no. 3 (2001): 395-441

- Derman, Emanuel. Models of Behaving Badly. New York, NY: Free Press, 2011

- Foer, J. Moonwalking with Einstein. NY: Penguin, 2011

- Lutzen, Jesper. Mechanistic Images in Geometric Form. NY: Oxford University Press, 2005

- Maguire, E.A., D.G. Gadian, LS. Johnsrude, C.D. Good, J. Ashburner, R.SJ. Frackowiak, and CD. Frith. “Navigatioanelated Structural Change in the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers.“ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97, no. 8 (2000): 4398-403

- Maguire, E.A., ER. Valentine, J.M. Wilding, and N. Kapur. “Routes to Remembering: The Brains Behind Superior Memory." Nature Neurosciencee, no. 1 (2003): 90-95

- Rocke, AJ. Image and Reality Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010

- Solomon, Ines. “Analogical Transfer and 'Functional Fixedness' in the Science Classroom." Journal of Educational Researd 87, no. 6 (1994): 371-77

We should all mimic sleeping dolphins, so we could always use our active heimsphere to approach 100% coding time

Also, to add some neuron info that the article didn't mention:

- place / grid cells would allow you to use your brain more, easily - see the book Moonwalking with Einstein a book recommended by a friend

- neural codes are convex- could we use this knowledge somehow?

- using your full brain is known as an epileptic seizure, iirc..

- tonic/phasic firing matters a lot as to the effect of neural firing, although I forget as to whether that's a dopamine-only trait..

Moonwalking with Einstein (the book by the article's author) is a really interesting read. I recommend anyone who liked the article to check it out.

There are some interesting ideas related to Joshua's 'deliberate practice' that can be applied to software engineering as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Rememberi...

Spaced repetition is great. Have you tried Anki (http://ankisrs.net/)? It's a flashcard app with spaced repetition. They have desktop and a mobile app, and the latter is especially useful for any downtime you have. In addition to just flashcards on their own, I'd try to learn the commands in the context of using them as well.

Have you read Moonwalking with Einstein? There are some good tips there.

Finally, you may want to understand yourself better to decide how you learn best, as each person is different:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles

“Moonwalking with Einstein”, a book by Joshua Foer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonwalking_with_Einstein), is all about memorization techniques and memorization competitions. It’s a great read. He found that while practicing with specific techniques allowed him to win competitions, he still tended to forget where he put his car keys.

I liked her point of repetition being the main problem. It makes sense as we strengthen the new synopsis that are made. Josh Foer author of moonwalking with Einstein proposed an interesting theory that, essentially fucked up imagery of any kind helps increase and strength synaptic connections.

Interesting watch (first 5mins gives good context)
http://books.google.com/books/about/Moonwalking_with_Einstei...

Here's a few of my favorites I read this year:

1. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman

2. Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman

3. Developing a Universal Religion by David Hockey

4. Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The full list: https://gitlab.com/rlease/Books

My list lines up with a lot of books that people have recommended here, so I'll try to add a few favorites that haven't been mentioned so far.

Fiction:

1. Ubik - I read a bunch of Philip K. Dick this year, but this was my favorite. It's delightfully mind bending and left me thinking about it long after the book was done.

2. All the Pretty Horses - Beautifully written. McCarthy has an uncanny ability to paint with words.

3. Cannery Row - Short, witty, and full of interesting characters.

Nonfiction:

1. The Idea Factory - A dive into how Bell Labs became such an innovation powerhouse and gives a rounded picture of the figureheads that brought it so much fame.

2. Moonwalking with Einstein - A fun read about a journalist who took researching a memory competition a bit too seriously.

3. Countdown to Zero Day - A fascinating look at the development and deployment of Stuxnet -- the virus built to set Iran's nuclear program back.

I had a similar issue using Mnemosyne. Then I read "Moonwalking with Einstein" and I'm pretty convinced that spaced repetition is a solution to an adjacent problem. More important is the vividness of the memory, and the use of spatial memory (memory palace technique), along with some other techniques, for engaging many parts of the brain. These make the memory stick much more clearly and for a longer time.

It's a great book but I understand there are others that are more focused specifically on techniques, with much less story.

I got started with the idea of mnemonics by reading Jonathan Foer's "Moonwalking with Einstein[1]", which is an exceptionally good read.

============* Potential Spoiler Alert* =====================
It isn't a 'how-to' book per se, as it mostly tells the story of how the author went from being a journalist who covered the World Memory Championship tournament and within a year of training, became the US Memory Champ.

Regardless, it's a really fun read, and Foer is a really good writer. It does have some 'how-to' moments in it, and the little I've learned has been 100% effective, but I needed something to deal with more complicated data structures -- I could easily memorize the periodic table now, in order, but I don't know how I would store associated data, like atomic weights, symbols, melting point, boiling point, etc. That's why I got the Higbee book.

Glad to hear an endorsement on it. The one deficiency I have with Moonwalking is that it doesn't go on to recommend a book or technique that would work. I debated over a few of the books mentioned in Moonwalking, and ultimately decided to go with the (not mentioned) Higbee book based on an external review.

I'm really curious on those who do have these kind of usable high memory capacity. I seem to be able to remember random facts in my head but for other, more important subjects (such as basic numbers about the company I'm working for, my emotions and feelings on a certain point in life, lessons and experiences that I've gone through in life) seem to pass me by and I feel like I just have these holes in my memory that I can't patch. I remember my friends sometimes ask me why I date my Instax pictures and I just realised that I cannot recall my memories easily without aids and/or concrete data (one of the reasons why it's hard for me to turn off my location history on Google). This is especially a hindrance in my personal/social life as I often forget significant life events for myself or others and come across as uncaring to others.

How to improve my memory in general, basically, is my question. I've read 'Moonwalking with Einstein' that describes techniques used in memory competitions (such as recalling thousands of digits of pi) but I don't feel that is applicable in real life. Maybe someone here could chime in on that.

The argument I find most compelling for learning the memory palace technique is that building a memory palace is a creative act (Yes, like Picasso). One must be creative to construct a memorable palace for something as mundane as a grocery list, and what's vivid works. (Joshua Foer argues just this, persuasively too, in his book "Moonwalking with Einstein").

(begin sort of random tangent)
I've tried using the memory palace technique to memorize poetry, and I found the clashing images somewhat disconcerting. On the one hand, there was the imagery of the poem, and on the other, there was the image I had created. Often times, I had to create completely new images, totally unrelated to the substance of the poem, in order to remember it. And well, somehow the images I created always involved a lot of...boob.

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/0...

The book touches on this. Basically, the human brain is biased towards novelty. It's much more likely to remember something if it's unique or interesting or different -- if it stands out.

The book's title, Moonwalking with Einstein, is one such example. Gordon Ramsey is probably another: there are lots of chefs out there, but if you see a chef screaming at people in his kitchen, it's probably going to stick with you, consciously or otherwise.

Forget about the spammy title, this is an amazing book on copy writting:

Cashvertising:
http://amzn.to/nrwKnf (all links have my affiliate link. On my way to richness baby! ;)

I'm currently reading this one, so far so good:

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
http://amzn.to/nGEnkv

This is a small list of books I want to read:

The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us
http://amzn.to/oiEIDs

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
http://amzn.to/qTNpgB

Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup
http://amzn.to/njSDPh

The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement
http://amzn.to/okuaFh

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal
http://amzn.to/rptuZ9

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
http://amzn.to/oaIDgu

So found out an interesting fact the other day. I was reading the book Moonwalking with Einstein and when reviewing ancient memory practices I found out something that I was never told before.

It turns out that the idea of separating words didn't appear until about the 9th century in Europe, which mean you had to read out loud in order to understand what text was saying. In fact for a long time being able to read silently was considered an almost magical ability. I find it fascinating how many things we just take for granted that really are big breakthroughs.

FWIW, photographic memory is a total myth. Not one person has been able to demonstrate a photographic memory under controlled conditions. Human memory just doesn't work that way. This is the case even for people who truly can, e.g., endlessly recite trivia (including details of their physical environment) from any random day of their life. The book Moonwalking with Einstein provides a great overview of the science, among many other aspects of memory.

If there's anything unique about this individual, it's how he feels compelled to study and learn language. With that sort of deep and abiding interest, memorization likely comes relatively easily, almost as a consequence.

Mostly all about life, not technology, but all the books below have science behind them and many references and studies. I have read every one of these books, some multiple times. These are the books I would make required reading if I gave a class on life, they cover sleep, nutrition, exercise, brain health (depression/happiness), memorization and learning.

* Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

* Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise

* Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss (evidence based, ~1,000 references)

* The Promise of Sleep: A Pioneer in Sleep Medicine Explores the Vital Connection Between Health, Happiness, and a Good Night's Sleep (sleep debt)

* Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life

* Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

* Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

> How do you add the numbers on landmarks? Do you just have a road sign with 42 miles to x, or a building with 8 windows?

It could be anything, what you said would work beautifully if it has occurred spontaneously to you. The key thing is it has to be very very natural to you but may not make any sense at all to others.

Example, one of the building I have assigned the number 78 as it is an old building and my father's age is around that.

> do all the landmarks need to be unique

Again it is a very personal decision. For me currently it is one pair of number per landmark as I did not want to 'overload' my system.
But if I think about it now, maybe after sometime when I'm comfortable with my current system I can assign another number to the same landmark... But I'm not going to risk it now :-).

If you really want to try it out, start with one thing now and see how it goes before doing for others.

Btw, I discovered this when reading 'Moonwalking with Einstein' (referenced by another commentator here). This book was in reading list of Bill Gates couple of years back.

To illustrate my earlier point, the title of the book does not make any sense at all, but that series of words is used by somebody in the book to remember certain things.

Joshua Foer goes into this in 'Moonwalking with Einstein', approaching from the view of a would-be mnemonist and how scrolls were far less efficient than books. OA touches on headings, indexes and tables of content, but Foer goes into more detail and discusses how these innovations made books a far more powerful way to store, index and retrieve knowledge. It's not exactly a deep dive but it might provide some roads into the subject.

I really doubt you'll retain as much as dedicated reading if you are listening to a podcast and playing a game. Unless it's a game where you don't need to think/read at all.

Regarding walking your dog: that's true. Walking around is a good way to retain information. That's explained on Moonwalking With Einstein

Blindfold chess is certainly effective for improving your spacial memory, but why leave it at that? I highly recommend anyone and everyone learn the memory palace technique (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci), which takes advantage of the fact that our spacial memory is vastly superior to our memory for facts, allowing anyone to develop the functional equivalent of a photographic memory. In Moonwalking with Einstein (a really fun and fast autobiographical tutorial on memory), the author Joshua Foer explains how to encode facts into images and then arrange them along spacial layouts to maximize the brain's potential. In convincing my mother to read the book, I had her memorize a 10-item shopping list in about five minutes when she was incredibly tired (which is when her memory and general thinking ability are at their absolute worst), and she still remembers all ten items, in order, to this day.

You really have no choice but to be somewhat autodidactic if you develop on the web, but I like to make that point that Tiger Woods has a coach. Michael Jordan had a coach. Coaching is important, because learning happens best with constant feedback.

Just read Moonwalking With Einstein, which touches on this.

Seems like this guy Dr. Ericsson in Florida is the go-to expert on mastery in general.

As working programmers I do think it's easily in our interest to spend time learning how to acquire new skills as well as we can.

Moonwalking With Einstein: http://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Rememberi...

Dr. Ericsson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._Anders_Ericsson

Having read Moonwalking with Einstein (which is fascinating and worth the read), I think of these skills as similar to studying chess - effective for the discipline but probably not generally helpful.

Memory experts sold their discipline as if it would radically transform an average person’s daily life, which has not been my experience.

I would recommend Kevin Horsley's Unlimited Memory[0] over Foer's Moonwalking with Einstein.

Foer is a lot of hype and unfocused, whereas Horsley almost immediately gets down to brass tacks after a brief introduction meant to energize you, and provides a great general overview that leaves you with the knowledge of how to continually improve beyond what the book provides.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Unlimited-Memory-Advanced-Strategies-...

I also found this passage about mammographers from "Moonwalking with Einstein" interesting:

For most mammographers, practicing medicine is not deliberate practice, according to Ericsson. It’s more like putting into a tin cup than working with a coach. That’s because mammographers usually only find out if they missed a tumor months or years later, if at all, at which point they’ve probably forgotten the details of the case and can no longer learn from their successes and mistakes.

One field of medicine in which this is definitively not the case is surgery. Unlike mammographers, surgeons tend to get better with time. What makes surgeons different from mammographers, according to Ericsson, is that the outcome of most surgeries is usually immediately apparent—the patient either gets better or doesn’t—which means that surgeons are constantly receiving feedback on their performance.

Just read your post - very detailed and informative, thanks so much for sharing.

I highly recommend "Moonwalking With Einstein" by Joshua Foer about his experiences training alongside memory championship competitors. Also, working memory tends to be domain-specific and there's little transfer as you mention, see K. Anders Ericsson: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.ht...

Really enjoyed your post though, shooting you an email now...

Yes, see memory techniques like the method of loci, peg lists, mnemonic lists, etc. The book Moonwalking with Einstein covers this well.

A good book that also touches on this subject is: "moonwalking with einstein the art and science of remembering everything". It also covers the subject of priming and why its important.

People used to memorize entire books by studying them for years. In a time before printing presses were a thing it was considered normal to spent long long hours learning the contents of a book by heart.

"Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer is an interesting book on the subject of memory athletes. The author is a journalist who sets out to write the book and in parallel practices alongside his research subjects. In the end, he winds up winning the USA Memory Championship and setting a US record. Really drives home the point that it's all about the techniques and the time one is willing to put into them.

Also would recommend books by Harry Lorayne (The Memory Book is the most well known). I've not yet read Moonwalking with Einstein to see how it compares, but it likely has the same techniques (loci/memory palace, different mnemonics, peg lists, etc).

https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Book-Classic-Improving-School/...

Personally, though, beyond using mnemonics for numbers, I never did master the techniques. I think it's a lot easier if you start at around age 10. By the time you're in your 20's you have a lot of habits around memorizing that you have to unlearn.

It's funny that he dismisses the more indirect cognitive gains associated with reading as lacking "rigorous experimental evidence" when the value of rote memorization is often just as uncertain. He should just as soon dismiss the value of mothers if you can't vividly remember most of what they say. He needs to read "Moonwalking With Einstein".

The real bottleneck is that no matter how rigorously you cram stuff into long term memory, you can keep precious few things - some experts think 2 - 4 is a realistic range - in short terms memory. Most of what's on your mind in any given moment is determined by your environment and activity, and we have extremely limited ability to randomly access bits of information at will (both our own memory and whatever we've gleaned from books and teachers).

So I'm sorry, but those connections that we form while learning and experiencing are about all we've got. The upshot is that reading and structured learning seem to be extremely efficient ways of building these connections/schema.

So many articles and books cite Frances Yates' "The Art of Memory", but it seems almost nobody has actually read it judging by which parts are typically cited. After years of nagging curiosity (especially after reading "Moonwalking with Einstein") I eventually dove in and found it fascinating. The book has little concern for mnemonics, per se. Instead it traces the evolution of the Method of Loci from a humdrum technique taught to every student in Plato's time to an obscure technique only monastics practiced (almost unknowingly) in the Middle Ages to an esoteric aspect of Renaissance paintings that had nothing to do with mnemonics.

Of course, much of it is based on thin evidence given that after Ancient Greece very few people ever wrote about the method itself--IIRC, by the time of Cicero who obliquely referenced it, it was probably beginning to wane as a purely practical method of instruction, and by the time of Augustine it's roots and original function had likely already been forgotten. But she makes a very cold, scholarly (at least scholarly to someone lacking a Ph.D in ancient literature or art) and utterly persuasive argument.

In particular, it partly explains practices like the Stations of the Cross, which are central to the architecture of Christian cathedrals. And it helps to explain the evolution of the use of sophisticated and, over the centuries, increasingly esoteric symbolism in European art--far beyond what is typical in other cultures. Perhaps most importantly, though, it really helps to frame much of Plato's philosophy: the usefulness of the Method of Loci was (arguably) to Plato a reflection of the superiority of ideas over physical manifestations; when you're using the Method of Loci, and your memory in general, you're [more closely] interacting with real reality. IOW, the Method of Loci was like Machine Learning today: a practical yet seemingly magical technique that some eager scholars believed hinted at deeper truths about the mind and human experience.

To anybody who liked "Moonwalking with Einstein": if you found the historical bits interesting, and are up to less entertaining reading, though still fascinating journey, I highly recommend "The Art of Memory".

One of the most influential books I've ever read was Foer's 'Moonwalking with Einstein' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonwalking_with_Einstein

Memory development is one of the best investments into yourself. A bunch of other things people strive for (foreign language learning, being great public speaking) is corollary of having a good memory.

Think remembering birthdays is difficult? Try memorizing two decks of cards in five minutes or less. That is what Joshua Foer did to win the 2006 U.S. Memory Championship...

“Moonwalking With Einstein” does just that: It takes the reader on Foer’s journey from memory novice to national champion.

http://www.salon.com/2011/03/06/foer_moonwalking_with_einste...

You should look into Anki and "Spaced Repetition."

The gist is that you submit a bunch of facts you want to remember to a computer program, and that program applies an algorithm to figure out when you are likely to be about to forget something. The program quizzes you just as you were about to forget (but before you do), and the act of responding to that quiz renews and strengthens the memory.

Powerful. I've been using it for myself and my 9 year old daughter, and it has been very effective. Many use it to build foreign language vocabulary, or memory of Chinese pictographs.

(Note: This is not the subject of the "Moonwalk with Einstein" book -- I mention it as an additional tool for helping with the memory goals you stated).

Some Links:

Anki: http://ankisrs.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition

Article on Piotr Wozniak and Spaced Repetition: http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...

Memorizing is a learnable skill, like anything else. There are lots of tricks you can use that eventually become second nature. A good starting point might be the book "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer. If you want to remember names easily check out Harry Lorayne. There's a YouTube video titled "Harry Lorayne memorizes audience's names" where he demonstrates his abilities. I started using his method recently and found it works well. But as with anything else you have to explore and figure out which methods work best for you. Good luck.

Sometime last year, I read "Moonwalking with Einstein" which, despite not having been as educational as I would have liked (there are other books for that though,) was a great read, and did have some instruction in it.

One of the lessons in the book is was to memorize the memory champion's grocery list which contained some items I'd never remember on my own (pickled garlic, for example, I've never had or heard of).

My daughter and I walked through the list, doing as instructed in the text, and instructing my daughter to do the same. I never performed an image replacement (e.g., the ace of spades actually equals something else,) but did try to abstract the items. For example, for pickled garlic, I imagined a car-sized jar of pickles, but the pickles were garlic shaped. Instead of cottage cheese, I imagined (as instructed) Charisma Carpenter bathing in a large cottage cheese tub.

To this day, both I and my daughter can remember the list perfectly, by walking through the house and looking how we should.

I haven't gone much farther with it to the degree that I would have had to encode a lion into an ace of spades, but just exaggerating the image itself into a more memorable form works for me. I also have the same lack of visual imagination, but following the instructions in the book exactly as offered worked perfectly.

One of the catches though, is that numerous memory champions will tell you that becoming really good at mnemonic memory is really a game of who can be more imaginative.

Some routines (like memorizing a deck of cards) can become rote, as you already have the cyphers in your head, you just have to encode them. The more advanced mnemonists have partial encoding techniques such that one mnemonic image can encode a 3 or 4 card sequence. That doesn't take imagination, just discipline... but encoding things, on the fly, that you haven't predetermined the pattern to, is a game of imagination.

That said, you might suck at it, as I sort of expect to suck at it myself. Regardless, there are other, less imaginative techniques that may work well for you, and allow you to permanently remember things you would wish to.

I also recommend Moonwalking with Einstein.

I use video game locations as memory palaces. I use Pokemon to represent numbers. It takes me 10 minutes to memorize a deck. It took me two 20 minute training sessions to learn how.

I will eventually use it to learn a new language.

I read half of "Moonwalking with Einstein", worked out some exercises, and started practicing. By the next day, I could remember the order of the deck of cards!

I can't believe I went my whole school career without knowing such a valuable technique.

Can you expand on what you mean by cross-improvement?

The differences are huge. One of the first things I did was make a memory papace for my current month and set up my schedule.

Also remembering names is laughably trivial for me now.

It feels like gaining a super power in the form of memory and litteraly everyone thinks you're a genius (even though they could just as easily learn the skill)

If anyone is interested in a book exploring these concepts, Moonwalking with Einstein was written by a journalist originally interested in doing a piece about the world memory championships who wound up becoming the first American to win the world memory championships. The book traces the history of method of loci and the competitions, the potential practical utility (or lack thereof) in history and today, and the interesting personal story of how the author went from wondering "huh, could I memorize 20 playing cards in order?" to memorizing multiple decks at an international competition.

Has anybody with Aphantasia read 'Moonwalking with Einstein' by Joshua Foer or 'The Memory Book' by Harry Lorayne? I recently started working on improving my memory using mnemonic techniques described in these books. And, let me tell you, they ALL rely on visualization. It's just so shocking to me that some people just won't be able to do this!

Has somebody with aphantasia tried any mnemonic techniques to remember things? Do you have problems recalling events long after they occur (like events from your childhood)? Do you ever daydream?

I suspect your concept of memory is incorrect. Outside of rare people with deep automatic synaesthesia or other sever mental differences, I don't think there's much variation in different peoples' inherent "ability to remember". People aren't generally better or worse at remembering things by some innate property of their brain. It is a skill, and one can practice and improve at it, and there are lots of very powerful memory techniques, especially including specific problems like "memorizing digits".

I strongly recommend the book "Moonwalking with Einstein" which was very enlightening for me.

There is a very interesting book on this topic - memory competitions - the book is about how ordinary people using an ancient Roman technique (Memory palace) becomes extraordinary memorizers. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything https://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Remember...

I could pickup the technique to help me in my day to day life. For very little investment in efforts it managed to drastically improve my life.

Context: I consider myself quite challenged when it comes to memorizing numbers.

The technique described in the book (and in this article) allowed me to remember details of a financial instrument which involves 32 numbers without any pattern. Whenever I have to use this instrument I have to input random 6 numbers out of those 32. Before I discovered this technique I had to pull out the hardcopy of the instrument every time for reference (it was painful - sometime it will be not in my possession, or it would be buried inside some cabinet etc.)

The technique that I use/adapted essentially is, I use mental map of a roadway which I’m intimately familiar with to place the 32 numbers on the various 32 landmark along the way (landmarks can be anything - a funny looking rock next to the road will also do. The key is one should be able to visualize it very clearly). So, whenever I need to retrieve numbers I mentally ’drive’ on the road and start checking out the landmarks. Example: I need to retrieve number corresponding to landmarks 5,9,15,20.. I start ‘driving’ reach landmark no. 5 and able to remember immediately this landmark is associated with number 29, then I move on and reach to next landmark, when I ‘reach’ that one I’m able to recollect that this landmark has number 89 associated with it, and so on…

Somewhere I read that it works so well because as a human species we have ability to remember geo spatial things much better than abstract things like numbers. I would guess that it has to do with our hunter-gatherer days when we were primarily dealing with spatial concepts; brain is hard wired to store those information much better than things like numbers.

"What I find more interesting than repressing memory is enhancing it, Anyone know of any product development based on this, or if it's viable?"

I'm certainly no expert in the field of neuroscience, but in terms of practical and available memory improvement, I've found that practicing mnemonic techniques is very helpful.

If you're unfamiliar with this area of study, I'm basically referring to a set of techniques that aid in memory retention, mostly through creative visualization and pattern creation.

If you can get past the wild claims put forth by guys like Tony Buzan, you'll find a wealth of useful information on how we can learn to remember and recall more information.

I've found the books of Dominic O'Brien to be good resources. There is another book called "Moonwalking With Einstein" that shows how applied study in this area can lead to real results.

If I remember right, the idea is that writing on paper has several kinesthetic properties: the feel of the pen and the paper, the smell, the way the notebook looks on the table, with the current location lighting, etc etc. There’s also the relatively slower, more physical act of actually writing by hand.

Brains normally form memories with all that data wrapped in. Typing on a screen it’s all kind of the same, compared to how different each physical writing experience feels. Those differences give your brain more “texture” to work with in forming a distinct memory and giving you hooks to recall it later.

If you’re interested in this stuff, there’s a very entertaining book about memory called “Moonwalking with Einstein,” which I highly recommend :)

See the book on memory: Moonwalking with Einstein

Good article. I've been studying Dominic O'Brien's techniques for a while now, he's the world memory champ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_O%27Brien

It takes some time to get the system down, but it's really handy for memorizing numbers, a pack of cards, or any other structured information. Basically, I've got a journey with 52 stages memorized along with a person and an associated action for each two-digit number from 00 to 99. When I was practicing regularly before I was able to memorize a pack of cards in 3 minutes. It may seem weird practicing this, but it turns out to be a pretty good gauge of your concentration and mental focus, just like how being able to run a few miles is a good measure of your physical fitness.

Highly recommend Joshua Foer's book, "Moonwalking with Einstein", to learn more.

Joshua Foer, author of "Moonwalking with Einstein", actually met Kim Peek and makes a lot of interesting observations about him. Regarding these competitions, what's incredibly interesting is that all the memory champs have always been trained... people with naturally strong memories have never been able to compete with them. The same holds true for the world mental calculation championships too.

Just as a counterpoint, in the book "Moonwalking with Einstein", the author talks quite a bit about the fact that many of these methods survived for a long long time, and people in the past considered memory an incredibly important proof of someone being educated.

The methods seem to have been "lost" mostly when better options for external memory (e.g. writing and printing) became more universal. (iirc - i'm probably messing this up somewhat).

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

I feel like this is one of the weaknesses of gonzo-ish journalism where the author spends some time partaking in some sort of lifestyle change.

Almost invariably, they spend too little time often using sub-par pursuits/techniques and end up not accomplishing anything or justifying their previous biases that allow for maintaining the status quo.

This is understandable given the constraints of deadlines and funding and the difficulty in finding the right things to do in the right order. It's unfortunate because it frequently leaves people with the impression that nothing works.

(Exceptions include books like Born to Run, Moonwalking with Einstein, etc.)

After reading Moonwalking with Einstein I started to exercise my memory skills and now I just use my brain.

Any thoughts on that Moonwalking With Einstein book? I'd love to improve information retention in my day to day life, especially in software. I'm not so much interested in remembering the to-do list as retaining broader concepts for long periods of time. I'm lucky enough to get to learn a ton of things every day, but my long term retention of them is terrible unless I spend considerable time applying these ideas in practice, which is often not practically possible. This leads to a lot of wasted time, it's as if I never even read the darn thing.

Often, and this is the sad part, I won't even bother reading something because I know I'll forget it almost immediately, unless I have a block of time available to dedicate to trying it out in practice.

For example, I'm really fond of the underpinnings of programming language design and compilers, and it's thousands over thousands of pages of information (most of it very interesting and useful to me), but I fail to retain the vast majority of the great info and need to continuously go back to the texts whenever I'm in doubt about something. There were a couple of valuable techniques recommended in Pragmatic Bookshelf's Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, such as "now pretend you have to teach this concept to your former self who knows nothing about this", which supposedly helps with retention and internalization into the brain's "web of known facts".

Is there anything like that in the book? Would it be of any help?

Read also: Moonwalking with Einstein

Moonwalking with Einstein is a fun book, but remember to be wary of books about the brain that are not written by neuroscience experts. From the NYT book review:

'(Irregular images aside, Foer’s missteps are few. Discussing the neurological underpinnings of memory, he repeats some commonly held myths about it, for instance, that obscure facts — “where I celebrated my seventh birthday” — are “lurking somewhere in my brain, waiting for the right cue to pop back into consciousness.” In fact, not only are many such memories lost for good, even the memories we do have are often quasi-fictionalized reconstructions.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-m...

> However, for recall, I find there’s something about the physicality of a paper notebook that gives the facts a place to live.

I think that's correct. On 'Moonwalking with Einstein', the author mentions that placing a memory somewhere will help. Like, listening to podcasts while you walk around, and stuff like that. Maybe because you use different physical notebooks, your brain remembers better

Like, I used to listen to podcasts while driving to my GFs town, or driving home. I remember way more what I listened while driving, than while in my bed. In fact, for a few things, I remember where I was when X thing was being discussed.

Moonwalking with Einstein is an interesting book related to this topic. It’s about Joshua Foer’s journey becoming an American memory champion a few years back. Some parts delve lightly into remembering people’s names, among other memory techniques. Was one of Bill Gates suggested reading when it come out too. If you’re interested in this sort of stuff, I suggest picking it up.

I have been programming for the last 15 years and I still sometimes look things up, even in languages I use daily. I would not really change this, since if I use it often I will remember it - - and if not, it's just one search away. I think memorizing random facts is a really bad way to become a better programmer - - much better ways is to solve problems and read expert code (via ex. GitHub).

Regarding the memorization technique I am unsure if this is the most effective way of remembering things. The book "Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything" presents a lot of tricks on how to memorize things that could be more effective than the method described in this article.

"Another Day of Life" by Riszard Kapuscinski and "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer.

Well, I'm still a work in progress! I'm working on a PhD and passed my oral exams because of these books. I have a weekly schedule that balances reading/doing math, writing and coding and producing toward the dissertation. These books have helped me 'discover' the process for becoming an expert. Cribbed from my notes:

One very important idea is the idea of intrinsic motivation: the best motivation is perhaps a really compelling and or interesting problem. Also, time is needed to learn and practice, and this practice comes at the cost of time spent elsewhere (eg producing). So there is a natural division of time into learning (incl. practicing) and producing. A lot of the Talent book is the sort of nuts and bolts of deliberate practice.

From the Habit book: Have a plan for what to do when the pain or other emotional event threatens to derail your action. Such as when this happens, I will do __. Having a plan helps people to get through the event, encouraging will power, and continue on until the will power action becomes a habit (by being incorporated into long term memory I suppose). (Incidentally, this is why having a daily plan help one to be more productive. When you get tired and easily derailed, and are low in will power, you can fall back onto your plan).

1) Cue, 2) Routine, 3) Reward. That is the habit loop.

A book called Moonwalking with Einstein, as well as a number of Cal Newport's books have also been helpful with these goals.

Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer.

> Socrates felt the same way about books actually a lot of big thinkers in that era felt that writing and reading would lead to the degradation of the human memory.

They probably did lead to degradation of human memory--not in the underlying capabilities, of course, but in how well most people are able to use them.

There is some interesting discussion of this in Joshua Foer's book "Moonwalking with Einstein" [1]. Before books were widespread learning ways to use memory quickly and efficiently was important to scholars and others who worked with large amounts of information. Afterwards, it was good enough to just go with your raw, untrained memory, and the old memory techniques were almost forgotten.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Remember...

For those who wish to know more about the history and applications of the "method of loci", beyond portrayals of it in a fictional series - I highly recommend 'Moonwalking with Einstein' by Joshua Foer. It's an account of a journalist who spends a year learning the methods above and subsequently wins the US memory championship.

It's interesting, in a world in which instant access to a significant subset of knowledge is taken for granted, that these memory techniques are undergoing a resurgence.

I encourage anyone to spend 15-30 minutes a day learning these techniques and applying them to small tasks such as memorising a shopping list, phone numbers and useful bits of info. one tends to forget.
http://mt.artofmemory.com is a good starting point also.

Two highlights from an earlier blog post (http://bellm.org/blog/2012/11/24/the-best-books-i-read-in-20...):

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, Mike Brown

A funny and very humanizing picture of a scientist at work: A great account of the quest to discover planets beyond Pluto, and of the upheaval that followed.

Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer

Can a normal person become a memory champion? Joshua Foer covers a lot of ground in this well-written book, including extensive historical background as well as considerations of neuroscience, deliberate practice and expertise, savantism, and immersive journalism.

It isn't exposure to writing in itself that reduces remembering, but the difference in how literate people tend to behave, by relying more on "external storage" than their own memories. I first became aware of this possibility when I took a class in translating Homeric epic poetry, much of which has been shaped by its origin as an oral tradition. (For instance, it has been speculated that the many repetitive phrases the Homeric epics are aids to memory -- 'the swift-footed Achilles,' etc.)

It's well established that remembering is to some extent a skill. You can find sources with a cursory search. If you're interested in a longer treatment of the subject, "Moonwalking with Einstein" by a journalist named Josh Foer, who managed to win the largest memory competition in the US using mnemonics, is well worth the read.

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.

This is also a similar thesis to what Joshua Foer writes about in Moonwalking with Einstein. One key takeaway is that whenever you're in a new environment, or doing something new, take time to appreciate your present surroundings, not worrying about the past or future. This way you can help extend the sense of time as well.

I know a guy who competes and does well in memory sports. I'd say he's above average intelligence for sure, maybe in the top 5%, but not some sort of extreme freak of nature. He's spent thousands of hours drilling memory techniques though. "Moonwalking with Einstein" is a good book about memory sports and has an intro to some of the basic techniques. From what I've seen, it's really about deepening a set of specialized ruts in the road in the brain around remembering numbers and other things that memory sports athletes compete on. It's essentially building custom designed specialized neural networks in the brain through thousands of hours of drilling.

One thing I told my nephew is that he can spend thousands of hours playing video games and then have his head full of video game trivia or he can spend thousands of hours learning to program or learning memory sports techniques and have almost as much fun, but instead wind up with something that he can actually use later in his life that doesn't involve working for a video game company.

The book "Moonwalking with Einstein" was my first introduction to memorization techniques. I had no idea these techniques existed, much less there were competitions for them. I drove my wife crazy trying to impress her with memorizing pi to 100 digits and memorizing a deck of cards. She was not impressed...I moved on to the next hobby.

Cool article, this reminds me of how the memory championships mentioned in Joshua Foer's book "Moonwalking With Einstein" (http://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Rememberi...) all workout and watch their personal fitness in order to optimize their mental performance. Gary Kasparov used to also exercise a lot too prior to chess competitions.

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.

for 'savant like memory', see the book ' Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything'
HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4528807

and on the memory palace: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2395739

and on spaced repetitions
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24857437
and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13151790