Author: Joshua Foer
Joshua Foer
Reading time: 23 minutes
Synopsis
In this book, Joshua Foer shares his journey to becoming a memory champion. Alles im Kopf behalten explains how our brain remembers things. It also tells us why our memory is worse than our ancestors’. The book shows how we can use simple techniques to improve our memory. This can help us achieve great memory skills.
What you will learn: How to master the art of remembering.
Who was that person who offered you an internship? What is your best friend’s phone number? What did you eat for lunch yesterday? Does forgetting things annoy you sometimes?
Then read these Blinks. You will never forget a name, a phone number, or other facts again. You will remember even complex things and become a memory master. These Blinks will show you the techniques to do this.
Also, find out:
- what computers and smartphones have to do with the worries of great philosophers like Socrates,
- why the art of remembering is slowly being forgotten, even though it was very important in the past, and
- why it is important to teach this skill to our children.
Blink 1 – It’s all about practice: You can train a good memory.
Everyone admires people with amazing memories. Who wouldn’t want to be a memory artist? But we can all train our memory abilities. We can make our memory much better. Excellent memory skills mostly come from using the right technique.
Psychologists K. Anders Ericsson and Bill Chase proved this with an experiment. A regular student practiced remembering number sequences. At first, he could only remember up to seven numbers in his “phonological loop.” This is a type of short-term memory in the human brain. After 250 hours of practice, he had increased his memory ability tenfold.
Chess grandmasters are also known for their incredible memory skills. Is it genius or practice that creates these great achievements? Russian scientists asked this question in the 1920s. They studied the general thinking skills of these grandmasters. The surprising result: Despite their excellent chess playing, the players only got average scores in the experiment’s tests.
A Dutch psychologist found out why the chess players were so successful in the 1940s. He discovered that experienced players have a “chess memory.” This memory strongly affects how they see the chessboard. Grandmasters do not see a board with 64 squares. They also do not see the positions of single pieces. Instead, they see certain patterns that decide who wins or loses. As they play more, they get better at seeing these patterns. They can remember them very quickly. However, this does not much affect their general memory skills.
So, we need to train our memory for each area separately. Our memory performance is not fixed. As we gain more knowledge in one area, our memory for that area also improves.
Blink 2 – Technique is key: We can remember more if we store information correctly.
Are you good at remembering numbers? Try to repeat this number sequence after reading it once: 2412200001012001. Don’t worry if you can’t do it right away. You are not alone. Most people can only remember about five to nine digits at a time. So, the number sequence above is too long for our short-term memory.
We can use a simple trick to remember long number sequences and make our memory span longer. We can break the sequence into smaller, meaningful parts. For example, dates like 24.12.2000 and 01.01.2001. This makes the numbers much easier to remember. This way of breaking information into bigger, easier-to-remember parts is called chunking.
Chunking works just as well with letters as with numbers and other information. The letter sequence KOPFSCHULTERNKNIEZEHEN (HEADSHOULDERSKNEETOES) is also easier to remember. We can divide it into KOPF (HEAD), SCHULTERN (SHOULDERS), KNIE (KNEES), and ZEHEN (TOES). This division reduces 22 pieces of information to just four parts. These parts also have a meaning, which helps us remember them a lot.
Another way to trick our memory a little is called elaborative encoding. This is when we put new information into existing ideas or stories.
For a long time, humans did not need to remember abstract knowledge. They only needed to remember the meaning of sensory things. For example, the smell of poisonous plants or visual signs for direction. Because of how we evolved, we tend to remember information we experience with our senses more easily. We use this natural tendency with elaborative encoding.
Let’s say we need to remember a shopping list: pickles, cheese, and salmon. We can remember the list better if we imagine it. For example, we can imagine the pickles standing on our table, next to some tasty cottage cheese, with a salmon swimming in it.
So, with chunking and elaborative encoding, we can greatly increase the capacity of our working memory.
Blink 3 – We can remember things without knowing it.
When we look back, our life seems to be the sum of our memories. Without them, our life would only be the present moment. Yet, some people live without memories. A famous case was E.P., a former lab technician. He lost his memory because of damage to his temporal lobe. The patient suffered from both anterograde and retrograde amnesia. This means he could not remember new experiences. He also could not remember things that happened before his illness started. But scientific studies showed that E.P. unconsciously remembered information. He just could not access it because of the damage he had.
Memory researcher Larry Squire found this surprising result in an experiment. He showed amnesic patients like E.P. a list of 24 words. After only a few minutes, the patients forgot all the words. They even forgot that the exercise had ever taken place. Then, 48 words appeared on a computer screen. Half of these were the words they had seen before. Each word was shown for 25 milliseconds. So, the patients could see some words, but not all. The patients were asked to read the words aloud. They did much better with the words they had seen before. This suggests that these words were stored in their unconscious mind. They could not actively remember them.
We all have conscious and unconscious memories. When we swim or ride a bike, we do not need to consciously think about the movements all the time. These memories are non-declarative. They are deeply stored in our long-term procedural memory. Unlike declarative memories, we do not need to actively recall them.
Blink 4 – Good memory was very valuable in ancient times.
Whether it’s a poem or historical facts, learning things by heart seems unnecessary today. Why try hard when we can easily find them online? But in times and societies where information was not so easy to get, human memory was extremely valuable.
In societies where few people could read and write, professional memory keepers made sure that traditional knowledge was passed on. They also kept cultural heritage alive. For example, in ancient Greece, singers spread the myths of the gods. This way, classic stories like Homer’s Odyssey survived many generations until they were finally written down.
Many techniques to improve our memory were well known in ancient times. We know this because they are described in the text Rhetorica ad Herennium. This text was published between 86 and 82 BC, and its author is unknown. The famous speaker and Roman senator Cicero later noted in his work on the art of memory that these techniques were so well known that he did not want to waste his ink describing them.
Great people of ancient times often had excellent memories themselves. Kineas, the messenger of the Greek King Pyrrhus, was famous because he remembered all the names of the senators and nobles one day after arriving in Rome. The King of Persia also gained respect by remembering the names of all the soldiers in his army.
We see that memory was a common and important skill in a world where books could not yet be easily copied and shared.
Blink 5 – The art of remembering became less important with the invention of printing.
In ancient times, a good memory was a highly valued quality. Today, however, few people can boast an excellent memory. This is because our memory has become less important since writing became common.
Before there were books, scrolls stored known facts and information. In 200 BC, there was no punctuation. Words flowed into each other in a seemingly endless stream. There were no commas or spaces between words. Of course, this made it hard to read if you didn’t already know the text. It served more as a reminder for content that was already learned by heart.
Reading was also not a highly respected skill back then. Even famous philosophers like Socrates spoke against it. They believed reading would make people forget more. This would lead to intellectual and moral decline.
The image of reading changed greatly when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440. Books could suddenly be copied much more. The cost and time to make a book dropped a lot. So, even people who were not rich could afford books. Also, books became easier to read. Spaces between words and punctuation marks were added.
As more people learned to read, the importance of memory decreased. Today, this trend results in our memory getting much worse. We rely more and more on external sources of knowledge and memory, like books, the internet, and smartphones.
But many people criticize our growing dependence on these external memory aids. They believe that children should learn the art of remembering from a young age.
Blink 6 – Memory training improves school success, but it’s not taught.
Why should we train our memory? We can easily look up information online or use our smartphone. We should train it because a good memory helps us in our careers.
American teacher Raemon Matthews teaches at a high school in the South Bronx, New York. This is a difficult area. Each year, he picks ten talented students from poor backgrounds. He teaches them the art of remembering. These students then improve not only their memory but also their school grades. Every one of them passes the final test with top marks. This happens in an area where half of the children do not even finish high school.
Even though a good memory is crucial for school success, it is not taught in any school today. The literary critic E. D. Hirsch also stresses how important this would be. He says students should not leave school without a basic level of “cultural literacy.” This means knowing cultural facts that we need to get by in society.
But when children learn facts in school, it is usually just boring memorization. This does not improve their memory at all. Psychologist William James even proved this in an experiment. For eight days, he spent more than two hours daily memorizing the first 158 lines of Victor Hugo’s poem “Satyr.” On average, he could remember one verse in 50 seconds. Then, he started to memorize Victor Hugo’s novel Paradise Lost. This time, it took him an average of 57 seconds per line. So, his performance even got worse.
A trained memory is very important for school success. But simply memorizing things does not make our memory better. We should not fill our memory with just facts. Instead, we should gain cultural knowledge. This knowledge is what we need to live together in society and interact with each other.
Blink 7 – Mr. Miller in the mill: Remember names by turning them into easy-to-recall pictures.
Imagine you are at a party where you know almost no one. Many new names overwhelm you, and you can hardly remember them all. This is unless you find a way to turn these abstract names into a picture that stays in your mind.
The so-called Baker/baker paradox shows how well humans can remember facts. This happens when we can link them to certain pictures. In a study, two participants were shown the same photo. One participant was told the man’s last name was Becker. The other was told the man’s job was a baker. Weeks later, the scientists showed the participants the pictures again. They asked them for the man’s name or job. The job was easily remembered, but the name was forgotten.
We remember facts when they are in a specific situation. The job “baker” brings up many ideas. We imagine a baker in a white apron, kneading dough. Behind him, bread in the oven starts to give off a pleasant warmth and a wonderful smell. We can almost smell it. These vivid ideas make the information stick in our memory.
You can use this brain tendency when learning new names. You just need to turn names into lively pictures. For example, if you meet a woman named Sophia Lochno. You can remember her name by imagining Sophia as wisdom herself. She would never fall into a hole: Loch (hole) – no. The sillier and more nonsensical it is, the easier it will be to remember such pictures and, with them, the name.
Blink 8 – More than just words: When remembering, it helps to add emotions and pictures to texts.
How nice would it be if you could lie under a star-filled night sky in the arms of a loved one? And in that moment, you could recite your favorite poem to make the moment perfect. Is it a shame you can never remember the poem? It’s sometimes important and helpful to know a poem or text by heart, not just for romance. Have we completely forgotten this skill? You can get this ability back. Do this by adding extra information to the text in your mind.
When memorizing whole pages of text, it helps to create your own alphabet of pictures. Gunther Karsten, a famous German memory artist, uses this. For example, for the word “and,” he imagines a circle. This is because “and” rhymes with “round.” He links the end of a sentence to a nail. He imagines hammering it into the text at that point. This way, he takes away the abstract nature of texts and poems, which makes them hard to remember.
Karsten’s memory technique works especially well with pictures and funny or rude wordplay. Our brain can remember these most easily. When trying to remember the word “best” in a certain situation, we might think of the best sausage we ever ate. “Sausage” and “best” also sound similar, making them easy to link by sound.
Many other memory artists, who compete in events like the USA Memory Championship, use emotions instead of pictures to remember things. The Austrian memory expert Corinna Draschl first breaks poems into individual “chunks.” Then she gives each part an emotion. She then combines these emotions into a flow of feelings. This is easier to remember than a series of abstract words. For example, you could link the feeling of being in love with a part of a poem that describes spring. And you could link a painful sadness with a dark winter description.
Blink 9 – Link memories to well-known places and routes.
Now you know how to give abstract knowledge an easy-to-remember form. But how do you store this knowledge long-term so you can get it back whenever you want?
The Loci method is a helpful technique for storing information well. It works like this: You assign information to a specific place along a well-known path. You use the fact that your brain remembers places and paths very well.
For example, you can remember your childhood home. Imagine opening the door, walking into the hallway, and then turning into the kitchen. There, you place the information you want to remember on the kitchen table, right next to the keys. When you want to recall the information later, you just walk through the house in your mind. You will find it again on the kitchen table.
There are several tips that help build a memory palace. For example, you can save certain rooms for specific topics. If you have exams in different subjects coming up, you can assign one room to biology and another to history. You can create many memory paths. Use any route, such as your way to work or your jogging path in the park. Just make sure you can picture the place clearly enough in your mind.
Summary
You do not need to be very gifted or a scholar to have an excellent memory. The right technique and a little practice will quickly improve your memory. Our brain remembers things linked to pictures and emotions very well. Use this when remembering names and texts.
What you can do:
Keep practicing. Whenever you meet a new person, invent a picture or a wordplay that fits their name. This way, you will remember the name very quickly!
Be systematic. When preparing for your next exam, use the Loci method, elaborative encoding, and chunking. This will help you remember everything!
Source: https://www.blinkist.com/https://www.blinkist.com/de/books/alles-im-kopf-behalten-de