Moonwalking with Einstein is a very thought provoking book. It's the
story of the author Joshua Foer, a journalist, and his journey from
reporting on the US National Championship to winning the event the
following year. The book chronicles how he set out to find an answer to
the question, "How can I improve my memory?"
Personally,
I was intrigued by the book and found the style of writing much to my
liking. There is a lot of research and information that is presented and
explained via story. It reminds me a lot about how JD Roth from
GetRichSlowly was able to successfully blog about potentially dry topics
in personal finance: he tells a story.
This book is
not a book on technique and specific practice regimens, but a treatise
on how our memories work, how memory usage has changed throughout time,
and the exploration of how practice can indeed improve memory skills.
Some of the skills employed in memorizing decks of playing cards, scores
of random numbers, or other random trivia, in less than a minute
involve the image association and storing those images in a 'memory
palace'. While impressive, I wondered whether practicing this skill was
ultimately useful. Surprisingly, even the author, shortly after winning
the US National Championship, placing 13th overall in the World
Championships, Joshua Foer conceded that in today's world of
externalized memory storage, it's just easier to store that phone number
in your cell phone than your brain.
US Hardcover, pg75
What follows are just my notes that I took while reading that I wanted to save for myself.
Without
time, there would be no need for a memory. But without a memory, would
there be such a thing as time? The more we provide our lives with
chronological landmarks, the longer our lives will seem. Our perception
of time is subjective. Sometimes time flies, other times the opposite is
true. "Our lives are structured by our memories of events. Event X
happened just before the big Paris vacation. I was doing Y in the first
summer after I learned to drive." The denser the web of accumulated life
experiences, the denser the experience of time. "Monotony collapses
time; novelty unfolds it." "Life seems to speed up as we get older
because life gets less memorable as we get older. Youth have a
continuous stream of new experiences, but each passing year converts
some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at
all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out...
US Hardcover, pg 138
Technological
gadgets have made it unnecessary to remember phone numbers, friends
birthdays, and even directions. They've changed the world, but they've
also changed how we think and how we use our brains. Writing, for
Socrates, was nothing more than a cue for memory.
And
yet, for me, I've always held to the idea that I read in one of Tom
Clancy's novels - if you didn't write it down, it never happened. For
me, writing is the only reliable anchor that I can attach to my memories
so they don't get lost in all that grey matter.
US Hardcover, pg 145
The
history of books and the invention of alphabetical indexes, page
numbers, and table of contents as a means to navigating the immense
information stored therein. "As books became easier and easier to
consult, the imperative to hold their contents in memory became less and
less relevant, and the very notion of what it meant to be erudite began
to evolve from possessing information internally to knowing where to
find information in the labyrinthine world of external memory."
US Hardcover, pg169
Joshua
Foer also became a subject of research to a Florida professor, Anders
Ericsson. When Joshua hit a plateau on his speed times for memorizing a
deck of cards, Ericsson helped him learn about skill acquisition. Phase
one is the "cognitive stage", you're intellectualizing the task and
discovering new strategies to accomplish it more proficiently. During
the second "associative stage," you're concentrating less, making fewer
major errors, and generally becoming more efficient. Finally you reach
what Fitts called the "autonomous stage," when you figure that you've
gotten as good as you need.." You're OK with your current skill and stop
improving and were once thought the upper bounds of ability. The only
way to break free is to engage in a very directed, highly focused
routine, which Ericsson, who has studied the best in several fields, has
labeled "deliberate practice." "They develop strategies for consciously
keeping out of the autonomous stage while they practice by doing three
things: focusing on their technique, staying goal-oriented, and getting
constant and immediate feedback on their performance. In other words,
they force themselves to stay in the "cognitive phase." "When you want
to get good at something, how you spend your time practicing is far more
important that the amount of time you spend." "Indeed, the single best
predictor of an individual's chess skill is not the amount of chess he's
played against opponents, but rather the amount of time he's spent
sitting alone working through old games." "You have to analyze what
you're doing."
US Hardcover, pg 202
In these
pages, Tony Buzan's Mind Map was explained, and it reminded me of when I
was writing my research paper in my college English class. My professor
explained to me that after reading my paper she felt like the opening
scene in the Simpson's show when the cash register trys to scan Maggie
at the checkout with the groceries, but the computer is confused and
doesn't know what to do. Her advice to me was that I needed to go home
and read each paragraph and color code it to it's theme and then cut up
my paper and rearrange it so that it flowed better and made better
sense. I took her advice - and it worked! This was essentially the
groundwork of a mind map. "It's kind of an outline exploded radially
across the page in a rainbow of colors, a web of associations..." Tony
Buzan also said, "The art and science of memory is about developing the
capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity
is the ability to form similar connections between disparate images and
to create something new and hurl it into the future so it becomes a
poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity
is, in a sense, future memory."
US Hardcover, pg 266
He
had improved his ability to remember digits, playing cards, and yet
could still forget where he parked his car. His memory was the same. He
had new skills, but ultimately he "validated the old saw that practice
makes perfect. But only if it's the right kind of concentrated,
self-conscious, deliberate practice." "Remembering can only happen if
you decide to take notice." "Our memories make us who we are. They are
the seat of our values and source of our character... That's what Ed had
been trying to impart to me from the beginning: that memory training is
not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing
something profoundly and essentially human."
I was surprised by the number of visitors we received in the following weeks after our open house. Lots of people came by dropping off resumes as expected, but what surprised us all was a load of gift baskets delivered. Each employee received a basket of goodies put together by the local businesses. The bank provided a branded mug. The local hardware store provided a blank key. A baby store provided a unique coupon. Etc.
We were new in town, and our neighboring businesses brought a warm welcome to us and intimately shared with us how they might share their services with us: future customers.
Once you find a proven strategy for finding customers, it's best to focus on that one method. However, it's important not to miss the one time unique events as well. In this case, I believe it was the power of the connections, the chamber of commerce, which could be a network of your own kind in other circles, that brought about the successful neighborhood welcome campaign.
