Anthony Metivier's Magnetic Memory Method Podcast

Critical thinking books are a dime a dozen. However, few of them come packed with examples. Even fewer come with exercises. Examples and exercises are important because critical thinking is not just something you learn. It’s something you develop through observation followed by practical application. Here’s another problem that might be frustrating you if you’re looking for the best critical thinking books: A lot of them are either irrelevant, “dumbed-down” for the mass market, or already abandoned by their authors. For example, the famous Thinking, Fast and Slow on just about every list has big problems. Its author, Daniel Khaneman has agreed that several entire chapters need to be removed in a future edition. Why? The reproducibility problem. Many of the studies he refers to weren’t scientifically valid. But critical thinking is based on reproducible models. So on this page, let’s dig into a comprehensive list of critical thinking books that won’t go out of date. The 15 Best Critical Thinking Books Packed With Examples For Improving Your Mind As you go through these examples, consider your specific goals. As you’ll see, each of these examples are related, but each has different strengths. You’ll want to beef up on each of these areas, but as you gather your collection, I suggest you start with where you currently feel you need the most help. One: Scientific Critical Thinking In Critical Thinking for Better Learning: New Insights from Cognitive Science, Carole Hamilton helps you understand how the brain creates categories in the mind. Knowledge of how your mind works helps you tap into how your memory deals with examples and analogies that can improve your thinking skills. Some of the best parts of this book teach you: How to study topics thoroughly so that you can think critically about them. How to develop creative analogies so you can see the “shape” and dynamics of larger topics. Threshold concepts, which are “the central, defining truths in a given discipline, the ideas that open a gateway to deeper understanding.” Why some ideas are obvious to certain people but take others a long time to learn. As an example of how this book and its critical thinking strategies helped me personally, when I was working on my Art of Memory project, this guide reminded me to read both the historical summary and also the specific books about memory during that period. This is what Hamilton means by knowing the “shape” of a topic. Other great aspects of this book include its points on: How beliefs can distort facts Who really benefits and who suffered from environmental damage in the world The concept of opportunity cost How to assess critical thinking It gives examples of each and concludes strong with its best tip: Study real problems and how they were solved, and then recall these frequently to test your memory for accuracy about the details. Two: A Jargon Free Toolkit Critical thinking often involves a lot of complex terminology. You have to learn about antecedents in logic and the concept of paraconsistencies. But if you’re just beginning and don’t have a Memory Palace, such terms can be hard to learn and remember. Enter The Critical Thinking Toolkit. This book provides a wonderful introduction with examples from: Rhetoric Psychology Sociology Political science Three: How To Think About Arguments We all get into arguments. That’s not a problem, but the ways we use language while arguing often causes more problems than necessary. Enter The Uses of Argument by Stephen E. Toulmin. There are many reasons many of us fail to be persuasive. Worse, we are unaware of the reasons we are so easily persuaded. But in this excellent book, Toulmin shows you: What it means to make a valid argument How to lay out valid arguments The difference between working logic and idealised logic How that validity must be intra-field, not inter-field (so that you approach critical thinking comparatively) It boils down to this: Arguments have patterns and we can learn to perceive those patterns. One pro tip in this book is to find ways to see logic and critical thinking as historical. When you know how logic has changed over time, you’re able to note the patterns that shape how we communicate and use them better. That’s just one benefit. Here are 11 more benefits of critical thinking you can expect after reading the books on this page. Four: Validity In Your Thinking I’ll never forget hearing The Amazing Kreskin discuss hypnosis. He said: “Hypnosis is nothing more than the acceptance of a suggestion.” In other words, it’s just persuasion. And since we’re persuaded all the time, there’s a strong suggestion that our behavior is being shaped outside of our awareness more often than we think. If you don’t have much time to learn how this is happening to you, I suggest Critical Thinking : A Concise Guide by Tracy Bowell and Gary Kemp. This book’s strength is how it helps you determine whether an argument is valid. To do so, th

If you want to learn new skills quickly, the process can be easy and fun. But let’s call a spade a spade: What might challenge you are the steps involved. This point is important for one simple reason I’ve observed many times over my years as a professor and author who helps people with skills development: Far too many people miss out on learning the most effective process for rapidly acquiring a new skill. Often, they chase after efficiency first. In fact, learning how to learn effectively is where everyone should start when it comes to just about every skill you can learn. There’s another problem we’re going to eliminate today: We live in a world where all kinds of gurus keep telling you what to do and how to do it based on their journeys. Sure, sometimes you can follow their tips. But let’s get one huge problem out of the way from the get go: You should not try to reproduce anyone else’s journey. Why should you take me seriously – apart from the fact that I just gave you the most powerful advice for learning any new skill upfront? Well, for one thing, I have rapidly learned skills that helped me become a person of accomplishment. I’m not asking you to follow my journey, but you should know that I’ve been in the trenches of developing multiple skills. I have: Written and marketed multiple bestselling books Accomplished goals in multiple languages Delivered a TEDx Talk with over 2 million views Built the world’s leading memory improvement website Completed a PhD, two MAs and multiple certificates Toured as a musician in multiple bands Studied multiple languages … and much, much more on my polymathic journey Despite all those experiences, I’ll be the first to tell you that I still have a lot to learn. And that’s the next best tip I can give you upfront: Keep humble. It helps you learn faster no matter how good you get. So are you ready for the best nitty-gritty learning tactics I know? Let’s get started. How to Learn and Master New Skills Quickly The first thing I would point out is that technically there’s no such thing as a “new skill.” Now, this might be getting a bit philosophical, but I think the point is important. Just because it’s “new to you,” doesn’t make it new. In fact, it wouldn’t even be called a “skill” if someone else hadn’t learned it first. That’s why this first tip is so important. As Michael Hyatt once put it, “you always have all the resources you need.” When it comes to learning skills, this statement has never been more true. Most of us can access blogs, videos and social media to learn more than ever before. One: Get Clarity Using “Dual-Coding” Often, the people who have mastered skills completely define them very differently than those who want to learn it. For example, if you read certain books by Bruce Lee, you’re not going to get a lot of technical verbiage about the physics of movement. You will get a combination of photographs with something more akin to philosophy, which is more important to skills development than you might think. Combining reading with looking at illustrations is called “dual-coding.” It’s been scientifically tested and in this study, researchers found that it helps learners enjoy both concrete and abstract thinking at the same time. But when you’re looking for books and courses, you have to watch out for sandtraps. Many publishing companies hire people to write books and create courses teaching skills the instructors don’t actually possess, after all. It’s a tragedy, but you can learn to avoid it by doing your research. It’s not that such learning programs are always bad. You just want to make sure that you’re getting a variety of learning inputs, with ample materials coming directly from the source. I use the Bruce Lee example because he shares more than just the technical processes and photographs. In books like Striking Thoughts, Lee gives you critical thinking strategies as well so you get the benefits of dual-coding. Access to multiple channels of information is so important because combining theory and practice will help you learn skills faster in almost every case. Two: Seek Experiences Wherever Possible As part of going to the source and beefing up on theory, try to find ways to learn the skills through lived experience. This doesn’t mean not reading books or taking video courses. You definitely want to do that, and make sure you read in a way that makes the information memorable. I’m talking about supplementing the skill you want to learn with: Workshops Seminars Apprenticeships Field trips Long term coaching Working with a mentor Even skills that are solitary, like reading and writing, benefit from working in groups. You can take breaks and talk with others, rapidly accelerating how you learn. Three: Remove Limiting Beliefs A lot of people think they have a particular learning style. Whereas you might respond better to different kinds of visualiza

Some people say that visual memory boils down to recalling what things look like. That’s part of the picture, sure. But if you really want to understand visual memory thoroughly, you need to dig deeper. And that’s exactly what we’re going to get into on this page. As a memory expert, I personally needed to figure out the definition of this aspect of memory for a few reasons. The main one is that many of my students and coaching clients memorize highly visual information at memory competitions or on the job. For example, some of my clients are police officers or work for the fire department. They need to remember things like license plates and building layouts. And they need to do so in a flash. It’s especially useful to understand the visual aspect of how memory works because visual memory ranges from the concrete to the incredibly abstract. Having health visual memory is therefore essential for navigating the world and you can improve it. So if you’re ready to “see” deeper into what visual recall is really all about, including different ways to make yours sharper, let’s get started. What Is Visual Memory? Visual memory is not merely the ability to recall what you see. This kind of “visual recall” includes how you remember features of reality like: Objects Words People Activities and events Mental images that appear in your imagination Dreams Visual memory is not to be mistaken with visual memory techniques that people use to learn faster in combination with mnemonic images. But you do use visual memory during both learning and recall. When exactly does visual memory come into play? To take just a few examples, a healthy visual memory helps you: Remember where you put your keys and other things you want to stop losing Spelling Incidents that you describe after the fact Copying notes from textbooks and screens Thus, visual memory is technically any kind of memory formed by information that enters your mind through a visual system. This foundational principle is where things get really interesting. For example, there are types of synesthesia where some individuals might experience sounds in highly visual ways. And if you think about it, most of our experience in watching a movie is built not from what we see. The brain builds 70% of the experience (or more) from what we hear. We often think of movies as a visual medium, but studies have shown that our brains build pictures largely from what we hear. With that in mind, Steven J. Luck and Andrew Hollingworth define this term in their book Visual Memory like this: “The memory must retain properties of the original perceptual states generated when the memory was encoded.” This definition of visual memorization means that you could feel something but if your brain translates it into a visual concept at any time, it will count as a visual memory. Let me give you an example: In choreography, many people close their eyes to help them remember moves. Later, they will picture themselves or others going through these movements. In some cases, there are granular details you can visually focus on in your imagination without ever having “seen” them. For example, in martial arts, it’s possible to imagine combat scenarios and how you would move in response without ever having to go through such a situation. This is how powerful our visual senses are, and we draw directly on visual memory in order for our minds to animate or bring to life these hypothetical events. As Susanna Siegel points out in The Contents of Visual Experience, there are a number of ways information (content) enters our minds: We have beliefs about what we see before it is seen (which can cause us to mistake what we’re seeing) What we see guides our physical actions in concrete ways (like when you open your hand to a particular size to accommodate a door handle) We introspect about what something might look like (as in the choreography example above) You also have to think about situations where the autonomic nervous system’s sympathetic branch has been stimulated – such as when your pupils dilate. Optical illusions often draw upon these automatic responses to trick our minds. Some of these points might seem abstract, but everything comes down to one word: context. Keep context in mind when defining visual memory and you will enjoy greater accuracy when describing it. How Does Visual Memory Work? As we’ve just discovered, the exact context in which visual memory comes into play matters. For example, if we’re talking about memorizing the content of scenes or events, we need to take into account how our eyes move relative to this kind of sensory input. As John Henderson demonstrates, eye movements are very important to understanding how we remember various scenes and events. These directly impact on how the brain makes a “composite” mental image of what we’ve experienced. This means that visual memory is not really experienced or built. It is composed after the fact in col

Intrapersonal intelligence is one of the most powerful psychological assets you can develop. Why? Because it’s the key to studying independently. This is because intrapersonal intelligence allows you to imagine what other people think and the thought processes they use to accomplish their goals. In other words, if you want to succeed like Einstein, you need to be able to create a mental image like he did. Fortunately, this is easier to do than most people think. And as you’ll discover, intrapersonal intelligence can not only be developed readily by anyone. It is the key to improving how you learn a wide variety of topics, from math to languages, philosophy to acquiring new skills. Ready to improve this aspect of your intelligence? Let’s dive in! What is Intrapersonal Intelligence? “Intrapersonal” literally means within a person. It is a form of insight typically arrived at through reflective thinking. Another way of thinking about it involves realizing that you are not one fixed personality. Rather, your personality is built from multiple parts. Sometimes these parts compete with one another. For example, research has shown that young people choosing vocations might not yet have enough insight about the different parts of their personalities to make solid career decisions. Yet, when these students are given insight into the theory of multiple intelligences, they feel less confused and more confident in the choices they make, even at a younger age. As another study puts it: “Intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to understand oneself and act on that understanding which includes awareness of moods, intentions, motivations, temperaments, desires, self-discipline and self-respecting abilities.” In other words, it’s not just about understanding the different parts of your psychological experience. It’s about using that insight to act in particular ways to produce positive outcomes. Origins and Research Much of the research into intrapersonal intelligence stems from Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. Although many people have criticized Gardner’s approach, it has led to many positive changes to education. In particular, many teachers now know how to help young people cultivate metacognitive thinking skills. Helping students improve their intrapersonal intelligence has even been shown to improve math scores. They experience better outcomes because of their increased analytical thinking abilities as such. Similar research has shown improvements in other skills, such as artistic ability and the medical sciences. Indeed, as we learned from Dr. David Reser on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, medical students who learned memory techniques as a group by tapping into aspects of their personalities that often go unexercised. Intrapersonal Intelligence Examples To sum up, intrapersonal involves finding the different aspects of your personality and then utilizing them as resources. Many incredible example are available, so let’s get started with some of the most impactful. One: Image Streaming Einstein wasn’t just smart. He was imaginative. And he took every opportunity to visualize the problems in physics he was trying to solve. One technique he used was image streaming. Not only does the technique (as I teach it), walk you through multiple aspects of your personality. It helps you experience the fullest range of sensory visualization modalities. Once you start experiencing these different resources within yourself, you’ll be able to take action on them. Not only that, but if you’ve ever worried that your intelligence is fixed, image streaming helps prove that it isn’t. Two: Masterminding Although it would be a stretch to call Napoleon Hill scientific, many accomplished people have used a technique he called “masterminding” in his book, Think and Grow Rich. In brief, you call up people you’ve read about (like Einstein) and ask them to help you solve various problems. It sounds ridiculous on its face. But in a letter to Lucy Donnelly, the highly influential philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote: “And another thing I greatly value is the kind of communion with past and future discoverers. I often have imaginary conversations with Leibniz, in which I tell him how fruitful his ideas have proved, and how much more beautiful the result is than he could have foreseen; and in moments of self-confidence, I imagine students hereafter having similar thoughts about me. There is a ‘communion of philosophers’…” I often hold conversations with philosophers myself and it is a tremendous tool for solving problems. Rest assured, I have no belief that I’m actually talking to my favorite philosophers. But provided I know their writing well, it’s a perfectly reasonable way of accessing my intrapersonal intelligence and taking action on what comes out. It’s also another reason why philosophy is so important. Three: Battling Monkey Mind Many people struggle with thoughts gone wild. Bu

Have you been told that you’re a linear thinker? You might have received it as a compliment or a criticism. Either way, people use the term in so many different ways, it can be hard to figure out what exactly linear thinking is supposed to be. Well, if you want to become a better thinker, you’re in the right place. We’re about to think linearly about linear thinking together. And we’re going to think about it in some alinear ways too. The best part? By the time you finish reading this page, you’ll be equipped to think in a variety of ways, in any direction you wish. Perhaps even in an “impossible” direction that follows no line at all because it is completely free from having a point of view. Intrigued? Let’s get started! What is Linear Thinking? Before defining linear thinking, let’s take a step back. Ideally in a “straight” line. When trying to define any kind of thinking, we’re assuming that there are multiple kinds of thinking or thinking styles. This means that we have to sort out the relationships between these thinking styles. But more importantly, we have to think about who is creating their definitions. Linear Thinking in Entrepreneurialism Researchers Charles Vance, Kevin Groves and Herb Kindler devised the LNTSP or Linear-Nonlinear Thinking Style Profile. Their assumption is that linear thinking is characterized by logical and analytical thinking. Nonlinear thinking, they claim, is defined by intuition, insight and creativity. In a follow-up study, they proposed that entrepreneurs would think more linearly than actors. As a subset of this, they predicted that entrepreneurs would also think more linearly than accountants and managers. Is it really true that thinking styles exist? And what did they find out? The answer is complicated because entrepreneurs are often visionary in nature. They respond in off-the-wall ways to unseen market demands only they can perceive. Creativity Can Be Linear The notion of “creativity” when it comes to acting is also problematic. For one thing, there are many different kinds of actors. Method actors, for example, might need to be incredibly logical in order to play the role of a certain character, but use creativity and intuition in order to create the illusion that they are such a person. In other words, actors often “reverse engineer” characters they did not create and base them on studies of people who actually exist. This approach often involves just as much mathematical precision as it does going with gut instinct. Even a highly responsive comic like Robin Williams knows the structural rules that govern how a joke works. Thus, Vance et al’s study ends with the call for more research, noting that educational background experiences might hold the ultimate key to why some people wind up thinking in the ways that they do. If we were to think in a “straight line” about these findings, we would want to note that these researchers are using their own definition of linear thinking. And they’re using their tool for testing their hypothesis. I’d humbly suggest that the entire study is suspect at best, a case of inventing solutions for invented problems without carefully demonstrating that thinking styles exist in the first place. Linear Thinking In Philosophy Now, I’m not saying that thinking styles don’t exist. But as Tesia Marshik has shown in her TEDx Talk and other research about learning styles, such notions are complicated. When it comes to linear thinking in philosophy, Patrick Finn sees linear thinking as a negative aspect of critical thinking. In Critical Condition, he indicts “regulated systems of education” as using “a muscular, linear form of thought” to “control information and training citizens to think in a particular way.” He sees this as a problem in politics, science and especially education. As he points out, universities are no longer related to the meaning of the word: Universitas: the whole. The word for university came from this Latin root. To be educated at the university was to engage with the whole – the whole being, the whole body of knowledge, and the whole of society. Although I don’t disagree with Finn’s discussion of the meaning of this word, it’s not clear to me that knowledge is a “body.” But if it is, it probably doesn’t have any straight lines, and his point is taken. The notion of knowledge as being rounded, rather than straight, is a point made by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus and other co-author works. They think of knowledge, not as a top-down structure, or a tree as Renaissance scholars like Petrus Ramus described it. Linear Thinking As Escape or Destination? Rather, Deleuze and Guattari think of knowledge as rhizomatic, a lattice-like structure that travels in multiple directions at the same time. In another book called What is Philosophy?, they claim that “to think is always to follow the witch’s flight.” I’m not sure, but I think they are referring to the Wicked Witch in Wizard of Oz,

Want to know how to stop forgetting things? Well, you’re in the right place if you’re tired of asking yourself, “Why do I keep forgetting things?” I’m an internationally acclaimed memory expert and I promise you this: The answer is actually very simple. So simple it will probably surprise you. But even better than shock and amaze you, I’m confident the answer will help you tremendously. You see, there are some incredibly simple techniques that will help you remember just about anything you want. And when you do forget, your annoyance with losing track of information will completely disappear. Follow the steps further down this page, and you may wind up never being bothered by forgetfulness again. Ready? Let’s dig in! Why Do I Keep Forgetting Things? The Answer Forgetting plays an important role in human experience. And yet, some people have doubted that forgetting actually exists. For example, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: The existence of forgetting has never been proved: we only know that some things do not come to our mind when we want them to. Nietzsche clues us in on something very important with this quote: In order for things to come to mind, they need to have entered the mind in the first place. My point? It’s this: One: Not Paying Attention in the First Place A major reason we think we’ve forgotten things isn’t a reason at all. If we haven’t paid proper attention to a detail, then it never entered long term memory in the first place. It can be humbling to admit that we haven’t been attentive. But it’s one of the keys to experiencing improvement, as we’ll discuss in a moment. Two: Storage Failure Let’s say that you did pay attention, however. It’s possible that a memory was formed, but it was nonetheless not stored correctly. This can happen because incoming information often has to compete with other stimuli. For example, when you’re meeting new people, you might also be given details about where they live and their occupation. Another term for this is cue overload. As a result, the flow of multiple data points somehow corrupts how the main detail you wanted got stored. John Wixted outlines a few different kinds of interference. In addition to competing stimuli, you might also experience storage failure from: Proactive interference Retroactive interference The first happens when something you’ve learned before messes with the learning of something new. For example, if you learned something that was incorrect in the past and discover a correct version of that fact, the primacy effect might maintain the storage of the inaccurate data despite new learning. Your brain thus fails to store the truth. The second kind of interference happens when something about the way you’re learning a new detail interferes. You might experience this kind of storage failure when ineffectively using a software like Anki or even old-fashioned flashcards. Three: Retrieval Failure Let’s assume that your brain has recorded everything absolutely correctly. You might still forget something if something interferes with the retrieval process. These kinds of interferences can literally cause information you know very well to evaporate. Scientists have found this kind of forgetting interesting, but don’t yet know exactly why it happens. Endel Tulving linked it to cue-dependent forgetting. The research basically suggests that if words are grouped in categories, you might remember more of them better. But when randomness is introduced, forgetting goes up. Part of the issue relates to how memory works, particularly spatial memory. And that’s why when someone prompts you or gives you a trigger that relates thematically or categorically, you can sometimes get back the information that you forgot or felt lingering on the tip of your tongue. Four: The Influence of Time Did you know that it’s possible to forget your mother tongue without suffering a brain injury or symptoms of a disease? The problem is called linguistic deskilling. I experienced it myself while living in Germany and speaking hardly any English. Basically, this kind of forgetting follows the “use it or lose it,” principle. Or, more scientifically, we can think about the forgetting curve, which helps predict how time will degrade the ability to remember things if they aren’t recalled regularly. Five: Repression Sigmund Freud is a controversial figure. But many people forget the value of his goals. For example, in Remembering and Forgetting Freud in Early Twentieth-Century Dreams, John Forrester reminds us that psychoanalysis was meant to be “self-annihilating.” When it worked, the point was never to need it again or even think about it. To help heal people from their ailments, psychoanalysis explores ways to uncover repressed memories. The theory goes that because these memories are still lingering in the unconscious mind, they are trying to “return” so that you’ll attend to them. This is the so-called “return of the repressed” that has been so inf

My worst mental block happened back in 2008 while giving a lecture. I was standing behind the podium when a huge panic attack burst inside my chest. Although I’m usually very good at remembering what I want to say, when I want to say it… during that moment, I found myself speechless. I had no idea what I had just been talking about and couldn’t find the thread needed to get myself back on track. Embarrassed beyond belief, I dismissed the class and retreated home. I decided I would never be caught cold like that again. Fast-forward to February 2020. I made a small error while delivering a TEDx speech. Using the techniques you’re about to discover, I rapidly recovered because I not only had the thread firmly in my hands. But overcoming mental blocks under pressure has become my speciality. Are you ready for all my best tips? Great! Let’s get started! What is a Mental Block? Mental blocks can be defined in a few different ways. But Tobore Onojighofia Tobore gives the best definition I’ve seen: A memory block or mental block is the sudden inability to focus and remember due to a failure of learning and mental representation. Tobore gives us an important way to think about this problem because mental blocks can happen to anyone, no matter how skilled or experienced you might be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpjjATXXRq8 There are also levels of mental blocks a person can experience. For example, think of the difference between writer’s block, when the person can’t write at all, and writing a bad book. An experienced author should know better than to produce second-rate work, yet even Stephen King has admitted in On Writing that he’s capable of producing a dud. He may not have been blocked from writing altogether, but something in his brain failed to remember what makes a story great. Likewise, a student can show up to an exam and often remember enough to answer the questions. But they might struggle to recall the nuances that make the difference between a C+ and an A. Tobore thinks that it boils down to the strength of your neuronal connections and their resistance to disruption. The 5 Main Mental Block Causes If Tobore is correct (and I think he is), this means that the typical explanations for why we experience mental blocks are incorrect. Typically, we’re told that we experience them when we’re: Overwhelmed Tired Stressed Unrested Although these states certainly can contribute to poor focus and an inability to access memory (stress in particular), they are not strong explanations. We know this because many people who play Jeopardy, act on stage or give speeches face all of these factors and yet still perform well. Athletes also have to access procedural memory under grueling conditions, so it just doesn’t make sense that these oft-cited factors are to blame. I know from personal experience that they aren’t to blame because I often perform perfectly well despite suffering all of the above issues, including chronic pain. So if we can’t point the finger at those issues, what factors do reliably explain our mental blocks when we have them? One: Lack of Preparation Most people experience blocks because they simply haven’t prepared themselves thoroughly enough. They may have skimmed or scanned books instead of reading them thoroughly. Sloppy reading prevents the brain from forming enough connections to frame a complete enough picture. Instead of a study foundation, you wind up with mental sand that easily blows away in the wind. When I had my panic attack in front of the lecture hall, I was still a rookie. A huge part of my problem was that I hadn’t put a lot of thought into how I was going to end the lecture. I was okay up until the close and thought I could wing it. But I was wrong and that led to me experiencing a massive mental block. Two: Lack of Practice As a professor, I’ve marked hundreds of exams and essays. It’s easy to spot the work of students who have put in the practice and those who have not. When I myself had field exams and a dissertation defense to pass before getting my Phd, I practiced each and every one. It was as simple as getting friends to test me and following the rules around what is called dedicated pactice. Performance-wise, when I gave my TEDx Talk, I wasn’t feeling all that well. But it didn’t matter because I’d practiced reciting the talk multiple times. I’d even memorized it and written it out by hand three times to make sure I knew it inside and out. That way, no matter how tired, overwhelmed or stressed I felt, I knew I could rely on memory consolidation alone both in terms of the procedural memory of delivering the talk and semantic memory of the words and phrases. Three: Communication Challenges Some people have congenital issues or brain disease. For example, some people might suffer from aphasia and need to be trained to rely on formulaic speech patterns. But because the flows of normal speech are not necessarily tidy, people with these issues can quickly find the

Although philosophy and psychology have always been intertwined, the surprising difference you’re about to discover is incredibly valuable to understand. You see, there are a lot of simplistic discussions about philosophy vs psychology. For example, some people will say things like: Philosophy studies wisdom while psychology studies the soul Philosophy and psychology both study humans and how they behave Whereas philosophy leads to one set of career options, psychology leads to another Psychology can observe behavior in laboratory settings, but philosophy cannot Although there is some truth to some of those statements, frankly, they’re all missing the most important point. So if you’re a lifelong learner and ready to solve the riddle, let’s dive in. What’s the Difference Between Philosophy and Psychology? 4 Things to Know Both philosophy and psychology are rich fields that involve many branches. Arguably, philosophy gave birth to psychology, and there’s a simple way to demonstrate why this is true. Let’s look at this simple fact first and then explore other things you need to know about the differences between these two fields. One: Philosophy Is What We Use When We Don’t Have A Science Technically speaking, psychology is a science. There are many kinds of psychological sciences, ranging from cognitive neuroscience to the study of personality, forensic psychology and more. In order to study aspects of the human mind related to cognition, performance at work, development from childhood into adulthood, etc, psychologists use tools of observation, measurement, analysis and scientific writing. But when we have questions about the nature of existence for which no such scientific tools exist, we use philosophy. This is not to say that philosophy cannot be scientific. Much of the best philosophy draws upon all the science the philosophy has on hand. However, it would be ridiculous to say that anyone has tools to measure concepts like infinity. Yet, we still manage to think about the infinite in a variety of ways despite not having a science of infinity. You don’t even have to understand mathematics particularly well to arrive at certain conclusions about this aspect of reality. This is why philosophy is important. When I say that philosophy gave birth to psychology, I am pointing to the fact that most of our records show that philosophy predates psychology. People seem to have been asking questions about the nature of reality somewhat before they were asking about the nature of the mind. Two: Philosophy Combats Confusion, Psychology Creates It This point might have you scratching your head. Why on earth would psychology create confusion? It absolutely does because it is a science. Science is a tool that allows us to ask hypothetical questions and then produce evidence that either confirms or denies our hypotheses. There’s going to be confusion along the way any time science is correctly performed. Philosophy, on the other hand, looks at confusing data or stimuli and tries to make sense of it. Indeed, this is precisely why we have the philosophy of science. Because philosophy is concerned with truths about reality and science is concerned with providing evidence that helps clarify the validity of our questions, this difference between the two fields is essential. Science is much more concerned with validation than it is with truth, and that is why science must constantly test and retest. And make no mistake. If you thought that science was about truth, this is simply not the case. In fact, there is something called the reproducibility crisis. An extraordinary number of studies that scientists have assumed give us an accurate picture of the world do not work when other scientists try to produce the same results. If we did not have philosophy to try and help us figure this out, we would be in big trouble indeed. Three: Philosophy Has Multiple Methods, But Science Boils Down To Just One Although science is of course incredibly complex, it ultimately has just one method: the scientific method, or empiricism. Our claims are valid when they can be reproduced. There are a lot of ins-and-outs to the scientific method, such as falsifiability. This is an important principle, so please look into it. Philosophy, on the other hand, does not rely on falsifiability. It might refer to it, but more often than not, philosophers rotate problems through a variety of philosophical methods. For example, an individual philosophy might look at a given problem through the lenses of: Ontology and metaphysics Epistemology Related fields like psychoanalysis, economics, sociology and other disciplines Indeed, a philosopher does not need to be a Marxist (or even a Marxoid) in order to benefit from wondering how such a person would try to solve a particular problem. Likewise, a philosopher can provide incredibly useful ways of looking at things by simply wondering how a psychoanalyst would answer a question that has arisen either personally, reg

Welcome to the ultimate list of thought processes. A definitive resource you can bookmark and refer to whenever you want to sharpen your thinking. I created this list because I taught an advanced critical thinking course for years at a university. And I personally practice many types of thought as I continue to absorb many philosophical traditions from around the globe. So if you want multiple thought process examples that will help you improve your mind, today you’re going to get them. Even better: I’ve included several sure fire ways you can rapidly improve your thinking. Ready? Let’s dig in! What Are Thought Processes? According to researchers, a thought process can be both conscious and unconscious. In fact, your mind can be processing more than one thought at the same time. For this reason, the exact definition of a thought process is simple: It is being engaged with the stuff of thought. What’s is this “stuff” exactly? It’s a combination of semantic facts you hold in your memory and physical things you know how to do that are held in your procedural memory. Then, you have the material that is held in your subconscious and your unconscious mind. This is important to understand. That’s because the fact that so many of your thoughts are outside of your awareness means you don’t have free will quite the way you think you do. Although many positive types of thought process stimulate our creativity and problem-solving capacities, Daniel Kahneman’s work has shown us to be at the mercy of many cognitive biases. Cognitive bias is any of a wide number of thought processes that cause us to take shortcuts. We distort reality and make irrational decisions as a result. For this reason, it’s a very good idea to become familiar with as many thought processes as possible. Types of Thought Processes (with Examples) As an exercise, don’t just read the following list passively. Try to think of a time you’ve either thought these ways yourself, or observed others involved in these thinking processes. For best results, write your personal examples and observations down. Also, reflect on whether or not each thought process is positive, negative, neutral or more than one of these options at the same time. One: Associative Thinking Being able to see how one thing connects to another is an important skill. In healthy children, the ability to think in terms of association begins early. Most of us get better at it as we age because more life experiences creates pattern recognition. For example, we often relate things we see in life to mythological patterns. You might associate someone with King Midas if they’re greedy, or say that a Pandora’s box has been opened. These are kinds of associative thinking stimulated by pattern recognition. It doesn’t have to be Greek myths either. Since 1999, it’s been very common for people to respond to certain events in the age of the Internet by saying, “It’s just like in The Matrix.” Freud famously asked his patients to engaging in free association, leading to many new psychological therapies and procedures, such as the Rorshach test. And association is widely used. Creative people frequently allow themselves to follow random trains of thought in order to come up with interesting and unique ideas. Students use mind mapping and association is a key mnemonic strategy. Two: Abductive Thinking This form of thinking involves drawing conclusions based on observations. It is also called inferential reasoning and Sherlock Holmes provides the most well-known examples. Real life detectives use it as well. A simple way to think about this thought process is that you’re arriving at a conclusion without having the full picture. If you arrive at a crime scene and find a knife covered in blood, you can reasonably conclude that it is the murder weapon. But you don’t actually know – you’re inducing the conclusion. Note that many people mistake this kind of reasoning with deductive thinking. So let’s look at that next. Three: Deductive Thinking Deductive thinking is often formulaic. It usually involves an “if this then that” structure. For example, you can deduce that if you don’t get on the freeway before rush hour, it will take you longer to get home. Unlike induction where you are drawing a conclusion from an incomplete picture, you do have a complete picture of how traffic works on the highway. Deductive reasoning is typically easier to test when there is an abundance of evidence. There are three main types to master: Syllogisms Modus ponens Modus tollens To help yourself further, check out these critical thinking book recommendations. Combined, inductive and deductive thinking form what we tend to think of as logical or rational thinking. Four: Social Thinking We tend to think of ourselves as individuals. Nothing could be further from the truth! Humans share a variety of languages, and when you think about it, none of the words or phrases belong to any i

A major problem with philosophy is that just about every philosopher has a different definition of what they do as a philosopher. This is sad because it turns a lot of people off who would otherwise benefit tremendously from exploring the art, science and craft of philosophy. So let’s simplify things by looking at the two ways philosophers define the field first. Descriptive (what philosophy is) Prescriptive (what philosophy should be) Once we realize that people rotate between these two categories of definition, everything will become much clearer. Ready? Let’s dive deeper into the wonderful realm of philosophy! What Is Philosophy? The Simple Answer The most direct philosophy definition I’ve ever seen is that philosophy tries to make sense of existence. And more than merely make sense of it, know that the sense we make is true, or at least accurate. Typically, this is done through the use of reason, though there are many other philosophical tools. Now, you might be wondering… Why doesn’t science take all of this up? The problem is that science is a tool that helps us gather evidence to validate or invalidate our ideas about the world. But existence itself? We don’t even know what being is or have the tools needed to study whatever existence is. And until we do, we’ll need philosophy. Now, within existence, we find many ideas, concepts, people and objects. They all seem to exist in different ways. Yet, they are bound by a major similarity. They exist. Philosophy tries to figure out the what, why and how of existence, or what some philosophers call Being with a capital B. Then, they work on figuring out what that knowledge about being tells us about how we should live in the world. Now, because existence is quite complex, philosophy has split up into many different types and categories. We’ll talk about several of these in a moment. But I mentioned above that many philosophers talk about what philosophy should be by way of defining it. An Alternative Philosophy Definition One classic example is found in What is Philosophy? By Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. They say that philosophy should be the creation of concepts. This is a prescriptive definition rather than the descriptive one I gave above. The book gives examples that show how philosophers define philosophy only by creating concepts. Plato created the concept of the Idea which later influenced Descartes’ notion of cogito. In this way of thinking, philosophy is something that influences the production of conceptual responses to previous ways of doing philosophy. You could then say that philosophy is almost like a living thing, evolving along with the human species. This co-evolution is just one of many reasons why philosophy is so important. And here’s the point: If philosophy is subject to evolution, then we should do all we can to help it evolve in a positive way. What Philosophy Is Not What does philosophy mean? Another way to get at the answer is to look at what philosophy isn’t. And that means looking at people who pretend to be philosophical, but aren’t. In a work of philosophy called The Sophist by Plato, we find three key definitions of the kind of person who fails to hit the mark of creating new concepts and properly answering the questions of existence. First, Plato points out that many people sound philosophical when in fact they’re just playing around with words. If you’ve done any amount of reflective thinking in your life, you might have wound up doing a bit of wordsmithing yourself, as have I. But that doesn’t mean what we came up with was properly analytical. Second, Plato noticed that Sophists used tools of persuasion to win arguments. These people weren’t really concerned with the truth about existence. They just wanted to come out on top in the discussion. As a result, technique was more important to them than accuracy. Finally, Plato felt that these people who only appeared to be doing philosophy lacked modesty. Rather than admit or even seek the limits of their knowledge, they pretended to know-it-all. Doing so is inherently un-philosophical. With these counter-examples in mind, we can say that to be properly philosophical, you need to: Use clear language, or at least use language for the goal of creating clarity Don’t switch your analytical tools and rhetorical style just to win an argument Be humble and remain conscious of the limits to your present understanding As a result, as you use philosophical thinking to pursue the truth, you will truly expand your mind. Philosophy Throughout Time And Place Unfortunately, it’s all too common for people to think only of philosophy in terms of specific times and places. For example, some people focus exclusively on Continental Philosophy or only Ancient Greek Philosophy. But as Bryan van Norden points out in his book, Taking Back Philosophy, many cultures have used philosophy to determine what existence is and use that knowledge to decide how best to live in the world. The more you

People who use memory techniques enjoy a diversity of terms. “Memory Palace” is my favorite, but more and more I’m leaning towards adapting Lynne Kelly’s use of the term “memory spaces.” I like it because that’s essentially what a Memory Palace is: a space for storing information. Of course, we’re usually using an imaginary version of that space. However, there are times when we can use these memory storage areas in much more direct ways. On this page, I share some of my favorite approaches. Why should you care? Because when you’re able to rapidly learn and remember information using these techniques, your quality of life goes way up. You can: Pass any exam Learn languages faster Remember everyone’s name Absorb entire books Master mathematics And that’s just for starters. Ready to learn more? Let’s dive in. What Are Memory Spaces? A memory space is literally any location you use as a foundation, canvas or platform for encoding information with associations. Let’s say you want to remember the name Luke. You can place Luke Skywalker on his shoulder. His shoulder becomes a “memory space.” In the method of loci, this specific spot would be called a “locus.” Generally, though, I would just call this a station in a Memory Palace, particularly because I usually remember names at events. Luke would be just one of many I would memorize. But these are all typical approaches. Let’s look at a few more. The Lukasa Now, there’s a sneaky reason I used the name “Luke” in the example above. That’s because my first example of an alternative memory space was going to be the lukasa. Also sometimes called a “memory board,” the word means “long hand” or “claw.” Typically made of wood, they often come shaped in a way that might remind you of an hourglass. People would cover them in colored beads to help them remember histories, plant locations and names of medicines. Folk wisdom, military matters and other information would also be encoded. These devices also helped people remember how their societies were organized and give them a common point of focus for discussing the law. As far as I understand, they would run their fingers along the surfaces. Each bead would help them recall a story or piece of information. The relationship to how encoding in a Memory Palace is clear. It involves all of the principles related to the linking and story method. Related to the lukasa are many other items. You can learn about them from Aboriginal and indigineous memory expert Tyson Yunkaporta. The Guidonian Hand Can you imagine holding 75 hours of music in your mind? Anna Berger suggests that people regularly memorized and retained this amount in her book, Medieval Music and the Art of Memory. She quotes Kenneth Levy who estimates that their knowledge “would correspond to the selection of Beethoven’s instrumental works plus the full Wagnerian canon.” That’s a lot of information! How did they do it? Many scholars, including Berger, have shown that a lot of the memorization was done by the medieval monks using their hands. Basically, they would turn their fingertips and the joints into memory spaces. Each spot would be marked with a name that corresponds to the musical staff they were using at the time. The approach gets its name from Guido of Arezzo. In contemporary terms, you could use your hand to memorize the clef notes quite quickly. For example, if you take the notes of the bass clef that appear between the lines, you could align them like this on your pointer finger: The hand doesn’t just have to be used for music, however. Tyson Yunkporta gives a great example of using your hand to remember knowledge in his book, Sand Talk. I’ve also used my hands to remember and practice Sanskrit verses that I’ve memorized. The important thing is to figure out the grid you’re going to mentally layer onto your hand and then stick with that configuration. Otherwise, you risk confusing yourself. Buttons I once read that Napoleon might have used the buttons on his shirt to help him remember simple things. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it totally makes sense. And when we think about military people, all of those medals, badges and other insignia are literally spaces we use to help us remember rank and other important information about people. To use the buttons on your shirt as a kind of mini-Memory Palace, start by counting them up. Don’t forget to include the buttons on your cuffs. Then, when you want to remember something, link it with the buttons. If you already have a PAO System, you can use those images as a pre-loaded hook on a button-by-button basis. In case it isn’t obvious to you, by using buttons like this, you’re essentially turning any relevant item in your wardrobe into a kind of lukasa! Coins Sure, they’re small. But that’s no reason why you can’t use the coins in your pocket in a pinch. Before I started using shoulders as my memory spaces for names, I would meet one or two people and place their names on a coin. It was a reference tha

It’s hard to find good info on long-term memory, isn’t it? You get drowned in difficult terminology, when all you want is to understand what it is and learn how to improve it. On this page, you’re going to discover the different types of long-term memory in plain English. But that doesn’t mean we’ll be skimping on the science of this type of memory. You’ll understand why scientists distinguish long-term memory from short-term memory. We’ll also look at the sub-systems of long-term memory before turning to the most important topics of all. These are how to: Maintain your current long-term memory abilities Improve your long-term memory Protect all aspects of your memory for the rest of your life So if you’re ready to increase your long-term memory capacity as you understand its many ins-and-outs, let’s dive in. What Is Long Term Memory? Long-term memory is ultimately about stability. Do you remember your first day at school? If you can get even just a small sense of where and when that event took place, that memory is relatively stable. Likewise, if you can access visuals of the school, how you felt and the names of any teachers or friends you had at the time, this long-term memory is even more robust. How about the meaning of a word like “justice”? If you can give a reasonable definition, then your memory of the term is a demonstration of persistence. As before, if you can give examples of when you learned the term and how your understanding of it has changed over time, the stability of this knowledge exists on a scale. The Categorical Nature of Long-Term Memory But here’s what’s super-interesting about the duration of long-term memory: It’s ultimately about categories. For example, if you think about your visual memory (or iconic memory), you’d be tempted to think of visual memory as a whole. But according to researchers, our long-term visual memory relies upon categories. Your brain seems to literally “tag” different visuals as if by name and then draw upon those tags later. For example, researchers at MIT and Harvard found that the brain’s pattern recognition draws heavily upon categories like ocean, field and even more specific terms like golf course and amusement park. When asked to remember images shown from over 160 image categories, people remembered scenes better than objects. They believe that the categorization itself explains these higher levels of recall because categories are more prominent in long-term memory. What do these findings mean? Well, it doesn’t mean that eidetic memory grants anyone superpowers or that photographic memory exists. (It doesn’t.) It suggests that how memory works so fast relies upon how surfaces and icons are embedded in contexts. The same thing is true when it comes to reading faster. Scientists have thoroughly debunked most claims about so-called “speed reading.” But one thing the science agrees on is that you can read faster if you improve your vocabulary. Just as people were better able to remember scenes that draw upon information in long-term memory, people with larger vocabularies read faster. Their brains draw upon long-term memory with greater efficiency because they have greater speed of pattern recognition. Long-Term Memory Examples Since long-term memory involves everything that persists in a stable way that you can access on demand. As mentioned, not all long-term memories will be equally robust. But as long as you can recall something about the information you’re looking for, the memory has indeed persisted in your long-term memory. In terms of where these memories are “stored” in the brain, scientists still disagree. Whereas some believe long-term memory and short-term or working memory follow a “single store” model, other researchers think that the location of remembered information or “mental imagery” changes over time. With those points in mind, let’s look at some examples of long-term memory. Procedural Memory Probably the easiest type of long-term memory to understand is procedural memory. Anytime you ride a bike, use chopsticks, type an email or play a musical instrument, you’re drawing upon skills that are deep in your long-term memory. The visual pattern recognition we discussed above is highly-related here. When we look at a painting, we can determine practically on autopilot whether we’re looking at an object, portrait of a person or a landscape. There’s a procedural quality to how we understand the visual world around us. Episodic Memory Episodic memory is all about time. It’s personal and related to you. Anything you remember about specific events and periods of your life belong to this category: Getting married Trips Birthdays Job interviews Although it’s different than semantic memory, there are a few relationships between the two types. For example, knowing the name of the place you got married is semantic in nature, and also carries with it episodic memories. Semantic Memory Everyone knows multiple facts about the world, and that’s

Memory works like breathing and blinking. Here’s why: You can control your brain function to a certain extent and it operates entirely on autopilot, whether you’re paying attention to it or not. How do we know? Think about your home. Did you have to work hard to learn the layout? Probably not. You probably learned it automatically. The alphabet, on the other hand, required exercises and repetition over weeks. Your teachers guided the process. As an adult, you need to guide the memory process yourself when you want to learn new information. Given that memory is both an automatic process and a tool we can use deliberately, how exactly does it work? The answer is fascinating and comes with many clues that will help you improve it. Let’s dig in, starting with this handy infographic that lets you see and understand the three main memory processes at a glance: How Does Human Memory Work? The 3 Main Processes Scientists think that memory is built from processes that work together. These processes involve multiple neural pathways and include: Encoding Storing Retrieving, or decoding Encoding Encoding takes place during and after information enters your brain through the senses. It starts with the initial impression and interpretation of information. Take the example of learning your home layout. In Human Spatial Memory: Remembering Where, the authors present a number of theories of how encoding begins and produces a memory trace that leads to consolidation. One of their theories suggests that our brains remember spatial layouts by determining which objects are on top of other objects. In other words, you remember the location of the kitchen because the countertops and the stop stand on top of its floor. The tub is on top of the bathroom floor, etc. The brain then uses what is called its “coordinate system” to encode the information. One theory of memory says that our brains track surfaces and what objects or on top of other objects in order to remember our environments. When it comes to learning information like a language, we can deeply integrate with the process by using one of several forms of active recall. How are Memories Stored In The Brain? In terms of storage, scientists think our spatial information may reside in the parietal lobe. They’ve reached this conclusion because damage to this area of the brain disturbs our spatial awareness. The hippocampus also plays a key role, specifically in consolidation and transferring information from short-term to long-term storage. Storage is a big topic because it’s not clear that information ever really stays put in the brain. On the contrary, scientists have shown that information we’ve memorized moves around over time. Memory expert Dr. Gary Small likens this movement to how families travel from homes around the world to gather in one specific building for Thanksgiving dinner once a year. Retrieval (Decoding) Dr. Small’s analogy suggests that our memories are actually split apart and keep moving around in the brain. Then, when we retrieve the memories, they move to a single location so we can perceive them as something that feels whole. And when our recall does not feel whole and complete, that’s because some parts of the memories did not make it to the party. Here’s more detail on recall and retrieval with more details on where memories are stored. How Are Memories Formed? People tend to think that long-term memories take time to form. However, scientists know this not to be the case. Not only can certain protein synthesis formations rapidly form long term memories, we also experience flashbulb memory. Either way, the direct answer to how memories form is neurochemical. It is literally the collaboration of existing brain structures working together to “connect” in order to facilitate retention and recollection of multiple details. You can even see the process take place with your own eyes as neurons and synapses find one another and connect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0rHZ_RDdyQ As memories connect, myelin wraps around the connections. The strength of any given memory appears related to the robustness of the connection itself, the strength of the myelin sheath and the length of the dendritic spines on the neurons. Although the exact process of how memories are formed and stored is still not well-understood, scientist and memory expert David Eagleman claims in The Brain that every healthy brain has room for a zettabyte of information. Where Are Memories Stored? As mentioned, the brain stores memory throughout its structures. And the exact location of individual memories can and does change. This means that the most direct answer to the question is that our memories are stored in our synapses. They are literally stored in connections. But there’s another way to think about the question. Memories aren’t just stored in your brain. They are stored in the brains of other people. In books. Movies. Recorded music. Library archives. Our species has devised alph

Do you want to know why questioning everything is the best policy in life? It’s because humans are prone to error, including the smartest amongst us. In fact, there’s a principle called “the curse of knowledge” that highlights this problem. A popular example of how this plays out in life is in the exchanges between Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes often points out how Watson doesn’t see the simplest things simply because he doesn’t question the details enough. It’s not that Watson isn’t a smart guy. He’s a doctor, after all. But because questioning things is such a small part of his mental activity, he misses both the big picture and the granular details. As a result, Holmes shines as an incredibly bright individual and Watson seems rather dim, despite his credentials. If you’d like to learn how to question things with greater frequency so you can observe the world in-depth, stick around. In this post, we’re diving deep into why you should always question everything and different ways to do it well. Much of my suggestions are based on courses in critical thinking I used to teach during my previous career as a university professor. Let’s begin with this infographic covering the benefits: Why Questioning Everything Is Critical to Great Thinking As you’ve seen on the infographic, questioning promotes understanding, drives innovation and helps you build confidence. Even if you never get into debating others in a formal setting, you simply cannot put a price on being able to explain why you think in particular ways and substantiating your views with evidence. But there’s also a long history to rational questioning that you’ll find helpful to know. For example, the ancient Greeks knew that asking questions was their best bet when it came to critical thinking. A lot of people associate questioning as a tool introduced by Plato through the Socratic dialogues. Although it’s true that Plato used the character of Socrates to highlight the use of questions to sharpen our thoughts, inquiry is much older. The Pre-Socratics, for example, devised what is called Eleatic Philosophy. Parmenides of Elea, from which Eleatic Philosophy gets its name, is sometimes considered the first of the Greeks to use questions to explore the nature of reality itself. How Questioning Removes Errors Quickly Here’s the most important point about these philosophers: They preferred to use logic instead of their direct senses. And this meant using language in particular ways. In fact, a lot of their wording boils down to a kind of math though the use of syllogisms that help with thinking logically. Here’s an example of a typical syllogism: “All mammals are animals. All elephants are mammals. Therefore, all elephants are animals.” To test the validity of this statement, the philosophers would use questions that remove their senses. It might sound silly to us today, but put yourself in their shoes for a moment. If you were to use purely your sense of touch to assess an elephant, you could conclude that this animal is a reptile based on its leathery skin. So, before the Greeks developed classification systems, many of which we still use today, they needed to question everything in order to rule out errors that could mislead them. Another way to look at the questioning process is to understand the difference between abstract thinking and concrete thinking. In each of these types of thinking, you use different kinds of questions to arrive at the truth. Finally, we need to be able to question our own most cherished ideas. I’ve done that myself often. Consider my work on this blog. I’ve even asked whether or not the Memory Palace technique I teach actually works. Fortunately, the science supports my teaching. But I would have missed out on learning a lot of the science if I hadn’t had the courage to ask the question. The Dialectic Approach Sticking with the ancient Greeks, let’s look at Plato a little further. One of Plato’s main contributions is called dialectical thinking. Through the use of questions, it allows you to reason effectively by producing multiple ways of looking at just about any issue or problem. It works because you use questions to examine your thoughts and the thoughts of others before, during and after arriving at conclusions. In other words, the process of questioning never really ends. This process is the core of the scientific method, in which nothing is ever “proved.” Instead, we use our scientific questions to help us produce evidence that either validates or invalidates our assumptions about the world and reality. Without being able to ask and answer questions as an ongoing process, truth fizzles up quickly. And this is why Plato’s recording of the dialogues of Socrates is such an astonishing document. Whether Socrates is right or wrong, what matters is the freedom to debate and keep questioning things. Other Traditions Based on Questioning Everything Although the ancie

We are all naive sometimes. And make no mistake: That can be a very good thing in the right context. Why? Because the core of scientific, philosophical and personal progress requires the ability to see the world with fresh eyes. By the same token, being naive can also be incredibly destructive. It can force you to miss out on so many of life’s pleasures because it can make you: Irrational when rationality is needed Skeptical when active participation is required Emotionally destructive when only reason can save the day But here’s the very good news: When it comes to learning how to be less naive, the improvement process could not be simpler. And this post covers how to increase your wisdom in precise terms. Ready? Let’s get S.M.A.R.T.E.R together! (I’ll tell you what the acronym means later. I promise!) Am I Naive? The Top Seven Signs of a Naive Person Scientists have shown that being naive is essential to our cognitive development as kids. We literally cannot tell the differences between things without allowing curiosity to help us distinguish the difference between things. For example, as kids we scientifically test the world. We learn to avoid hot surfaces by being naive about what they are and how they harm us. This means that the number one way to know if someone is being naive is pretty simple. One: Lack of Experience If you want to know how to stop being naive, ask this simple question every time an opinion floats to your mind: Do I actually have the experience required to make my opinion valid? Questioning everything in this way will instantly make you a smarter person. You’ll certainly stick your foot in your mouth much less often. This is true because intelligent people ask questions – or at least acknowledge that a topic is in question – before making final statements about it. But naive people? Not so much. You can often tell by the speed of their answers that they simply lack the background knowledge required to give an intelligent response. Two: Lack of Self-Awareness Some people suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect. This takes place when a person is not smart enough to know that they aren’t educated in a particular topic area. It’s very destructive, and one need only look at the comments on various social media sites to see how rampant this problem is. Three: Poor Vocabulary Did you know that scientists have warned that the vocabulary of our young people is rapidly shrinking? This connects to our first point about how experience helps us differentiate different things in the world. We rarely do this through experience alone. Our language helps us process the experience and deepen it through communication with others. But if we don’t know the words for objects and experiences, our ability to understand and connect them with other aspects of reality shrinks. Four: Gullibility Having a larger vocabulary has been shown to help you read faster, which helps you avoid being easily cheated or deceived. The more you know, the more you can know. Yet, there are people out there who talk for hours about things like the Mandela Effect with zero evidence that it exists. Watch out for people who misuse scientific-sounding terminology to take advantage of the gullible. They don’t realize that other people exploit their lack of scientific literacy. They do this by showing them ads to sell them products packed with other sensational material. Entire industries direct themselves at consumers with limited mental processing power. Five: Lack of Critical Thinking Skills Now, I don’t mean to put only a few people on the spot. Incredibly smart people also display gullibility from time to time. Desperate health situations, lack of time to think and other situations can cause even people with very high IQ scores to blunder. However, people with critical thinking abilities often realize their mistakes much quicker. Often, they’re able to reverse course before any significant damage has been done. They can do this because they’ve had some training in critical thinking, like the kind you can get on this blog. Here are some resources if you’d like to beef up your brain so you can think through important issues faster and make fewer mistakes: 9 Critical Thinking Strategies Analytical Thinking Abstract Thinking Concrete Thinking Logical vs. Rational Thinking 14 of the Best Critical Thinking Books Six: Lack of Willingness To Change They say that the only constant is change. But one of the top signs of a naive person is inflexibility. Nietzsche put it best when he said that asking someone else to change is like asking the entire universe to change. But isn’t that often what naive people do? As I suggested in my TEDx Talk, which centered on a naive passage of my own life, we know that we can’t change others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtYjdriSpM But we can change ourselves. So if you want to stop being so naive, make sure to check out the various ways that you can change yourself in the section below. Seven:

David Perell is an author who helps people excel in what you might call the business of creativity. And frankly, I think he’s a memory artist too. For example, everything that has to do with writing winds up involving the most positive form of spaced repetition. It’s like the ultimate mnemonic device. But it’s not traditional spaced repetition or rote learning. It’s creative repetition. But these matters aren’t the only reason I wanted to interview David. I’m also interested in how he’s using technologies of today to educate people. As the founder of Write of Passage, David helps people generate ideas systematically and transform them into living, breathing and published pieces. He is doing this though cohort-based training programs online and has been generating incredible results for people who tired of ineffective writing methods. If you’re interested in expressing yourself through writing and developing career-level chops, definitely check his program out. As I often like to say, writing is the source of all wealth. I believe it is also a key source of memory too. Enjoy this conversation and I hope to hear from you in writing soon! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pMzpbKJMTw David’s YouTube Channel David’s website David’s Twitter

Want to know why concrete thinking is so difficult to define? It’s because people use the term in many different ways. I observed this for years while teaching critical thinking as a professor. To this day, I observe multiple uses as people regularly ask me for help in making their minds more practical and their memory skills sharper. Here’s something else a bit strange that I’ve encountered as a memory expert: People will ask me to help them remember “abstract” concepts, thinking that abstract thinking is somehow the opposite of concrete thinking. But is that really the case? Not always. You actually can experience some incredibly concrete abstractions. Flags, for example, represent entire countries at an abstract level. Yet flags are also incredibly concrete. So what gives? If you’re confused, don’t worry. We’re going to get to the bottom of things on this page. That way, when people say things to you like “concrete thinking is literal thinking,” you’ll be able to respond… “Yes, it is that, but also so much more.” Are you ready? Let’s dive in! What Is Concrete Thinking? The first thing we need to understand is that thinking is always about representing knowledge. The world is a very complex place, but for the sake of simplicity, we can boil our experience of it down to three kinds information: Material Conceptual Experiential When it comes to the experience part, many people cite Jean Piaget as an expert in concrete thinking. However, I believe this is a false attribution. Here’s why: Piaget was really talking about something called concrete experience. In the first of his four stages of development, he discusses Sensorimotor development, which takes place between birth and the age of two. There is not necessarily anything related to thinking as we normally mean it going on during this period of life. Rather, the goal of the child during this stage is to establish what is called “object permanence.” In other words, the child “remembers” that objects exist even when they are outside of awareness. Concrete experience with objects is needed for this to take place. It’s only during stage 2 that symbolic thought, which involves abstract thinking begins to emerge. Later, logical thinking and then scientific reasoning develop at different levels depending on the individual’s context. So with Piaget out of the way, let’s look at what really defines concrete thinking. The Real Definition Of Concrete Thought I believe Maxine Anderson puts it best in a book called, Absolute Truth and Unbearable Psychic Pain: “Simply put, the concrete state of mind relates to reality in terms of sensory perception and sensory experience, defining reality in terms of what the peripheral senses convey. More specifically it is a state of mind in which metaphor and symbolic thought are not available.” Researchers have generally agreed. In this study, for example, the researchers found that you have to bring a “concretizing mindset” in order to help define what you’re experiencing. To better understand the need to literally work at making your thoughts about an experience concrete, try this exercise: Place an orange in your hand. Think about how it feels in your hand and how it will taste. Those are concrete thoughts. Although an abstract thought about how much the orange weighs or what country it comes from might arise, thoughts about feelings and taste are based on your concrete experience of stimuli in your immediate environment. 3 Concrete Thinking Examples Other lists of examples claim that “concrete thinkers” don’t understand phrases like “it’s raining cats and dogs.” Frankly, I’m not sure if that’s true. If some people can’t understand or relate to popular idioms, other issues may be involved, such as literacy levels, reading comprehension and sufficient practice with self-expression. So with the immediacy of your physical senses in mind, let’s look at some more examples. These will help better illuminate the concrete thinking process. One: Visible Thinking Although Visible Thinking is a book for mathematics teachers, I believe its key points apply to all kinds of thinking. The authors basically point out that even the most abstract and conceptual concepts can be made concrete by: Speaking them out loud Hearing others discuss them Drawing them on a chalkboard Writing about them in a journal Memory expert Tony Buzan was a huge proponent of visual thinking. His style of mind mapping has helped thousands of people turn complex ideas and processes into immediately graspable form. Using a mind map is one of the best ways to feel and see anything you find abstract in a concrete manner. One example is how Tony taught the rules that govern memory by having all of his students draw what he called The Most Important Graph in the World. It’s a simple concept, but has a lot of moving parts that can be difficult to understand when conveyed in writing alone. I never fully understood it myself until

Abstract thinking is the ability to step away from concrete facts and juggle ideas, symbols and possibilities in your mind. If you’ve ever connected unrelated concepts, predicted how a story might end or spotted a pattern in a spreadsheet no one else noticed, you were thinking abstractly. Still, a lot of people struggle to understand abstract thinking. I know a lot of my students did when I taught critical thinking at university. Also when I taught Film Studies and would show them movies by directors like David Lynch. When I would tell them that many of Lynch’s films still involved the hero’s journey, they would struggle to think about how his plots had anything to do with mainstream cinema. Well, if you want to not only understand abstract thinking better, but also excel at practicing it, this article hands you the playbook. Read on you’ll discover: A full definition of abstract thinking Examples that train your brain to see various types of abstraction How to train your brain to move between concrete ideas and see the big picture on demand By the time you finish the last line, you’ll be on the path to greater mental versatility and be able to tackle even the most intangible problem when it appears. Ready to upgrade your mind and think more abstractly? Let’s get started! What Is Abstract Thinking? We typically hear that abstract thinking originates with the Greeks. Plato, for example, talked about how our material world is a shadowy “copy” of a pure and perfect world of ideals. In this sense, our world is an “abstraction” of the perfect world because “ab” as a prefix means “away from” or “removed.” “Traction,” on the other hand, means to pull away. Thus, an easy way to think about abstract thinking is to realize that it is the act of pulling away and removing yourself from a concrete process or idea. This is very different than how the other types of thinking work. To make this distinction as clear as possible, here’s an example from Plato’s shadowy-world-as-copy concept. A Simple Example of Abstract Thinking Take the word “human.” In a concrete way, we use this term to indicate a person. But when we “pull away” from the concrete meaning as part of the thinking process, we can also see that human means: Mammal Homo sapien A collection of biological cells Stardust This list gets more and more abstract as we move from matters of genus and species to the cosmological origins of life. With this example in mind, you can also think of abstract thinking as existing purely in the mind. Nowhere in nature will you find a sign that says, “this is a biological cell that belongs to a mammal.” Humans have created such concepts and they exist only in our mental lives. “Hold on,” you might be thinking. “What about books and videos?” True, and congratulations on holding critical thinking to be important when people write about topics like this. And you’re right: We have indeed created methods for storing our ideas using words that are imprinted on paper or saved in electronic formats. But how are those recorded ideas brought to life? They only have meaning when a human interacts with them, using a mind trained in abstraction to “translate” the stored words into something meaningful and useful. One of those ways involves committing concepts to memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBYBu-Qystc A Broader History of Abstraction Now, I mentioned that typically we think of the origin of being able to abstract ideas as coming from the Greeks. No doubt they made a huge impact. After Plato, Aristotle did a lot of work that helped create many of the classification systems we still use to this day for gathering and organizing knowledge. However, as the scholars of memory Tyson Yunkaporta and Lynne Kelly have shown, indiginous cultures dealt with plenty of abstraction long before the Greeks. Their memory techniques in particular provide great evidence of how prehistoric people “abstracted” ideas from the world and placed them in memory by associating them with objects like the lukasa. They also used processes like Songlines and body parts to help them remember abstract cultural processes. As more and more scholars learn about the past, we find another definition of the term abstract thinking. Whereas we used to think the Greeks were the first to use serious critical thinking strategies in a lot of areas of life, more data helps us think “abstractly” about other cultures and timelines. We are literally removing and pulling away from a territorialized form of thinking and including more history to form a new and more nuanced picture of human development. The more information we need to consider, the more abstract things become. Especially when it comes to matters of consciousness, as you can see play out in this excellent debate hosted by Skeptic Magazine and Michael Shermer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alz3SD_G-KI More Abstract Thinking Examples As you can already tell, abstract thinking

Ever heard of a note taking technique that involves vibrant colors and keywords and asked yourself… What on earth is this mindmapping stuff all about? I used to ask myself that question too. Then, one day I started to dig into the topic seriously. I soon discovered that Tony Buzan had developed a number of laws for mapping the mind well. So well in fact that he claimed it could to “radiant” thinking. Sadly, Tony Buzan has left fans of accelerated learning for the great Memory Palace in the sky. But we’re very fortunate that Marek Kasperski has picked up the mantle. Thanks to his valiant efforts, we have an incredibly talented instructor who will be taking Tony Buzan’s unique views on mind mapping as a learning, creativity and memory tool into the future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q11rI8A39NA About Marek Kasperski Marek Kasperski is Vice President of the Tony Buzan Company. He’s committed to helping you achieve your highest ideals through memory techniques, mind maps and a wide variety of mental techniques that have been proven time and time again to work. All you have to do? Show up and work with the techniques. Marek is also the Global Chief Arbiter and president of G.O.M.S.A. (Guild of Mind Sports Arbiters) where you can learn more about one of the incredible competitions you can take part in and how to qualify to compete. Visit Tonybuzan.com for more information about this unique set of skills and learning techniques like the Memory Palace. You won’t regret it!

Is intelligence fixed? Of course not. Think about artificial intelligence. It’s been improving each and every year. And so has human intelligence. As you’ll see, the rise in human intelligence is easily demonstrated by looking at the improvement of IQ scores over the years. However, there is a catch. Lately, IQ levels are showing signs of slipping. Nonetheless, the evidence shows that not only can your intelligence change. There are also guaranteed ways you can improve it. You just need to be willing to set specific learning goals and then show up to complete them. Because if you don’t, your intelligence will almost certainly degrade. So if you’ve been hoping to get smarter, stick around. On the page we’re taking a deep dive into malleable intelligence and putting the power of change directly into your hands. Is Intelligence Fixed? In Genetics and Education, Arthur Jensen famously said that “intelligence, by definition, is what intelligence tests measure.” In other words, intelligence cannot be fixed because it is the tests that define it, not some intrinsic quality of the brain. And since tests are changing all the time, this means that the definition of intelligence also changes. Updated definitions are normal in science. Even the definitions of crystal and fluid intelligence have changed over time as new ways of looking at the topic have evolved. What Exactly Does “Intelligence” Mean? Of course, the word “intelligence” needs more definition. According to James Flynn in What Is Intelligence?, we need to look at a bare minimum of six categories: Mental acuity (dealing with problems you’ve never seen before) Mental habits (ability to learn new things and apply them, like memorizing new vocabulary and using it in context) Mental attitudes (the willingness to apply oneself to developing mental habits) Knowledge accumulation (the more you know, the more you can know) Assimilation speed (as you develop pattern recognition, you’ll learn faster) Memory (ability to access information) Taking on new challenges and learning new things automatically changes your intelligence. The more you take on over time, the more flexible your intelligence can become. In each of the definitions of intelligence Flynn lists, change is a given. Even by virtue of seeing a problem you’ve never encountered before, your intelligence undergoes change. How could it not? So, when we’re asking questions like, is IQ genetic or learned? The answer doesn’t matter. Here’s what does: Intelligence undergoes constant change. We know this because new information is always coming at you and always exercising your memory. Even your dreams can cause your intelligence to change as they bring you new insights about yourself or trigger old memories from your past. The real question comes down to the category of mental attitude, which itself boils down to the question of mental strength. What Does Malleable Intelligence Mean? Have you ever heard about neuroplasticity? It means that our neurons literally reorganize and “rewire” themselves. In other words, the structures of our brain change the brain as they grow. Since “malleable” means “changeable,” then the meaning of malleable intelligence is changing intelligence. Because we know that the brain physically changes, so too must the content of the brain transform. And it’s only because the brain is malleable (changeable) that we’re able to learn anything at all. As discussed in the Handbook of Intelligence: “IQ scores can change significantly in a short period of time but, more importantly… targeted interventions can improve performance on the cognitive processes assessed in intelligence measures, contradicting the belief that our intelligence is fixed.” Echoing Flynn, the authors of this handbook talk a lot about the importance of mindset. If you want to change your attitude you can. The Attitude Of Parents Is Critical Researchers have shown that how parents think about the malleability of intelligence deeply influences their children. Parents who express to their children that their intelligence can be shaped help actualize positive transformation. Similar studies have shown that teachers and professors have the same effect on their students. If the instructor believes that your intelligence is fixed, then they might influence you into behaving as if it is. However, if they know that intelligence is malleable, they are much more likely to help you improve your level of intelligence. A Sad Personal Example Of A Negative Professor It was my third year as a teaching assistant during my PhD. I was teaching under the main professor of a course called The Networked Imagination. It was all about the history of the Internet. On the first day, the professor I was assisting stood in front of over 500 students in the lecture hall. She said that 90% of them would fail. 50% of them wouldn’t even pass the first exam. Crazy, right? It is, but it happens in schools all the time. And it need

Scott Gosnell’s translations of the memory improvement books of Giordano Bruno are legendary. They have enabled English readers around the world to access some of the richest ideas for using the Memory Palace technique around. Now, Scott is launching a revised and updated edition of his first translation: On the Shadows of Ideas. Frankly, this is the most important Kickstarter campaign I’ve ever seen. Why support it? A few reasons. First, this incredible book will help you understand the classic method of loci in a deeper way. If you want to explore the Renaissance approach and learn more about using a memory wheel, On the Shadows of Ideas is essential reading. Even better: You’ll discover an incredible way to apply it to reflecting on life’s many challenges. It’s an epic book, and the best part is that supporters of the current Kickstarter campaign can also sign up to get all of Scott’s Bruno translations. You can also get access to a course that Scott is putting together – a learning experience I’m tremendously excited about! In this interview, Scott and I dive deeper into the ideas in this book and the implications for your practice with mnemonics. We also discuss the production of this kind of educational material from Bruno’s era to our own, its challenges and the wide open potentialities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvnKtst9qZI To support the Kickstarter campaign, check out the trailer video and select your support level. If you have any questions, you can find Scott: Twitter Bottle Rocket Science Windcastle VC More On Giordano Bruno on the MMM Podcast Scott and I have discussed Bruno’s memory works a few times before: On the Composition of Images On Scott’s first edition of On the Shadows of Ideas (De Umbris Idearum) Enjoy this episode and I look forward to seeing you with your copy of this new edition!

Normally when we think about the Memory Palace technique, it’s for virtuous outcomes. For example, medical students use it to learn the skills that help them save lives. Hannibal Lecter? Not so much. In fact, this fictional doctor has such a horrible memory problem, the ways he uses the technique almost puts it to shame. Good thing then that it truly is the stuff of fiction. The question is… How exactly is memory and the Memory Palace technique presented in the vast number of stories that have sprung from the original Thomas Harris novels? Let’s have a look and think through some ways you could turn a bad relationship with your memory into a force for good. An Overview of Hannibal’s Memory Palace The first interesting thing about Hannibal Lecter is not so much memory, but language learning. For example, Lecter is said throughout the stories to be have studied: Lithuanian English Italian Latin Japanese I raise the point partly because it lets me make a scientifically valid pun: bilingualism is proven to be good for your brain, especially if you become a polyglot. I also point it out because it’s part of Hannibal’s character as a well-studied individual, particularly one who murders many of his victims to teach lessons. “Lecter” connects to words like “lecture” and “lector” which means reader in Latin. But the name is also close to lēctūrus, which has meanings related to choosing, gathering and even stealing – the exact behaviors of serial killers. The Memorable Buildings In Lecter’s Life The next thing we should focus on are the buildings Lecter might have used for his Memory Palaces. Theoretically, these might include: Castle Lecter Medical school buildings in Paris Baltimore medical The Norman Chapel in Palermo (Cappela Palatina) His own offices His prison cells As far as I can tell, few of these buildings would be like the Norman Chapel, which is a very different way of approaching the Memory Palace technique. By his own definition, Lecter’s Memory Palaces aren’t about storing information related to learning faster. Instead, he primarily uses his “Memory Palaces” to mentally revisit the places being imprisoned prevents him from seeing. Since he seems to know a lot about architecture, it’s little surprise he uses old churches. In fact, the most famous Hannibal Lecter Memory quote is: “My palace is vast, even by medieval standards.” This quote proves that he’s not really using memory techniques. Few, if any memory masters would have only one Memory Palace. My friend Nelson Dellis, for example, has over 300! The best part? Memory Palace examples are in abundance for anyone to take inspiration from. The Major Memory Themes Associated With Lecter I feel that the series of books, movies and serial episodes aren’t so much about what Hannibal Lecter likes to remember, but what he has repressed. True, Hannibal refers to ancient memory improvement books like the Rhetorica ad Herennium. But we never see him using the technique to learn anything. Instead, the dramatic focus is always on the negative aspects of his relationship to memory. For example, there’s a symmetry between him being an astute language learner only to spend quite a long time without speaking to anyone. He’s also said to have repressed memories of his sister. Lecter’s self-induced forgetting later has a symmetrical relationship in the novel Hannibal. We see this when Lecter hypnotically induces Clarice Starling into serving as a proxy for his murdered sister. It is ultimately repressing memories that turned Lecter into a killer, and there’s nothing I’ve seen in the series about using the techniques to remember information. Rather, as Jessica Balanzategui has pointed out, memory serves throughout the stories as a symbol for repression and desire. To be clear, the series does talk about him using this technique as a “mental system.” But it never shows him using it – certainly not for any positive outcomes like language learning or passing med school exams. It is primarily depicted as a tool used to escape the punishment he deserves. Resources For Creating Your Own Memory Palace When we focus on the positive, Thomas Harris talks about what is usually called the Roman Room technique. Harris attributes it to Cicero, who is often mistakenly credited as the author of a book from 90 BCE that contains Memory Palace instructions called Rhetorica ad Herennium. This technique is also sometimes called the method of loci or the journey method. For “next level” applications, you’ll also want to learn the Major System, Pegword Method and develop a PAO system. One inspiration you can take from the Lecter approach of using medieval buildings is raised by memory expert Chester Santos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnhM3heMJLQ As Santos suggests, you can mentally transform rooms in buildings so that your memories stick better when using a Memory Palace. You can even try doing this with invented or virtual Memory Palaces. For the best po

If you want to know how to increase IQ, the answer is simple. Create and complete goals. Sounds like a sweeping statement, doesn’t it? I’ll explain why it’s true on this page. And rest assured, the main reason why intelligence goes stagnant in the first place is also simple to explain. It comes from the absence of goals, or the bad habit of not completing the ones you set for yourself. Think of it this way: Failing to continually fuel yourself with goals leads to feelings of worthlessness and shame on a downward spiral to rock bottom. But once you understand that intelligence requires goals in order to grow, there are endless self-directed missions you can create that are scientifically proven to make you smarter. And to help you even more, I’ll give you a list of suggested activities that improve cognitive function quickly. Ready to boost your IQ in ways that are easy and fun? Let’s get started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXl_s6wnmak How To Increase Intelligence: 7 IQ Boosting Activities Now that you know how to separate your wants from your needs, let’s look at additional activities you can start practicing today. One: Boost Your Cardio I try to get to the gym at least once a week. The benefits to intelligence are too large to miss. As published in the journal Neuroscience, regular cardio exercise is incredibly important from cognition. One study in particular found that exercise improves “synaptic plasticity and neuronal excitability.” In other words, your brain is like a garden and exercise makes your brain wake up like flowers opening to the sun. Two: Meditate Daily There are a lot of reasons to meditate, and reducing mind wandering is one of them. As reported in Psychological Science, people prone to distraction are especially helped by even just a simple meditation practice. One reason meditation works so well is because meditation increases memory capacity. Because meditation trains you to continually bring your awareness back to a basic level of consciousness, your procedural memory improves. In other words, coming back to a state of focus becomes an autopilot procedure. That way you can learn a lot more, faster. Your intelligence will increase naturally as a result. For more on both simple and robust meditation techniques, I suggest reading The Victorious Mind: How to Master Memory, Meditation and Mental Well-Being. Three: Read In 90-Day Knowledge Missions People get interested in topics, but then give up too easily. But the trick to increasing your knowledge and ability to learn intelligently is persistence. Rather than getting interested in reading just one book on a topic, you want to read several. That way you develop what is called “pattern recognition.” So why 90-days of reading on a particular topic? Well, a lot of numbers around positive habit formation get tossed around: 21 days, 66 days, etc. But as Richard Wiseman reports based on research in his book 59 Seconds, 90 days is the closest number. And if you commit yourself to 90-day reading missions, you’ll not only learn enough about a topic to legitimately know a decent amount about it. You’ll instill the habit of reading for depth. As a result, you’ll develop more pattern recognition, spot more patterns and connect the dots in the future with much greater ease. Four: Learn a Musical Instrument Musicians enjoy many benefits. For one thing, it’s been proven that they can pull details out of conversations better in noisy crowds. This finding probably relates to the pattern recognition benefits you’ll get from mission-oriented reading. Music also helps with language acquisition because musicians become expert at handling a variety of sonic input sources. It’s like they can juggle sounds with their minds. The best part? Musicians are able to speak a language of their own with other instrumentalists. That’s why I have always kept up my own musical abilities, and often take on 90-day music memorization challenges. Five: Create New Things I’ll never forget when my fellow memory expert Mark Channon told me about how his son created a game. He went through everything from initial planning to product design. Not only did this set the stage for learning about game design, but also enabled him to learn better during the second iteration. Likewise when I write new books. Because the new goals I set are based on the existing competence I already have, I’m able to quickly discover industry practices, learn them and put them to use. As reported by Science Daily, the brain literally changes itself as we create. The existing neural networks become stronger and new ones form. Note: creating new things should not become a game of perfectionism. After all, perfectionists aren’t even perfect at being perfect. Instead, like Mark’s son, understand that just about everything related to your memory and intelligence is permanently in beta. That means you can always improve on the second iteration. Basic intelligence involves allowing yourself to make mistakes

Do you wish you knew how to remember everything you hear? If so, you might feel like you’re a poor listener because you forget so many details. Worse, you wind up losing out on so many opportunities to participate in the present and take action in the future. For example, let’s say someone mentions a book. You know you just have to read it because it’s going to help you conquer an important goal. But after you leave your meeting, you not only forget what the book is called. You even forget that anyone mentioned the perfect path existed for you in the first place. Good news: There’s a way to eliminate this problem from your life forever. On this page, I’ll show you how to remember all the important details in any conversation from now on. You’re about to become a “Warrior of the Mind” who never forgets important details again. Let’s get started. How to Remember Conversations Better In 4 Steps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Iuqfmpo8CI The steps you’re about to learn begin with a meta-step. You need to do this first in order to see any improvement in your memory for remembering everything you hear. Commit. I know, I know. Some people are already clicking the “back” button because some crazy teacher on the Internet is trying to hold you accountable to your goals. But we all know it’s true. Those who succeed at anything are committed to learning skills and practicing. And that’s all that I ask in the conversation we’re having now: Remember the need to commit so that you can improve in life. With that in mind, here’s what I want you to commit to first: One: The Spatial Memory Hack That Makes Every Bad Listener Good The first thing you need to do is start becoming more aware of the details as they fly past your ears.Then you need to grab ho ld of them and pin them into place. To do this, you’ll want to learn a special technique called the Memory Palace. There are a few ways to use this technique for conversations and we’ll get into them. The first thing to understand is that you can use rooms to “place” ideas that you want to memorize. For example, let’s say the friends Janet and Tina are hanging out in a cafe. Janet tells Tina about a book that will help her improve her memory. The book is called The Victorious Mind, by Anthony Metivier. To use a Memory Palace, Tina takes the difficult new title and connects it with information she already knows. She then mentally places this familiar association in the corner of the cafe. By focusing on a location in a room and placing an association, you have a reference point you can return to later. Let’s say Tina’s a fan of the show Victor Frankenstein. The book is by Anthony Metivier, so she imagines Victor handing his mind to an ant after a battle. He’s feeling victorious when he does it. Now, this association is not a one-to-one correspondence. But later when Tina searches for the book on Google, she’s going to think back to the corner of that cafe and remember the key words: Victorious, mind and Anthony based on the associative-imagery. These are the basics of the Memory Palace technique. Two: Elaborate Everything Your Hear Now that you know about using the space around you, exaggerate and elaborate everything about the association you just made. Instead of just having Victor Frankenstein hand his mind to an ant, imagine his mind exploding like a bomb. Make sure to make your associations multi sensory. That way, they’ll be even easier to remember later. Hearing the sound of the explosion and feeling its force in your imagination will make the memory much stickier when you think back to that corner in the cafe. This kind of elaborative encoding can feel difficult when you’re new to using these techniques. Don’t fret. These visualization exercises will help you develop the skills in no time at all. The trick is to have a system for adding the exaggerations. I use the KAVE COGS formula: Kinesthetic Auditory Visual Emotional Conceptual Olfactory Gustatory Spatial One way to practice running through each of these is to run through them all while developing your first pegword method. Three: Practice Scaling By this point, you’re probably thinking… “Great. I know how to memorize just one detail. What about the thousands of details I encounter in conversations every week?” Well, we all start somewhere. If you can’t memorize one detail, there’s no point in worrying about how to memorize thousands of them, right? Scaling up to multiple details is easy, but you need the basics mastered first. Then, to scale is easy, provided you follow this simple recommendation: Know how to turn any room into a Memory Palace with at least 8 Magnetic Stations in it. Using a simple number system, you can turn any room into a Memory Palace that will help you recall every important detail in any conversation. This is what we call a “Magnetic Square” in the MMM Masterclass. It’s one of several different ways to use the Memory Palace technique. I like this for cafe meetings because it makes it e

Imagine memorizing 70 decks of playing cards to raise money for Alzheimer’s. Not just to fund research into curing the disease, but also to support front line workers who help care for the victims of this cruel disease. Well, that’s the goal memory athlete Braden Adams set for himself. Think about this for a second: That’s 70 times 52… 3640 cards, all shuffled up. That’s a lot of Memory Palace prep and Braden and I dig into that topic, including the “Shadow” technique used for encoding the cards – a powerful way of applying mnemonic tacts you’re not going to miss. I haven’t developed the Shadow for myself (yet), but rest assured it’s much more robust than this technique for memorizing a deck of playing cards. But it’s the meaning of Braden’s mission I want to focus on above all. It is incredible. Why? Because memorizing cards is a perfectly aligned symbol for the battle against conditions like Alzheimer’s. After all, the disease mixes up your thoughts and memories, but when you have the kind of memory skills Braden has developed for yourself, no matter how shuffled those cards get, you can still lay everything out in perfect order. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIO1Zg03akk To train, Braden has been using the International Association of Memory software and live streaming the journey to 70 decks on Twitch. I wanted to learn more about this training journey and help spread the word about his mission. His tips on creating a proper Memory Palace are golden. And as we speak, people have already been donating to the cause! If you’d like to toss in a few Magnetic clams, as I’ve done myself, you’ll find the donation link in the description or can simply type this handy link I’ve created for the cause. But you can also consider donating to any Alzheimer’s charity near you during this drive. You can also watch Braden memorize and recall the decks live on August 28th on his stream by visiting his Twitch page. Until the event takes place, if you like digging deep into the nitty gritty about how memory techniques work and how you can use them to complete MASSIVE memory projects like memorizing 70 decks of cards, I think you’re going to love this discussion. For another interview with Braden, here’s the last time he was on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast. It’s also a great conversation packed with valuable info! For more on Braden, follow him on: Braden’s Twitter Braden on Instagram  

If you’ve spent any amount of time looking into memory improvement courses, you’ve come across the name Ron White. But you might be wondering… Is his Black Belt Memory course any good? In a word: Yes. And if you’ve struggled with other memory improvement books and courses, his approach might just be the ticket. One reason why is because the course makes you earn your future lessons. You don’t just get to the next level by skimming and skipping around. You have to actually complete tests in order to progress. And in case you’re wondering, I know this from experience. I’ve completed the course myself. Here’s my Black Belt certificate: Receiving my Black Belt in memory after taking Ron White’s training was a great feeling! Although I already know a fair amount about memory techniques, I still learned new things. The best part? I had a lot of fun going through the program too. And on this page, I’ll tell you more about what I learned and what you can expect. But first, let’s talk about the man who created the course before digging into a full Black Belt Memory Review. Who Is Ron White? Ron White is an author, speaker, seminar leader, course creator and talented YouTube personality. He has also served as a soldier and won several national memory competitions. For example, he won the USA Memory Championship twice, in 2009 and 2010. When it comes to the World Memory Championships, his records are also impressive.   He’s also completed incredible memory demonstrations, such as the 7000 pieces of information involved in the Afghanistan Memory Wall project. I wanted to learn more about these experiences, which is why I’m so glad Ron sat down with me for a long form conversation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1JcM1znKOc I hope by now it’s obvious to you that Ron White’s memory training course is more than legit. And the man is not only a memorizing machine when it comes to using mnemonic strategies. He’s a great teacher and provides tons of inspiration. Ron also knows his history, so it was fun talking with him about some of the old memory books that contain powerful tips and tactics you won’t want to miss. Black Belt Memory Review: What You Need To Know As I mentioned before, this course is unique in that it requires you to earn your progress. To be honest, I initially thought this was a little annoying. I really just wanted to check things out. But that’s the problem isn’t it? We get courses, skip around and then throw our hands up in the air and say… “Nothing new here.” That’s wrong in nearly every case, and when you go through this program as Ron has designed it, there’s a lot new to learn. Keep in mind too that “new” means a few different things: It can be completely new to you because you’ve never heard of something like the Memory Palace or the Major System It can be new because you’ve not thought about classic techniques through the lens of someone else’s experience It can be new because you’ve never deployed a classic technique in quite the same way as Ron has So when Ron gets you to go through the training sequentially, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a complete beginner or an old master. You’re going to learn something new from the program. The Filing System Ron approaches the arrangement and encoding of information through what he calls files. These can be used in different ways. For example, you can have files that serve as numbers and images at the same time. It’s kind of like the pegword method, but with more possible uses. You can use the filing approach to easily make any Memory Palace much more robust, for example. Unique Approaches to the Major System As Ron shared in the conversation we recorded, he combines the body Memory Palace with the Major System in a way that stems from Mega Memory. I think it’s a brilliant adaptation. I wish I would have thought about it myself! The coolest thing about it is that you can apply it to other bodies and use those bodies as files distributed throughout a Memory Palace. In this way, any figure you place can instantly have ten individual stations instead of just one. Review Tips Ron’s Black Belt Memory is one of those rare memory training courses that goes through what matters most in memory: review. You see, so many people treat techniques like the method of loci as if it were meant to be some kind of “eternal” treasure chest. But that’s not the way it works. Rather, these tools give us a solid means for reviewing information in a way that triggers what memory scientists call active recall. If you aren’t following these patterns in an optimal way, your brain simply won’t form memories reliably. And since reliable memory is what we want, Ron makes sure you know about it. Holistic Memory Health As if all that weren’t enough, Ron makes sure you know about diet, hydration and fitness. Face it: We’re all getting older by the minute and we need to keep both our bodies and our brains as fit as possible. The program doesn’t go as deep into this topic as it

Don’t you hate it when you learn NOTHING from a course? Me too. I can’t stand it. And it’s the teacher’s fault right? Well… not so fast. It’s entirely possible that even the best teacher is fighting a tradition and system that’s rigged to fail. Not only that, but there’s the question of what makes an experience “meaningful” in the first place, let alone educational. That’s my I’m glad John Danaher had some time to chat about a compelling article he wrote. It’s called: “The Trouble with Teaching: Is Teaching a Meaningful Job?” What I love about this article, and John’s blog overall, is the deep analytical thinking about the topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiCaqfIa6iE I also really like his book “Automation and Utopia,” but it was this first article that got me hooked on his writing style. It’s very clean, clear and direct. Sometimes VERY direct at how it demolishes some of our ideals about things like teachers and teaching. Sure, eschewing the romantic can be painful. But Radical Honesty is what the MMM Initiative is all about. So do as I’ve done and follow John on Twitter so you don’t miss a thing he shares. And please read Automation and Utopia. It’s clear and thought-provoking. You won’t regret it! Photo Credit: Aengus McMahon

Are you struggling to learn the law? If so, you might be excited to learn that even the world’s top professionals and legal experts never stop learning it. After all, it’s always changing. And there’s a ton to keep up with. Or maybe you, like me, just find the law fascinating. The logic – or sometimes, lack of logic – stretches your mind. It keeps you sharp, and there are always tons of new names and terms to learn. Well, I find the law fascinating, and have been interested in it for many years. I’ll save the strange and mysterious story of how I once almost went to law school after making a court appearance of my own. That’s because today I want to share with you a conversation I had with my favorite online legal vlogger… or Vlawger as David Freiheit likes to call his incredible legal analysis vlawgs on a channel called VivaFrei. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wUdmx0sJUI I’ve been following David for a few years now, and it’s been amazing to watch how his channel has grown to include multiple platforms, including a collaborative community I belong to myself called Viva Barnes Law with Robert Barnes. In this conversation, you’ll learn about the importance of: History Theory Analysis Practice Balance I find the work David’s doing education, inspirational and something well worth paying attention to, especially in our day and age. Enjoy this episode and let us know if you have any question about learning the law!

Let me compliment you on wanting to learn something new. In a world of indifference, so few people take action, let alone search for how to take action. Then there’s the question of what to learn. This can itself be quite challenging because there are so many options out there. Well, on this page we’ll simplify everything by talking about how to learn a variety of things. Not all skills are learned the same way, after all. And to start eliminating the confusion about how to learn, let’s boil things down to a simple formula: S.I.P. Study Implement Practice Once you pick what you want to learn, you study to find out the steps involved. Then you implement those steps, followed by practice to improve your execution. With this process in mind, let’s get started. Why You Should Learn Something New One word: Longevity. Learning things literally promotes cellular growth in your brain. It also strengthens the neural connections you already have. If you go the language learning route, some studies in bilingualism report up to 32 years in brain fortification. This benefit means that your brain gets protected from diseases like Alzheimer’s and Dementia. Other reasons you’re right to say, “I want to learn something” include: Getting a raise or promotion (like Jesse Villalobos) Winning a competition (like James Gerwing) Speaking a language in another country Studying effectively so you can pass an exam Spending time offline to fend off digital amnesia Improve your reasoning abilities To put it another way: If you want to continue learning for the rest of your life, always learning something new is the best way to keep your mind and memory short. And the more you know, the more you can know. How to Learn Something New: A Proven 6-Step Process Now, we’ve seen that to learn we need to take it one S.I.P. at a time. But what are the exact steps? There will always be nuances for different things you want to learn. But generally, here’s what you need: Step One: A Vision Before planning anything or buying books, it’s useful to sit down and imagine the desired outcome. For example, if you want to learn how to improve your memory, you can craft a memory improvement vision statement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFz31HpVkj0 The reason it’s important to do this is that it helps you know your “why.” That way, when certain parts of the journey get tough, you’re able to keep pushing through. And never give up when you’re challenged. No doubt, obstacles can create resistance. But it’s when we push through challenges that growth occurs. This cannot happen if you quit. Crafting a vision statement also helps you test through your conviction. There’s often a difference between what we want and what we’re actually willing to do. When spending some time on your vision, you can dodge a lot of speeding bullets. You can also think through various alternatives. Pro tip: If you don’t like linear prose, one great way to craft your vision statement is through mind mapping. Step Two: Plan Wisely After testing your conviction by crafting a vision statement, it’s time to plan. In this step, you’ll set aside time to research what you want to learn. During this phase, you’ll identify books, courses and key experts who can help you achieve your vision or desired learning outcome. Then, you’ll chart out when you’re going to go through those materials or meet with the expert trainers who can help you. Pro tip: If you struggle to plan and schedule your time, getting help from a coach can be a game changer. There’s no shame in lacking discipline and knowledge in this area. So if you have a vision but struggle to plan and implement, find someone who can help you make it happen. Life Coach Spotter has a great guide that can help you find the perfect person. Step Three: Define The Project I’ve already talked about spending some time identifying your books and courses. This should help you define the scope of the project. To do this, state how much time you’re going to spend and how much material you want to get through. For example, when I started my Art of Memory learning project, I devoted six months to it. I committed to reading one book on the topic per week and at least two articles. By giving your learning commitments definition in terms of both scope and duration, it’s so much easier to achieve specific goals. You can even create certain milestones. For example, if you’re learning about a topic that has multiple authors writing about it, pick one author. Read just their major works as a milestone before moving on to the next author. Step Four: Plan To Fail Sounds weird right? Not at all. As I mentioned, there will be challenges when learning anything. And that’s why we need to have a plan for what to do when those challenges arise. The choices you make can be quite simple. For example, when I reach a point of frustration, I almost always take a walk. “Go for a walk,” is my auto-pilot mantra and it helps refresh the mind. I also like to have “attitude a

Are you curious about the memory techniques used in the ancient world? I’m talking about aboriginal memory techniques in Australia. But also a lot more. For example, it’s possible to learn about all sorts of indigenous tools for learning and retaining information used by people around the world. If this sounds interesting to you, you’re in luck. In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, I sat down with Tyson Yunkaporta, an author and educator who has shared these techniques with many groups of people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_–IAZz410   Aboriginal Philosophy and Memory Techniques Tyson’s a huge fan of both the Aboriginal memory techniques and the Memory Palace, so I think you’re going to love how we discuss all the techniques we go over in this discussion. As the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World, Dr. Yunkaporta is an incredible teacher. I found this book compelling, useful and the main mnemonic device taught in the book is an obvious win for social change and healing global issues. As Tyson expresses in this interview, the time for “memory wars” (and all kinds of other wars) is over. We simply don’t have time for them anymore. And to help you be part of the solution in your culture, you need to widen your context and bring that back into your community. Here are just some of the memory techniques you’ll discover in this discussion: Real places and objects Relational Haptic connections Riddles and wordplay The Night sky Songlines Place and maps of place Symbols and images Rhythm and rhyme Repetition Song Rude language Stories Message sticks In sum, if you were to put these mnemonics into play, you’d be using them as a “way of life.” For more on the scientific study that inspired this “yarn,” please see my discussion with Dr. David Reser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkDgT6_sNJQ I also recommend you supplement this video with Brilliant Miller’s interview with Tyson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCzlgBbv5OY Lynne Kelly and her books The Memory Code and Memory Craft comes up in this interview, so if you’d like to catch up with me and her, please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jim_csNGV1Q Finally, here’s The “Memory Wars” recording with Dr. Reser and Dr. Yunkaporta. We talk about a number of mnemonic devices in this interview, so please be prepared to write them down. Songlines are part of a larger set that people used who had a ton of knowledge they needed in order to survive. Make sure you supplement your own survival by digging as deeply as you can into the wide range of techniques history around the world has to offer. And apply the information you acquire to helping the world become a better place. Thanks for being part of the memory world at large and talk soon!

With so many types of synesthesia out there, it can be hard to understand exactly what it is. That’s why it’s important to look at the word itself first: It shares a root with anesthesia. This word means “no sensation.” “Syn” means that something is joined or coupled together. Thus, synesthesia means the joining or coupling of two or more sensations. And because many different kinds of sensations can be joined, that’s why there are so many synesthesia types. On this page, we’ll go through the definitions of each one. You’ll discover specific examples and interesting tidbits from scientific research. That way, you can leave with the fullest possible understanding of this condition. You might even be able to invoke it too using a resource I’ll share below. Let’s get started. The 10 Types of Synesthesia (with Examples, Causes, and Symptoms) In his book on the topic, neurologist Richard E. Cytowic states that approximately 4% of the population experience some form of synesthesia. Exactly how long people experience their synesthesia is unknown, but many seem to drift in and out of it. In Wednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia, Cytowic and his co-authors David Eagleman and Dmitri Nabokov found that evolutionary pressures may shape when and for how long a synesthesia condition affects people. The condition also tends to be unidirectional. As they point out, a person might experience the letter J as blue. However, seeing blue does not cause them to think about the letter J or experience “J-ness.” Most forms of synesthesia belong roughly to what some people call “Projection Synesthesia.” That is, something in the brain causes their minds to project senses that aren’t there for the rest of us. Often they tend to involve colors. So with these aspects in mind, let’s dig into as many types of synesthesia as we can. One: Colored Days of the Week Here’s how Daniel Tammet discusses his birthday: “I was born on January 31, 1979 — a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday, because the date is blue in my mind and Wednesdays are always blue.” In his book, Born on a Blue Day: A Memoir of Aspergers and an Extraordinary Mind, Tamet says that Tuesday is a “warm color” and Thursday is “fuzzy.” This lack of specificity for some days of the week should remind us of the consistency issue raised by Cytowic. Or it’s possible that some days have substances for Tamet rather than colors. Is this the same as associating numbers with colors. Not necessarily. For that we need to learn more about our next type. Two: Grapheme Color Synesthesia When you see or think about the letter “A,” does it have a color? For some people it does. Likewise with numbers. Some people will read letters and numbers and see them as colors. Others with grapheme color synesthesia will see letters and numbers as black marks on white paper but think about them as colors. In The Frog Who Croaked Blue: Synesthesia and the Mixing of the Senses, Jamie Ward gives a list of letter-color associations from two research participants. It is interesting that different people experience these letters in different ways. This suggests just as much nurture in the development of this form of synesthesia as nature. Three: Chromesthesia Chromesthesia, or colored hearing, means that the individual experiences colors connected with sounds. Researchers have found that sounds can trigger more than colors as well. A person with this condition might hear music and experience shapes, landscapes or textures. Composers who may have drawn upon this type of synesthesia include Franz Liszt and Jean Sibelius. Four: Ordinal Linguistic Personification In this manifestation of synesthesia, the individual will experience numbers, days, months and multiple kinds of words and things as if they were people. For example, the word “camping” might be experienced as having a gender and a tendency towards grumpiness. A stick on the street might seem to the individual as a happy young man. In many ways, this synesthesia condition is a lot like how kids play with objects to keep themselves entertained. Five: Mirror Touch Imagine you see two people across the street shaking hands. But you don’t just see it. You feel it as if you were the one shaking hands. That’s what is meant by Mirror Touch synesthesia. In a two-year study by Charlotte A. Chun and Jean-Michel Hupé, these researchers found that many kinds of people with synesthesia experience this form. There was no way to predict which kinds of people might have this kind, but they did see some indication that French people were more likely to experience grapheme color synesthesia. Six: Spatial Sequence Synesthesia There are at least two parts to Spatial Sequence Synesthesia, sometimes called “Number Form” synesthesia. First, the person experiences numbers units as having distinct locations. For example, take an organizational unit like a calendar. Instead of thinking of February conceptually as a group of days, the person will experi

Tell me if this sounds like clickbait? “Ancient Australian Aboriginal Memory Tool Superior to ‘Memory Palace’ Learning” I mean, I thought so too. Must be click bait. I grew even more concerned when Dominic O’Brien tweeted a Neuroscience article and added this statement: “In short, Link or Story Method combined with Journey Method provide the optimum learning strategy.” With all due respect to Dominic and acknowledgement of his great accomplishments and wonderful books, this is not precisely what the Neuroscience article says. Nor is it what the full study says. Neither the media report or the study even contain the word “Journey.” An Opportunity For The “Pause” Button Now, because I’m human too, I decided not to battle about this on Twitter. As you know, Angry Birds just ain’t my schtick. In fact, I simply retweeted Dominic’s statement with a link to the original study. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkDgT6_sNJQ   And with sincere humility, let me offer this: For a memory expert to… shall we say… shape what a study says by promoting it with a quasi-branded term like “Journey Method” should be a wake up call to the human and humanness in us all. Because as educators, it’s normal to get excited by anything in the world of science that validates what we’ve been saying all along. I’m sure in haste I’ve done something like that too, and in this fast paced world, probably will again. All the more reason that we must be on our guard and seek to go beyond the headlines and the tweets. To temper ourselves so that we can truly learn from the research, and hopefully improve how we teach and learn, while avoiding getting territorial in ways that risk placing borders on the wonder. Territorialism Over Terminology Because frankly, I noted a small tremor of territorialism in myself at the idea that something could be better than the Memory Palace. And that happened to me even though I often remind you that this term is just a word for location-based mnemonics, and nothing more. Knowing that there must be more to this study than anyone could hope to convey in a tweet, I read the full paper myself. And to get even more detail, I reached out to Dr. David Reser at Monash university. As a neuroscientist with interests in attention, consciousness and many aspects of education, Dr. Reser is the head author on the study that several dozen people have emailed me about since the story broke. What Does The Study Actually Say? First off, it’s important that you read it yourself. The study is called: “Australian Aboriginal techniques for memorization: Translation into a medical and allied health education setting.” It turns out, the medical and health education setting matter a great deal. And there are several more nuances that make this study very, very interesting. For example: A particular story was important to the study Student preparedness and preexisting learning experiences may be key to learning faster Having a teacher in the learning space with the students was important The Aboriginal approach is shown to have helped the individuals remember the order better More research on long term comparisons with the Method of Loci and the Aboriginal technique are required These are just my tentative bullet points for the time being. Frankly, Dr. Reser is so good at explaining the science, I really hope you’ll dive into the full conversation. This Actually Could Be “Better” Than The Memory Palace Technique For now, I’m happy to say this: If all of us educators and students can get on the same page, share these findings around and collaborate with those members in the Aboriginal community who hold knowledge we should be very excited about… Why then, there might just be something many magnitudes of better, better than whatever you want to call the memory techniques you currently use. But we do have to pay the price of attending to accuracy. With care and accuracy in mind, I’m grateful Dr. Reser spent this time with us to discuss the study, the nature of its implications and what we all can do to learn, explore. Links To Dr. Reser Please spend some time on the reading, share your thoughts in the comments. And if you’re new to the Magnetic Memory Method blog, please get subscribed because I’m hoping to record a follow-up interview with Tyson Yunkaporta soon. If you, like me, care about the memory tradition and our quest for the truth about what really works, you’re not going to want to miss a thing. Dr. David Reser’s Monash University Profile Dr. David Reser on Twitter

Amnesia is a tricky term to understand because it is used in so many ways. For example, it has become popular to talk about “political amnesia” to explain the “crisis of memory” in various parties. Movies and streaming series also often feature characters suffering some form of memory loss and calling it “amnesia.” But using the term amnesia in these ways muddies the waters of an already complicated topic. So let’s bring some light to the field of forgetting as we explore retrograde vs anterograde amnesia in full, including some specific case studies from scientific literature. Anterograde vs Retrograde Amnesia: What’s the Difference? The difference is found in the prefixes. Something that is anterior is situated in front of another object or event. “Retro” as many of us know, refers to the past. Therefore, anterograde amnesia refers to having difficulties forming memories after amnesia sets in. Retrograde amnesia, on the other hand, refers to experiencing issues with accessing memories before the onset of amnesia. Let’s dig a bit deeper and look at some specific examples. That way you can truly learn the difference between retrograde and anterograde amnesia. What Is Anterograde Amnesia? Christopher Nolan’s Memento, released in the year 2000. According to clinical neuropsychologist Sallie Baxendale, this movie’s representation of anterograde amnesia is fairly accurate. As she explains: “The film documents the difficulties faced by Leonard, who develops a severe anterograde amnesia after an attack in which his wife is killed. Unlike in most films in this genre, this amnesic character retains his identity, has little retrograde amnesia, and shows several of the severe everyday memory difficulties associated with the disorder. The fragmented, almost mosaic quality to the sequence of scenes in the film also cleverly reflects the ‘perpetual present’ nature of the syndrome.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vS0E9bBSL0 “Perpetual present” is a key term here because people suffering anterograde amnesia cannot lay down new memories. Why does this happen? Traditionally, scientists have thought that anterograde amnesia is likely caused by something interrupting the consolidation of new memories. Here’s how Dr. Michaela Dewar puts it in her contribution to the excellent book, “Cases of Amnesia: Contributions to Understanding Memory and the Brain”: “During consolidation, new fragile memo­ries become increasingly resistant to disruptions.” Dr. Dewar’s research at Heriot Watt University’s Memory Lab suggest that more rest can help people suffering from anterograde amnesia. Research findings from Dr. Dewar’s Memory Lab project on distinguishing retrograde and anterograde amnesia. Exactly what it is that interrupts consolidation remains unclear. Dewar suggestions it could be: A general malfunction in the automatic consolidation of new memories A lack of intention by the patient to voluntarily rehearse new memories Situations where the patient faces overwhelming amounts of sensory input Other, as yet unknown interruptions between encoding and retrieval of memories A Specific Case of Anterograde Amnesia Dewar herself reports the specific case of a patient with severe anterograde amnesia caused by limbic encephalitis. For privacy purposes, the patient in question is referred to as PB. “The severity of his anterograde amnesia is perhaps best illustrated by a couple of anecdotes: when we first met, PB’s wife reported that a close family friend from abroad had recently been staying with them for several days. However, within minutes of the friend’s departure, PB had no recollection of the friend’s visit. More strikingly, after an hour of interviews and neuropsychological assessments, I left the room for a couple of seconds and then re-entered to examine informally PB’s ability to remember me after a brief delay. When I returned, PB had no recollection of ever having met me before.” Dewar found after working with PB that rest improved his ability to remember certain kinds of information. “I was both excited and perplexed by these findings! How was it possible for people with severe anterograde amnesia to be able to retain so much new infor­mation over periods of up to one hour?” Is There A Cure For Anterograde Amnesia? Dewar’s best answer as of 2020 has been rest, something which seems to have enabled PB to recall certain kinds of information even when his attention was diverted to other topics. She is not the only researcher to conclude that rest is a potential solution for anterograde amnesia. It may even be possible to promote memory consolidation without patients needing to sleep. This was reported in a Neuropsychology journal article called “Minimizing interference with early consolida­tion boosts 7-day retention in amnesic patients.” Finally, a lot of the answer depends on what exactly the patient is trying to remember. There’s a difference and it matters. For example, according to senior lecturer Anshok Ansari, some p

The term “autobiographical memory” sounds straightforward enough, doesn’t it? In reality, this aspect of human memory is quite complex. And the way scientists write about it can be hard to penetrate. I’ve been studying all kinds of memory for decades, so let me help you understand it with some examples and infographics. To do that, let’s take a step back and get a working definition of autobiographical memory and some examples that are easy to understand. Once you understand the different levels of autobiographical memory, you’ll be able to understand yourself and others better. And those psychology exams? Consider them aced when this unique and nuanced term comes up. Let’s get started. What Is Autobiographical Memory? In a word, this type of memory is a “system.” Better than that, autobiographical memory is a system that draws upon other systems so that you can rapidly draw upon emotions and facts that help you make decisions. What are these systems? And where are they found in the brain? Memories are in fact spread all over the brain. Or as memory expert Dr. Gary Small describes it, memories are distributed into what you can think of as “neighborhoods.” This means that when your brain serves up autobiographical memories about your life, it might be drawing upon: Episodic memory Semantic memory Iconic memory Sensory Memory If you think about these different aspects of memory as cousins and uncles who live in different neighborhoods throughout your brain, then experiencing an autobiographical memory is like an event. In other words, if you’re trying to remember something about yourself, you will gather all those different kinds of memories into one “room,” the same way you gather your family members for Thanksgiving dinner. And because autobiographical memory is something you can deliberately call upon and experience consciously, it belongs to a larger level called explicit memory. This is different than implicit memory, which involves unconscious processes. Do Some People Have Superior Autobiographical Memory? Yes, and the scientific term for superior autobiographical memory is hyperthymesia. This form of memory is sometimes confused with eidetic memory, which is itself mistakenly associated with photographic memory. Superior autobiographical memory or hyperthymesia isn’t understood well by scientists. In fact, some scientists think that there might be OCD or obsessive levels of self-reflective repetition involved. If this finding proves correct, then it would be elaborative encoding that explains the high levels of recall these people experience. Jill Price is one such notable case where people have noticed that obsessive levels of journaling have featured across her life. But whether or not repetitive journaling explains this level of recall or not, here’s the easiest way to think about it: Researchers have noticed that some people with superior autobiographical memory tend to journal much more than the average person. People with hyperthymesia are simply more efficient at calling all those different types of memory into the same “room” to help produce the experience of personal memories. In fast, it is very telling that superior autobiographical memory is really the only kind of memory that has shown this feature. As the personal suffering seen in the Price case shows, there might be such a thing as too much reflective thinking. The 3 Levels of Autobiographical Memory There are three levels and four “types” of autobiographical memory. It’s useful to distinguish them because they involve different kinds of autobiographical information. Type One: Lifetime Periods This literally means the memories you have to distinguish childhood from your adolescence, early adulthood, middle age and senior year. Jean Piaget described these periods in great detail in his theory of cognitive development. Some scientists include other categories in this type of autobiographical memory. For example, they would include how your memory divides: Elementary school High school College Type Two: General Events General events are much less fluid and don’t have distinct borders like “grade seven,” which has a beginning, middle and end. A time-based event like the fact that you attended grade seven at school is a general autobiographical memory. This level of autobiographical memory refers to those kinds of memories when you basically remember a set of days, weeks or perhaps entire seasons gathered around a theme. For example, when you tell someone a story about a fascination you had, you might say, “I studied that topic for a good couple of weeks. I couldn’t get enough.” But whereas lifetime periods have more specific beginnings and endings, you would not be able to say when exactly those weeks of a general event took place. Type Three: Event Specific When experiencing this level of autobiographical memory, you can literally remember things that happened down to the second. This might be a memory of the first time you saw the

Most people struggle to memorize the books of the Bible because they’re using songs, flashcards or rote repetition. Sure, those approaches can work. I’ll even show you a way to get much better results from flashcards further down on this page. But what is there was a memory method for the books of the Bible that is faster, more flexible and sets the stage for you to easily remember many others things? There is and it’s called the Memory Palace technique. In this guide, you’ll learn it. Memory Palaces are time-tested, scientifically valid and the most mentally efficient memory system you’ll likely every find. It makes memorizing a list of 66 items a breeze. And like I said, once you know how to use the technique properly, you’ll be able to recall individual verses, entire chapters or a list of Biblical themes whenever you want. Ready to unlock your Biblical memory for all the books for life? Let’s get started! The Fastest Way to Memorize all 66 Books of the Bible? A Memory Palace As mentioned, most modern Bibles contain 66 books. You can find them in order based on the Old Testament and the New Testament using this handy list. Some of the names will be familiar to you already, but memorizing even the most well-known names in order can still be a challenge. Often, this is because your memory is not trained to deal with large volumes of unusual names in a linear order. Other names will be difficult because of how they sound and how they’re spelled. But I’ll also show you how to deal with harder names of books like Zephaniah. Soon, they will all be very easy to remember. But let’s focus on memorizing the order first. For that, it’s important to have a technique that makes it simple and easy to think back to each book in its exact order within the Bible. One: Learn The Memory Palace Technique Learning to use a Memory Palace is essential for all learning tasks that involve large amounts of information. But this ancient tool is especially useful when it comes to memorizing Biblical verses. I do have one student who memorized 66 Psalms in a way he felt was without a Memory Palace. However, as we spoke, it was clear that the same basic use of spatial memory was still in place. Logically speaking there’s no getting around the method of loci for this kind of goal. To use this technique, you will create a journey throughout a familiar location. This journey will have space for 66 units of information, one spot for each book of the Bible. Depending on the room you choose, you can fit this journey into one room by using four walls something like this: This is one example of how you can start structuring a Memory Palace for memorizing the name of every book in the Bible. If you’re just beginning with this technique, this amount of information crammed into a single room might be too cramped. That’s okay. Just make the Memory Palace journey more spaced out. You’ll need more rooms, but that’s okay. This memory skill is a marathon, not a race. Also, I would suggest you consider having two Memory Palaces. One for the Old Testament and one for the New Testament. In this way, you can work on memorizing their books as two separate learning projects. It will make this learning project more manageable. Two: Learn to Place Memorable Associations The next step is to use your imagination to “pair” an association with a location in your Memory Palace. For example, you would place an image or association that reminds you of the word “Genesis” in position one of the Memory Palace. It could be a Sega Genesis, or perhaps you remember the Genesis Device and Genesis cave from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. If those references don’t work, you could even think of someone you know named “Gene,” such as Gene Simmons, the bassist for the rock band Kiss. Even better, you can combine all three of these associations for striking effect when you revisit the Memory Palace journey. By placing a few words that sound like “Genesis” or are spelled in a similar way in a Memory Palace, it’s easy to remember all the books of the Bible. Coming up with associations really just means looking at the letters of the words you need to memorize and thinking about similarities. For example: Exodus brings to mind Exxon oil Leviticus brings to mind Lev Goldentouch Numbers brings to mind the numbness you feel after a trip to the dentist Deuteronomy brings to mind Doctor Dolittle, etc. To start thinking up associations like this rapidly, have a look at the pegword method. Three: Elaborate Your Associations It’s not enough to assign associations. You also need to make them strange and striking using a process memory scientists call elaborative encoding. So let’s say that you use the example of a dentist numbing your gums to help you remember that the book of Numbers is at position four in your Memory Palace. (This association works because “numb” sounds similar to Numbers.) To elaborate it, yo

If you want to solve life’s problems with greater ease, you should learn how to think logically, right? Yes, but not so fast. You want to make sure you’re using the right kinds of logic for the problems at hand. For example, you might need a non-classical logic instead of classical logic to approach a particular problem. You see, logical thinkers do what I’m doing now: They put the brakes on when they encounter problems and start to spin those problems around. Why? Because logic itself often involves digging deeper and analyzing different perspectives. For example, one of the forms of logical thinking you’re about to discover would have you instantly ask… Is there more than one kind of logic for solving life’s problems quickly? Or can I explore alternatives outside of logic? A logical thinker might do the same thing to the very idea of a “problem” itself. This is done by “mentally rotating” the topic at hand and seeing how it might in fact not be a problem at all. It might be a path to a solution. How to Think Logically: 9 Ways to Improve Your Logical Thinking Skills At the end of the day, using the right form of logic is more about the best possible solution than the problem, but we do need to make sure we understand the problem first. If you’ve listened to Elon Musk talk about first principles thinking, that’s a form of logic he’s using to help humans thrive on distant planets after earth dies. And communicate better here on our precious planet while we still can. Those are real problems, and the right forms of logic are needed. The best part? There are a whole lot more ways to think logically to solve global and personal problems alike, so let’s get started One: Take A Deep Dive Into Logical Thinking Improving logical reasoning begins by knowing the types of logic at your disposal. Exploring the history of logic is well worth your time because it will help you see how humans discovered these principles and refined them over time through practice. As you’ll soon discover, many cultures have identified and used logical forms such as: Philosophical logic Informal logic Formal logic Modal logic Mathematical logic Paraconsistent logic Semantic logic Inferential logic Systematic logic Related to this, you have the difference between what philosopher Elijah Millgram calls theoretical reasoning vs. practical reasoning. The first involves figuring out the facts, the second is the process of determining what courses of action to take based on what is ideally a set of accurate facts. Now, usually what people who want to think more logically are actually after is the first category, or philosophical logic. This is also called “reasoning” and includes the skills of: Deduction Induction Causal inference Analogy Deductive reasoning is what we think of when we think of Sherlock Holmes, who builds his cases by arguing from general principles. He uses these to describe a specific series of events and solve various mysteries. Inductive reasoning is essentially the reverse of this process. Instead of using general principles to arrive at specifics, you use specific details to generalize. For example, you might notice that I post on this blog almost every week, and use inductive reasoning to logically determine that I am a consistent blogger. Causal inference helps you understand the scientific reason why and how things change. For example, why are you reading this article? I can logically infer that it is because you want to experience change and become a better thinker. (Or maybe you want to experience more, such as all of these 11 benefits of critical thinking.) Analogy or analogical reasoning involves making comparisons based on established examples or models. For example, we know that nearly every memory champion openly admits that they have normal memory that doesn’t work especially well without using mnemonic devices. By analogy, we can infer that any person with average memory abilities can become a memory champion. How long should you study logic? I’d suggest at least 90 days so you can get the bird’s eye overview and enough of the granular details. Logical thinkers always make sure they have a bird’s eye view and the granular details at the same time. Plus, as you’ll soon discover on this page, there are other fields you can read from to improve your logical thinking. Two: Understand the Problems You’re Trying to Solve Deeply Ever taken a quiz and realized you answered before thinking about the question? You could have gotten it correctly, but your impulses took over and you lost precious points. It’s not that you were being illogical. You just didn’t take the time to fully understand the question, and the reason why you failed to do so might have been logical. For example, from one perspective, in some contexts it might be perfectly logical to rush through an exam if you’re running out of time. But generally, we want to be sure that we deeply understand the problems we face. That is why Abraham L

Want to expand your mind? I sure have enjoying increasing my mental skills and pushing the limits of how much the human brain can learn. Being the owner of an expanded brain comes with so many benefits too. For example, you can: Remember more Make better decisions Think faster Connect abstract ideas Plan further into the future Energize yourself when you’re down Enjoy mental peace on demand The best part? You don’t have to be so open-minded that your brains fall out. After all, there are a lot of sharks out there teaching woo-woo “techniques” directed at the gullible. But you can learn how to expand your mind based on scientifically valid processes that work quickly. Let’s dive in. How To Expand Your Mind: 15 Activities And Tips The following practices are in no particular order of importance. Usually they can be mixed and matched for maximum impact (such as juggling while reciting the alphabet backwards.) One: Juggling With Added Challenges Hang on, you might be thinking. Juggling? Well, yes. It expands your mind for quite a few reasons. Research shows that it: Increase connections between the neurons in your brain Improves vision Improves memory Improves oxygen and blood flow or improvement cognition To get all the research in one highly readable account, check out The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture by neurologist Frank R. Wilson. To take your juggling to the next level, include other skills, such as reciting from memory. I share how I learned to do this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yTiX0JOuNU To get started, get yourself some suitable balls and make it simple. Add one level of complexity at a time. When you’re ready to supplement juggling with memorized material, I suggest you start with a song you already know. Then increase the challenge by reciting new content you’ve only recently memorized. You can also juggle while completing many of these powerful brain exercises. Practice at least four times a week for best results. Two: Seek Out Incredible Thinkers   If you want to know how to use more of your brain, you really can just let it rub off on you. We know that people learn by modeling others, so one of the easiest and fastest activities for stimulating mental expansion is simply to be around great thinkers. Now, do you really have to be in the same room? Yes and no. Obviously, listening to podcasts and watching videos of great debates can play a role. But I’m pretty confident you’ll pick up more thinking skills when you’re together with people who regularly use more of their minds. Options include: Attending public lectures and mingling Going to meetup groups Joining a chess club Going to a memory competition Hanging out with smart friends and family members If you really can’t find people offline, seek out online discussion groups and forums where people demonstrate their expertise. It can take some time to find the right mix, but it’s worth the search. The search itself should expand your mind too. Just keep this principle in mind: If you’re the smartest person in the room, it’s probably the wrong room. Three: Meditate Meditation is all the rage these days, and for good reason. Few mental activities have produced as much scientific evidence of the benefits you can experience than meditation. Here’s a guide on how to meditate for concentration and focus that includes some of the best science. I suggest you start simply: Set a time for less time than you think you can sit Sit in a chair or on the floor Focus on your breath Let your thoughts flow unobstructed When the timer rings, sit for just a little longer Journal to capture your reflections on the experience Four: Use a Memory Palace If you’re not familiar with this incredible mental tool, it works like this: You select a location such as your home. Then you identify a journey you can easily navigate. Like Hansel and Gretel, you place “crumbs” of association along this journey that help you remember information. Using the same Memory Palace, you follow a couple of patterns that rapidly ushers the information into long term memory. Once you have this simple tool under your belt, you can use it to extend your knowledge of many topics and skills. For example, you can: Learn the planets Memorize the presidents Remember the periodic table of elements Recall geographical information from maps Absorb new vocabulary within minutes And that’s just for starters. To master this skill, I’d like to invite you to this special program: Five: Read With Momentum Unfortunately, there’s a lot of hogwash out there about so-called “speed reading.” Yet, you can learn how to read faster. The trick is in selecting books worth reading – books that will actually expand your mind. To do this, I suggest you create a vision statement. What is it that you want to accomplish or experience in life? Next, do some research and identify 1-3 key texts on that topic. For example, when I wanted to learn about consciousne

If you want to experience incredible transformations leading to substantial accomplishments, positive visualization can help. You just have to make sure you make them multi-sensory and based on one simple quirk no one else talks about. The best part is that this form of visualization is really simple and fun to do. Are you ready? Dive in and please enjoy this actionable list of easy steps and positive visualization exercises. What Is Positive Visualization? During the weeks leading up to my dissertation defense, instead of feeling my palms sweat and my knees shake, I visualized. To make sure the practice was positive, I built in the proper outcomes based on a secret ingredient you’ll learn today. That ingredient is called multi-sensory visualization and it is very powerful. I added breathing and muscle relaxation to ensure I was really present. How? Getting really tuned in with my body. That means consciously feeling my feet on the floor. It means following the passage of air in and out of my lungs. And it means mentally noticing that the experience of having thoughts is itself physical. All the worry and the strain could be dispelled simply by acknowledging it was there and directing oxygen at dispelling it. Then, while going through the grueling rigors of the exam, I kept focused on my body. And as I answered questions, I positively imagined getting my degree. I didn’t just “see” this happening in my mind. No, I made it multi-sensory by hearing the sounds of clapping from the audience attending my exam. I felt the handshakes. I experienced an imaginary version of the emotions that come from success. I even tasted and smelled the celebration sushi dinner we planned for after the exam. To give a simple formula: Body + multi-sensory imagery + a focus on positive outcomes = Mindcrafting. Here’s the best part: When you have a positive experience, you can craft it as a tool for use later. For example, I have revisited the experience of successfully earning my PhD on that day many times. To do so, I put it in a Memory Palace. That way it has continued to grow in effectiveness over the years whenever I need positivity on demand. In case you’re wondering, this positive visualization practice is scientifically valid. Here’s just one of many excellent studies by Dr. Tim Dalgleish on using a Memory Palace for positive visualization. Positive Visualization: A Working Definition You now know that this form of visualization is powerful and can be reused many times. It is also defined as: A pleasant alternative to “monkey mind” thinking that wears you down with stress A multi-sensory experience A mental experience that incorporates the entire body An imaginary event that is used before, during and after a goal A process-based resource that you can benefit from on demand 7 Positive Visualization Techniques And Exercises As you can guess by the fact that I’m sharing this information, I successfully passed my final exam and was awarded my PhD. Here is a list of the different visualization meditation routines I use personally. They are all science-based and will serve as a starting point for you to build your own “stack” of visualization tools. Again, please understand that the core technique I have been using improves mood and has been successful in helping people with mood disorders, PTSD and more. That core technique is called the Memory Palace and is well worth learning. But before we dig into it, let’s start with some fundamentals of visualization so you can make sure you do it in a way that is actually positive in nature. This aspect can be a bit counterintuitive, so the granular details really matter. One: Focus Your Visualization Exercises On Practical Outcomes As Richard Wiseman notes in 59 Seconds, many people who visualize slow or ruin their progress. How? They set impossible goals. You can definitely visualize yourself getting fit, but there are more appropriate parts of the process to focus on. And you want to make sure that the outcome is actually achievable in your personal context. For example, a person with a particular skeletal shape might never be built like Schwarzenegger. Yet, some will persist in creating such impossible visualizations instead of focusing on seeing themselves getting their shoes on and going out for a run. Likewise, a person who has not made a dollar in their life as a business person is spinning their wheels visualizing themselves as a billionaire, let alone a millionaire. It’s much more practical and therefore useful to direct visualization at learning how to make that first sale instead. That you can visualize the next most logical step in the process of reaching your goal. Here’s another way to look at it, and this is the secret ingredient that matters most: You want to base your visualization practice on your existing competence. As psychologist Jordan Peterson lays out in Maps of Meaning, your path to learning and experiencing more success is se

How would your life improve if you could perform six mental operations at the same time? Do you think it would help you tap into more of your brain power? Harry Kahne certainly did. And he proved it many times, often by writing out quotes from books in both hands while talking to his audience about other topics. The strangest part? He claimed his mind was perfectly average. He told thousands of people around the world that anyone could perform multiple operations at the same time. I agree, and here is why: I’ve been practicing exercises from Harry Kahne’s Multiple Mentality Course for years. Although I can’t perform many of his impressive students, here are a few benefits I’ve experienced along the way: Sharper thinking More free time Improved numeracy Better memory Useful mental connections Enhanced abilities with memory techniques. Of course, I’m not practicing these techniques to deliver stunt performances… the odd time I might recite the alphabet backwards while juggling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGEuP-ls5hA   The real reason I perform demonstrations is to aid my research into how to use memory techniques better. I’m also constantly crafting new brain exercises so others can experience mental sharpness that lasts. Why? For one thing, there’s a lot of warnings out there against multitasking out there – most of them very good. Normally, we’re told to avoid multitasking. But is this always a good thing? But when it comes to using mnemonic devices to memorize, say, all the names in a packed room, we definitely need to multitask in our minds. Directing multiple mentality at our use of memory techniques seems to me the finest possible use. So let’s dive deeper into who Harry Kahne was and what multiple mentality is all about. Who Was Harry Kahne? Harry Kahne proved that multitasking is indeed possible. He demonstrated this by performing demonstrations where he would write upside down with one hand, backwards with the other, all while reciting poetry. Harry Kahne solving a crossword puzzle upside down and backwards while reciting memorized information. Or, he might solve complex calculations with his feet while speaking to his audience as his hands wrote out newspaper headlines from memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ2S6dExuHA   Born in 1894, Kahne said that he started practicing multiple mentality during school. His teachers kept catching him daydreaming, so he devised a way to read his school books and daydream at the same time. Clever! Derren Brown By the time the 1920s rolled around, Kahne was touring as The Incomparable Mentalist. I don’t know if Harry Loryane ever saw Kahne demonstrate his skills, but certainly these kinds of performances were common on the vaudeville circuit at that time. These days, Kahne’s work looks more like what we see from mentalist Derren Brown. To help other people learn how to perform several operations at once, he explained how others can practice the same “mental gymnastics” he used to develop his skills. Multiple Mentality Course Review Hopping into a time machine to attend a live lecture with Kahne is sadly not possible (yet). But we can find a PDF or webpage version of his teaching, and it is incredibly helpful. Here’s what you’ll learn: One: Why People Fail To Exercise Their Minds Kahne feels that schools focus more on socializing individuals than it teaches them to think. He also points to modern comforts as a source of weakening the mind, citing earlier survival requirements as being essential to better thinking. Although I think Kahne is right that needing to hunt, farm, build shelter and raise a family without the luxuries of contemporary medicine required more thinking, I don’t quite agree. For one thing, those skills have very little to do with writing poetry in reverse with your hands while verbally solving math problems. Also, we have the problem that the very reason we have so many luxuries comes from masses of people who have developed improved thinking skills. Kahne’s historical fallacy in this regard suggests that his objective reasoning might not have been as improved by multiple mentality as he claims. Nonetheless, Kahne is correct that all of us need “warming up” when it comes to using our mental abilities better. In fact, this point shows up in creativity studies. Just like your body needs warming up before exercising, your brain needs it too. For example, Dr. Robert Epstein is a leading authority on creativity. In numerous articles, many gathered in his book, Cognition, Creativity, and Behavior, Epstein shows how a quick warmup improves creativity, focus and attention while engaged in more complex tasks. This is why I like to quickly memorize a deck of cards or juggle while reciting the alphabet backwards before sitting down to do any writing or language learning. Two: Alphabet Exercises Kahne explains that these are the most important aspects of his training. Having practiced them myself, I can see why. First, he asks

Can you guess how many benefits of critical thinking you’ll enjoy along your journey of mental mastery? The number is huge and here’s why: The value of learning to think critically compounds over time. In fact, the more you practice, the more positive outcomes you’ll experience. So let’s dive into these benefits and point out some tips that you probably haven’t applied before. The best part? We’ll exercise our critical thinking skills as we go as I demonstrate a few ways I’ve used critical thinking myself. Why Is Critical Thinking Important? See what I just did there? I asked a question to demonstrate the first major benefit. Asking and knowing why something matters helps you: Place it in context Learn about its history Unpack and analyze its parts For example, we know that human civilization only really starts going when people started to think. And that probably only became possible because our ancestors discovered how to irrigate land for farming. Although human history is obviously more complex than that, it’s also pretty simple: If you don’t have to spend all your time hunting and foraging for food, you can rest and think more. The more you can rest and think, the more you can think about maximizing your free time, which is ultimately what gave rise to the Internet we’re using to communicate with each other now. This means that more free time and better communication between people make critical thinking so important. Why? Because the better you get at thinking critically, the more free time and better communication you will enjoy. I expand more on the reasons why critical thinking is so valuable and has been personally useful for me in this video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS7BZgAXSBc 11 Incredible Benefits Of Critical Thinking The following list of the benefits you can expect from thinking more critically are in no particular order of importance. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be ordered. You can benefit a great deal by thinking through which of these benefits you feel are the most important. Use ordering as a means of practicing your objective reasoning skills. One: Critical Thinking Gives You Practice In Multiple Disciplines Want to be able to think faster? Use “mental rotation.” When I was in university, and even to this day, I used this critical thinking skill. Here’s how it works: Let’s say you are given a problem to solve, such as inner city poverty. It’s a huge benefit when you can look at the problem from several perspectives, rather than just one. For example, you can mentally rotate through: Political perspectives Psychological perspectives Biological perspectives Ethnographic perspectives Historical perspectives Economic perspectives Ethical perspectives Etc. The critical thinking benefits of “rotating” through these perspectives happen because they exercise your thinking skills. As your perspective grows, you can spot more possible options for the next benefit. Think of “mental rotation” like a moving windmill of possible mental models you can move through while enjoying the benefits of critical thinking. Two: Avoid Unnecessary Problems The more perspectives you have, the more models you can mentally navigate. These models (like the ones listed above) help you imagine different outcomes. Essentially, you enable yourself to create multiple versions of the W.R.A.P. technique taught in the training on ars combinatoria, an early critical thinking tool you might want to explore. It’s just one of several critical thinking strategies you’ll want to learn. Of course, not all problems are avoidable, and it would not be appropriate to think critical thinking will create some kind of friction free paradise. But although some decisions will always create new issues, you can seriously reduce the negative impact of those decisions in advance simply by thinking things through with the widest variety of mental tools you can find. Three: Brain Exercise You get brain exercise from critical thinking for a few reasons. When you shift through multiple perspectives, you’ll be promoting cognitive switching. Research shows that this mental movement is the healthy equivalent of walking for your heart and lungs. Only in this case, the benefits are directed at your brain. In this case, you’ll be getting even more benefits thanks to how critical thinking gets used in conversations. For example, a fit brain is much more likely to use objective reasoning and avoid the traps of subjective reasoning. Here are more brain exercises I think you’ll enjoy. Four: Personal Time Expands Now, we’ve talked about how critical thinking was used to help entire societies expand their free time. This works at the individual level too. For example, if you run an online business and want more free time, nothing will help you faster than applying critical thinking skills to how you can release yourself from certain tasks. If you’re a student, you can learn techniques like interleaving, just one wa

Have you ever made a decision, only to realize you could have been more objective and less emotional? It happens to people all the time, and that’s usually because they don’t have decision parameters. In other words, they don’t have systems of thought that help them use objective reasoning. That’s important, because it’s definitely not something that happens on autopilot. This point is also important: It’s not that subjective reasoning or emotional reasoning is bad. Objective reasoning is not some kind of superhero force of good battling the dark forces of subjectivity. But without placing our subjective experiences and ideas within the context of as much pure objectivity as possible, we rob ourselves of important opportunity. What opportunity? The opportunity to harness the power of context. Moreover, we want to enjoy the fullest possible field of context so that we can successfully weigh all of our options before making critical decisions. What Is Objective Reason? A Working Definition Objective reason goes beyond decision-making and your overall critical thinking strategy skill stack. Being able to reason objectively also helps you understand history, psychology and many other topics much better. And when you can reason through any topic using multiple layers of reasoning, you’ll remember more as you understand the contexts at play much better. When defining objectivity, we need to look at standards of thinking. In other words, we want our definition to include: Logic Impartiality and balance Practical matters Theoretical matters Time for deliberation Psychological biases that interfere with objectivity Objective reasoning involves a balancing act of several elements, including logic, data and awareness of many cognitive biases. In a phrase, objective reason is a mental thought process that requires logical consideration of a situation or topic that is informed of the possibility for distortion from subjective bias. For example, people using objective reasoning will be: Highly self-aware of their minds Aware of a variety of tools for analysis Informed about the role of science and data in making good decisions Willing to take time for research and deliberation What Is Subjective Reasoning? People using subjective reasoning tend to either avoid or not know about the importance of objective tools, theories and the need for scientific data. Data is a key part of learning to reach reasonable conclusions. Instead, they rely upon their personal opinions, experiences and tastes. If they think outside of their personal context, they will tend to refer only to other people they know. For example, they will say, “I don’t know anyone who has had this experience,” and allow that small, personal data set influence their decisions. By contrast, an objective reasoner will say, “Although I don’t know anyone who has this experience, I’ll do some research to find out what scientific studies exist so I can expand my awareness.” This form of reasoning is objective because it looks to the external world for information rather than relying solely on the individual’s first-person experience and ideas. Is Objectivity Even Possible? Good question. The answer is yes. However, we need to realize that the tools of science and data appear in the human brain’s of individuals. This creates the fact that each and every person experiences everything subjectively. This fact does not mean that we as individuals cannot use objective reasoning to access facts that are true regardless of our subjective opinions and experiences. We just need to be aware of the fact that we all experience cognitive biases. In fact, we need them to survive. For example, humans are biased for evolutionary reasons critical to our survival. But in the modern world, researchers like Daniel Khaneman have shown many ways we can avoid some of the traps of subjective reasoning and become objective where it is useful to do so. In addition to learning about cognitive biases, it is useful to also study game theory books and texts on critical thinking. Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer is one of my favorite critical thinking books of all time. You Are Not So Smart is a close second. How To Be Objective In Your Decisions Now that we have a working definition of objective reasoning, let’s dive into some tips that will help you use objectivity to make better decisions. I’ll share even more of my favorite books along the way. One: Keep Learning About The Differences Between Objective and Subjective Reasoning Now that you’re here, the journey has just begun. And it’s very important you keep studying this topic. Here’s why: It’s nice to learn about things, but that doesn’t mean you will completely understand them, let alone remember the key points. To really benefit from developing objectivity in ways that will benefit you for life, find books that will teach you: The history of reasoning Cultural/geographical differences that influence reasoni

If you want to think faster without tripping over sloppy conclusions, here’s the inconvenient truth: The fastest path to boosting your thinking speed isn’t caffeine, hacks, or watching endless clips. It’s practicing your memory so that you can recall lots of details on command. Think about it: When you can surface the right facts, names, and examples instantly, your brain feels like it’s running at full bandwidth. I’ve experienced the benefits of thinking at top speeds firsthand. Before becoming known worldwide as a memory expert and accelerated learning instructor, I spent years teaching critical thinking and Film Studies at the university level. Later, I took the internet by storm with methods that showed people how to think better – not just faster. My key discovery? Thinking speed is a by-product of memory strength and having decision frameworks deeply embedded in your mind. Using tools like Memory Palaces, priming, and the W.R.A.P. model, you can train your mind to respond quickly and accurately in conversations, exams, and high-stakes decisions. The good news? I’m about to share all of those tactics with you today. Let’s dive in. Here’s what this post will cover: Why Do You Want to Think Faster? WRAP Your Way to Faster Thinking 9 Factors That Slow Thinking Think Fast! 4 Ways to Improve Your Speed Questions to Ask for Faster Thinking 9 Tips to Help You Think Faster Book Recommendations How to Be a Quick Thinker Ready to learn how to think faster? Let’s get started. Why Do You Want to Think Faster? Before we dive into the techniques I’ve got for you today, ask yourself: Why do I want the ability to think at faster speeds? Knowing your “why” is important, as is knowing your “why not.” Seriously. Before you read any further, pause for 30 seconds and ask yourself: Do I want to think faster mainly to look clever in front of others? Or do I need it for performance under pressure (exams, meetings, sports, decision-making)? When I freeze or feel slow, is it because I lack facts to recall, a framework to lean on, or simply practice time? If your answers lean toward vanity, you’ll be tempted by shortcuts that backfire. If your answers lean toward performance, you’re ready for the strategies that follow. Why? Because they’re optimized to train you for accuracy and speed as you solve problems and learn new things. WRAP Your Way to Faster Thinking Personally, I’ve managed to think faster in an ironic way. For example, I use thinking models that help me slow down and think more thoroughly. One of these models is the W.R.A.P. technique. It “speeds things up” unto itself, but also buys time because fewer errors get made. I learned about this technique in a book called Decisive. In it, Chip and Dan Heath talk about how to make better decisions, faster and more accurately. In their model, W.R.A.P. stands for: Widen your options Reality test Attain distance Prepare to fail Ever since I read the book, I’ve been using the W.R.A.P. formula for many of the things I do in my life. Now that you have an initial thinking model under your belt, let’s look at some of the factors that might be holding you back. In each case, you can use the W.R.A.P. technique to remove the following factors that might be slowing you down. 9 Factors That Slow Thinking You’ve decided you want to think faster and more accurately. But what if hidden factors are standing in your way? Let’s break down nine things that might hold you back from quick thinking. 1. Lack of Preparation One of the factors that slows down thinking is not understanding how to prime. But what is priming? In a nutshell, it’s a phenomenon where you respond differently to a stimulus based on how you experienced that stimulus previously. The stimuli are often at least conceptually related. I listened to a presentation by Damien Patterson when he talked about this amazing way he used to pass exams in school. Then he went on to immediately denigrate his approach by saying, “this isn’t the most scholarly way of doing things.” I went up to him during a break in his presentation and had a quick conversation with him. I told him he should congratulate himself for doing what speed reading experts call priming. I made him aware that it was a major industry that teaches people how to read faster — and that’s why he got top grades instead of the more diligent students. Those other students were fumbling around and not using proper learning skills. They didn’t have the thoroughness of accelerated learning techniques to get their studying done right the first time. When people don’t prepare properly and invest in accelerated learning techniques (like priming), it slows down their ability to learn. And even for the people who do, another factor that slows their thinking – and the value they get out of the material – is that they aren’t thorough about taking the course. 2. An Overflowing Calendar How many peo

Ars combinatoria is a mental technique that helps with both memory and decision making. The term means the art or technique of combination and is very powerful. Sometimes called a “thinking machine,” here’s briefly how it works: You compress larger ideas down into individual letters. These letters are then either referred to purely mentally. Or, as you’ll see, they can be placed on a “memory wheel.” For example, the letter B might help you compress the word and concept of beneficence. There may be other letters related to B that unpack other large ideas. If that’s the case, the user may need to follow a logical order or use multiple Memory Wheels. Everything depends on the users goals. To make this technique as clear as possible, including its uses for decision-making, I’ll share a very simple example on this page using a contemporary thought strategy known as W.R.A.P. And further down this page, I’ll show you a new way I’ve been using Ars Combinatoria. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me earlier as a specific critical thinking strategy, but now that I’ve got it running, it’s a very rewarding application of the technique. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cYDmaBXvJg Ars Combinatoria: A Short History The technique likely originates with Ramon Llull, a philosopher who lived between 1232 and 1316. Ramon Llull Its influence is strongly felt and most usefully expounded by the Renaissance memory master, Giordano Bruno. Note: Sometimes people mistake Bruno’s astronomical diagrams for memory wheels. It’s important to understand that his attempt to help us visualize an infinite universe based on finite solar systems does not necessarily relate to his theories of knowledge and memory. Although using this critical thinking strategy may involve a “memory wheel,” using one is not strictly necessary. You could also use a traditional Memory Palace. The point of using such a technique? Ars combinatoria provides rapid mental access to pre-existing mental content you can use to either follow a process or arrive at optimized conclusions. Two example memory wheels that use ars combinatoria. How to Apply The Ars Combinatoria to Your Learning Journey The first step is to have a goal for using ars combinatoria. For example, when Ramon Llull devised the technique, he wanted instant access to information needed to persuade people to adopt Christianity. Since books were heavy and difficult to transport and people are skeptical, it was important to deliver reasonable arguments based on deep familiarity with doctrine. And Llull didn’t just want this rapid access for himself. He wanted a specific pattern of reasoning to flourish in the minds of many evangelists. That way, his convictions stood a stronger chance of spreading far and wide. In Giordano Bruno’s case, Bruno adopts some of the ideas from Llullian ars combinatoria, but applies them more to what we might now call “self help” concepts. Perhaps the best book to read for clarity on this matter is Bruno’s The Seal of Seals. Other Teaching Traditions Arguably, the arrangement of information into mental memory wheels influenced the development of the textbook. This is a point brought forward by Walter Ong in his study of Petrus Ramus. You will often see such compressions of information down into different letters in other spiritual and philosophical traditions, such as Advaita Vedanta. For example, Swami Chinmayanada uses the BMI chart (Body Mind Intellect) to teach how certain mental impressions (vasanas) hold us back from lasting self-realization. Swami Chinmayanada and the BMI chart show a similar compression of large ideas compressed into a spatial arrangement. If you watch him teach it, you’ll see that he clearly has it all memorized. But as Llull imagined people might do, this chart is being used to instruct others towards adopting a particular outcome. The chart allows him to “combine” multiple ideas by extracting meaning from the individual letters as he goes. Why Ars Combinatoria Is NOT Really A Memory Palace Although this technique shares characteristics with the Memory Palace technique, it is ultimately very different. The main reason is simple: Anything you would place in a Memory Wheel for “combining” or “recombining” would have already been memorized by the user. This is quite a different application of using spatial memory when compared to something like memorizing the planets, a much more common learning task during the Renaissance than now. A Memory Palace, on the other hand, is used to memorized the information placed in the wheel. You then use the wheel to access the information in different ways, such as recalling details from important philosophy books. We know this is the case because Giordano Bruno teaches the techniques separately and the “Combinator” is designated as a seal, not as a Memory Palace. That said, I have found a few ways you can use Memory Wheels for spaced repetition. That’s a m

You’ve probably heard that you need active reading strategies in order to understand and remember more. The question is… what exactly are these strategies and how can you use them effectively? On this page, we’re going to cover what I consider to be the best active reading techniques. According to whom? First, scientific research. Second, I’ll share techniques I learned as part of my journey towards getting two MAs, a PhD and working for decades as a research and writer. So if you like the best of both proven research and lived experience, you’re in the right spot to learn how to read better and faster. Let’s get started. What Is Active Reading? Active reading is distinguished from passive reading, an activity where you read just to read. By contrast, the active reading process involves strategies. These strategies may include: Mindset Mental heuristics Specific steps followed in a particular order Advanced note taking techniques Using memory techniques like the Memory Palace during or shortly after reading The most important aspect is that you have a specific goal in mind. For example, as I teach in How to Memorize a Textbook, a goal might be to extract and remember three points per chapter. Here’s another example: Whereas passive reading might involve just picking up the latest book to hit the market, active reading involves researching books that belong to a specific example. Some of my personal case studies have involved the Advaita Vedanta research project that led to my TEDxTalk, Two Easily Remembered Questions That Silence Negative Thoughts. All of the books I read for this project are compiled in the bibliography of The Victorious Mind: How to Master Memory, Meditation and Mental Well-Being. The success of these projects required reading actively in each of the following ways we’re about to cover in depth. How to be an Active Reader: 7 Proven Active Reading Strategies As you go through each of the following strategies, I suggest you take notes. Why? Because it is one of the best possible techniques you can do to really switch on the power of fully engaged reading. One: Active Note Taking I take notes in a number of ways. These include: Linear thinking while taking notes Note taking on index cards so they can be moved around later Mental note taking using a Memory Palace Mind mapping I have written a lot about many unusual note taking techniques. Two of my favorite include using index cards in different ways. The first way involves capturing individual ideas on individual cards. I usually decide on how many notes I will take from each chapter to keep things simple and follow the “less is more” principle. Next, I will make the first card have the title and name of the book. Each card thereafter will feature a quote, key point or my own observations. I always add the page number in case I need to find my way back to the place in the book for context. The second style involves cramming everything on to just 1-2 index cards per book. For example, when going through certain books, like some novels I’ve read for a research project on consciousness, there’s no need for multiple index cards. I use just one index card as I read and jot down first the page number and then the quote or idea. This single card keeps my attention focused on the goal of reading the book. Sure, some of them might be entertaining, but here’s what matters: Using the index card while reading helps me remember the goal of paying attention to the theme of consciousness – the core reason I’m reading the book in the first place. Two: Question Everything While Reading One thing that puzzles me about people who practice speed reading is their contradictions. For example, they’ll tell you how to stop subvocalizing, yet at the same time instruct that you should ask questions while reading. How exactly is this possible? I’m not sure, but I can tell you that I ask questions all the time and vocalize on purpose. In fact, to make reading extra-active, you can adopt the voice of particular people in your mind. For example, you can pretend that you are Einstein and ask questions in a German accent. Now that’s what I call active and engaging. And the best part is how it all helps with retaining new information for the long term. What questions should you ask? The obvious ones, of course: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? But you will make your reading even more active by asking other questions. A first level of additional activity would be to add “else” to each question above: Who else? What else? Where else? When else? Why else? How else? If you can push for 5 answers in each case, your engagement will go through the roof. Especially when reading challenging books. For more strategies on that, read my guide to dealing with exceptionally hard reading material. I would suggest you also ask questions like: According to whom is this true? On what grounds are they an authority? How long is their point valid? What challenges or contradic

If you’re as skeptical about speed reading claims as I am, you’ve probably wondered about skimming vs. scanning. Do either reading strategies really help you remember more by reading less of some books? That’s what we’re going to talk about on this page based on my years of graduate school study and teaching as a professor in different countries. I’ve skimmed and scanned in multiple languages, which gives me a unique perspective. And on that basis, I can tell you that the biggest problem you face isn’t that you need to read faster. It’s that you need to read in a way that doesn’t sacrifice reading comprehension. Here’s the very good news: When I skim and scan, I do it properly. What I’m going to teach you today avoids the highly questionable eye-training and subvocalization nonsense taught in speed reading books and courses. The way I managed to read several books a week also works without sacrificing comprehension. Now, I don’t say this to come across as arrogant, but I hold academic credentials and publishing credits that demonstrate my thorough reading skills. So stick around because on this page, I’ll share my best tips on several skim and scan reading strategies. I’ll do so with a particular focus on remembering more. I can only recommend that you don’t skip around (at least for now) – and we’ll talk about why in a second. That way we can dive in by looking at these techniques from a higher level first. Skimming vs. Scanning: What’s the Difference? At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much that distinguishes these two reading techniques. As you’ll soon see, there are key differences, and their value to you stems from what you’re trying to get out of the reading material in question.Therein lies the ultimate difference: Reading techniques matter, but they matter most when deployed in context. You need to use the right techniques that work to produce the desired outcome. And, scientists have shown that skimming on screens reduces comprehension. That’s why in many cases, neither skimming or scanning will work. In fact, this study shows that even when proper skimming and scanning techniques are taught, it is “difficult to get students to skim and scan because of negative attitudinal biases of both students and teachers.” Well, sometimes we should feel negative towards techniques that are hard to learn to do well and only work in certain contexts – such as only when reading physical books. It’s also important to understand the role of context in reading. If you have no familiarity with the topic area, these techniques won’t help because your brain doesn’t have enough connections to the material. Even though I feel I have a big vocabulary, I still continue to work on expanding it in my mother tongue. I recommend consistent vocabulary acquisition to everyone wishing to improve skimming and scanning. Also, you might not have enough vocabulary to use either of these techniques effectively. This issue usually means that without some preexisting knowledge of a subject area, the differences between these two techniques doesn’t really matter. You will want to start with my free power-training on how to read faster instead. With this higher level points derived from both scientific research and critical thinking in mind, let’s get into some definitions that show how and why these techniques differ. Skimming Defined If we look at the origin of this word, it literally means to scoop a substance from a surface. That means when we’re trying to differentiate skimming from scanning, we already know that skimming can never serve as a depth reading technique. It’s all about the shallow elements of a book or other text. However, shallow does not necessarily mean superficial. As scholar and narratologist Gerard Genette discussed in his epic book, Paratexts, the “surfaces” of what we read often contain tremendous amounts of detail. For example, Genette points out the power of reading the colophon page for all kinds of important clues, including: Date and location of publication Translation information Edition number Author’s biographical data and rights Now, you might be thinking: This stuff has nothing to do with the meaning of the book! That may or may not be true, but it is always a best practice to at least glance at the colophon page. As I discuss in this video, you can pick up a very powerful memory tool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er-k8Ecgdfo Other parts of the books you can skim intelligently include: Table of contents Index Bibliography Images and graphs Section summaries Practice questions Acknowledgements Combined, skimming these elements of a book give you a lot of context. They are worth doing anytime you read any book because they help to form a field of understanding in your mind. And if you use mnemonic devices, you’ll be able to remember more by skimming. “Brute force learning” in my office while completin

Wondering how to stop subvocalizing? Well, let me ask you this: What if this rather strange term from the world of speed reading is fraudulent? Or what if reducing subvocalization is tactically a false goal for any serious lifelong learner? Here’s an even better question: What if there exist strategic ways to use your “inner voice” to read faster? You’re in luck. You see, the Magnetic Memory Method stresses the importance of avoiding energy-draining “tactics” so you can focus on enthusiasm-producing strategies that actually help you learn faster and better. That’s why on this page, we’re going to explore: How this strange term “subvocalization” has been defined and used historically. The psychological pain used to exploit people who are desperate to learn (this is probably what allows for the perpetuation of pseudo-scientific fraud in this area). Real techniques you can use to improve reading comprehension and speed by using your inner voice. And hey, if after you discover the truth subvocalization you still want to reduce it, I’ve got something for you. I’ll mention a simple trick from the world of meditation that is more likely to get you there. It’s perfectly a reasonable exercise. And the best part is that it relates scientifically to the nature of consciousness and studies in other aspects of learning where the eyes are involved. Let’s get started. What Is Subvocalization? First of all, there’s a long history to this term, and “subvocalization” isn’t the only word people have used. As Donald L. Cleland and William C. Davies show in “Silent Speech – History and Current Status,” the term also appears as: Silent speech Implicit speech Innervocalization Lip reading Vocalization The first recorded observation of people “speaking silently” to themselves occurred in 1868. Two psychologists focused on human physiology created a device like a telegraph key activated by the tongues of their test subjects. Everything they discovered is premised on the idea that parts of your mouth and throat move while you are reading. Somehow… for reasons no one seems to know… these movements came to be negatively portrayed as a (gasp!) habit. What we do know is that people who cite the same research clearly haven’t interpreted it as I have. They clearly missed Ake Edelfelt’s conclusion that subvocalization should not be stopped (more on his research-based assessment below). Frankly, if my interpretation is correct, and the “speed reader” who says the research calls it a bad habit is correct, then one of us is a horrible reader. Given that no one writing on that site uses a full name or lists any academic credentials… I don’t wish to come across as arrogant, but the bad reader probably isn’t me. Carrying on… The Historical Devices That Proved Subvocalization Is Normal Later devices used to study subvocalization included connecting a pneumograph to a kymograph. Some of these studies may have been mixed up with research into stuttering, which also involved using a pneumograph. If you read John Madison’s An Experimental Study of Stuttering, for example, he finds that stutters suffer brain fog and poor concentration. But he also finds that the use of a telegraph key for gathering data related to vocalization is highly suspect. Obviously, early 20th century science was not as sophisticated as what we have today. A lot of different people entered fields of study without necessarily having direct or even indirect credentials. It is thought, for example, that Rune Elmqvist, inventor of the first pacemaker, may have contributed an early electronically activated writing machine to initial experiments. It is not that he shouldn’t have, but when you see so many people with so many devices studying phenomena like this, here’s a suggestion. Start thinking “Wild West of Knowledge.” That will be more effective than expecting anything like clear and focused scientific analysis from this historical period. Indeed, when the first serious publication finally arises in 1960, Ake Edelfelt completely dismisses subvocalizing as a problem: “Silent speech is universal during silent reading; efforts to eliminate it should be discontinued.” Jump ahead to the present day and nothing amongst serious scientists has changed. According to research compiled by Scott Young, if you want to read well, you need to subvocalize. How To Stop Subvocalizing: Seven Weird, Unproven Tips That Probably Won’t Work The first thing you need to understand is that it’s more than fraudulent to claim that subvocalization should be stopped. It’s contradicted by almost every speed reading program and book I’ve seen. For example, in a course called “Kwik Reading” by Jim Kwik, you are given ways to reduce subvocalization. A few videos later, you are told to ask questions while reading. Well… which is it? Hear your inner voice or don’t hear your inner voice? How are you supposed to ask questions mentally if you’re trying to be silent? The lack of clarity and the

If you’re looking for critical thinking strategies to help yourself or others, congratulations. Learning to think better is one of the best ways to help ourselves improve the world. I’m talking about using thinking to be a better student, employee or employer. As a student, I used critical thinking strategies to get better grades. As a professor in three different countries, I strategically thought my way into getting better results for my students. And as an employer myself, I always think using the strategies on this page to enjoy a great business. And on the basis of all my real world experiences and study of the world’s best critical thinking books, I’m going to treat you to an epic lesson in critical thinking techniques that can: Improve your performance at school or work Help you make better decisions Assist in avoiding mistakes that crush others Improve profits as an entrepreneur Using creative thinking and critical processes of understanding that improve your memory This final benefit is especially important if you find yourself forgetting information. And on this page you’ll even learn more about how to remember the steps involved in thinking more critically. 9 Types Of Critical Thinking That Help Learners Outperform Their Competition Let’s face it. The reason we learn critical thinking is not just so we can improve the world. It’s so we can compete in the race to improve the world. That means that critical thinking cannot stand on its own. It has to also include analytical thinking and creative thinking. That’s why we have to go beyond the typical stuff you read online about asking: Who What Where When Why How Don’t get me wrong. Those are important questions to ask. But let’s dive in and understand four of the biggest and best categories of critical thinking: 1. First Principles Thinking This kind of thinking breaks a problem down to its basic parts and uses them to explore new paths. It tends to keep a goal in mind at each step. To use this kind of thinking, you also want to: Identify core assumptions Break the problem down into parts Create new processes towards a clearly defined goal Example: We know that memory requires at least some level of repetition. But how can we reduce that amount? Looking at our core assumptions, we can break the problem down into parts and notice that primacy and recency effect allow us to create a tool. The new process is the Memory Palace technique, something that every memory competitor and many students use and refine year after year, usually by repeating this same critical thinking strategy. 2. Blank Slate Thinking This technique starts with first principles, but you go further. You ask: What would this look like completely from scratch? Example: Imagine you’re trying to solve poverty in an inner city. Even though it won’t be possible to start the city over, by thinking about what the area looked like before it was inhabited, you can imagine a new history and try to figure out how greater fairness might have been achieved. 3. Synergistic Thinking Synergy is about combining things together that don’t normally go together. As a way of stimulating more critical thinking, you would get a bunch of items together and keep asking, Why don’t these items go together? Then dream up ways they could be combined as a critical thinking exercise. Example: Imagine scissors and a banana or a kite and vase. Ask: Why don’t these items go together? Your answers might be something like, because bananas don’t need to be cut and vases don’t need to fly. Try to come up with at least 5 reasons why the items you’ve paired don’t go together. Then try to come up with at least 5 ways they could. Even if the solutions you come up with are silly, they will exercise your mind. For example, maybe banana skins can oil rusty scissors or kites could deliver flowers to people in hospitals where the elevators are broken. 4. Adaptation A lot of innovations come from people transferring a feature from one area to another. Example: Book of the month club business models have become everything from vinyl record clubs to monthly underwear subscriptions. Another way to think about adaptation as a critical thinking strategy is ars combinatoria. This ancient technique let you adapt a Memory Wheel based on “contracting” larger ideas down into individual letters. Then, if you had a problem you needed to solve, you would expand the letters and adapt the ideas within them. It’s hard to explain, so here’s a video that describes the technique in-depth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cYDmaBXvJg 5. Magnification and Minimization We often get stuck in our thinking because we’re looking at things in their actual scale. But when we change their size and dimension, we can gain new insights. Example: If you’re trying to solve a problem involving thousands of people, scale down to thinking about how to solve it for just ten people, or even one. Or, if you’ve having a hard time imagin

Do you have a hard time focusing and wonder if concentration meditation will help? Right now, times are tough. There are hundreds of news stories, social media posts, and other distractions all vying for your attention — all screaming (loudly) about how important they are. Even before the world turned upside down, you already had a hard time concentrating. Then along came a pandemic and ruined any chance of being able to sit down and concentrate on anything important. But what if I told you your concentration is already 10 times better than you think it is? Chances are, you just haven’t learned how to pay attention to what concentration really is. So in today’s post, I’m going to break it all down — and I’ll teach you a number of exercises you can use to boost your focus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4PvLkzDB0o You’ll learn how to use concentration meditation, the benefits, and what shortcuts do (and don’t) work. Here’s what this post will cover: What is Concentration, Exactly? Benefits of Concentration Meditation Examples of Concentration Concentration Shortcuts How to Get into a Flow State Types of Concentration Meditation 1. Object Focus Meditation 2. Word Focus Meditation 3. Moving Meditation 4. Breathing Meditation 5. Number Skipping Meditation 6. Chanting Mantras 7. Biographical Thought Control Exercise 8. Movie House Exercise 9. The Music Album Exercise 10. Neti Neti Exercise 11. Flight of the Garuda Exercise 12. Memory Palace Recall Exercise Meditation and the Framing Effect Concentration Meditation FAQs Ready? Let’s get started. First, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I could not live without concentration, and neither could you. Here’s why exercises like these have been so important and helpful for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtYjdriSpM And get this: Memory will improve meditation — and meditation will improve memory. So let’s begin with a definition. What is Concentration, Exactly? When you think about the word concentration, what comes to mind? It probably brings up images of someone super focused. Maybe they’re reading a long and complex novel, studying for a big exam, or doing a task that involves being really careful. Or maybe you think about visualization meditation as the ultimate way to sharpen your concentration. Let’s look at four aspects of concentration you might not have considered. Focus All Your Attention The dictionary says concentration is the action or power of focusing all one’s attention. The two most important words in that definition are “all” and “attention.” So what does it mean to have the action or power of all one’s attention in concentration? Let’s start thinking about concentration by thinking about it as circles. Why? Because the word “concentration” comes from “concentric.” That means having a common center. And this is why you’re probably more concentrated than you think. It’s a matter of which circle or sphere of concentration you’re currently in. The meditation for focus and concentration you’ll learn later in this post is part of a tactical strategy guide. You’ll learn how to go out and try different things. And you’ll see (as I mentioned in the opening) how you’re already much further ahead than you think you are. This post and the meditations and exercises you’ll learn will help you accelerate your progress with concentration very quickly. Be Aware of Your Awareness If we dive even deeper into this idea of concentration, it can also be a careful mental application of your awareness itself — not just attention. When you’re aware, you’re already concentrated. How aware are you of your awareness? If you were to give it a number out of 100, what would it be? 80 percent aware? 20 percent aware? Do you even know if you’re aware of your awareness… or not? The reason I ask you to think about this is, arguably, all we are is awareness. Therefore, we’re always 100% concentrated. We’re already there. If you’re feeling a little confused or like this concept is a bit far out there, I’d encourage you to read a book called Standing as Awareness: The Direct Path by Greg Goode. The book can help you wrap your mind around this concept — it’s eye-opening when you start to understand what awareness is, and how it ties into concentration and focus. Moreover, my research has revealed that memory training has been about realizing total presence since at least the 1500s. I talk about this in-depth in a mindfulness YouTube series I’m developing called The New Art of Memory. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkZ2FGJhR5R9njWtWwRrkZKaq8j7OjDL3 Shift Your Understanding A close mental application of concentration, paired with the meditations we’ll do later, require a shift in understanding. Because concentration is only as good as your awareness of awareness itself. And awareness of consciousness is not just that, but it’s awareness of consciousness plus something – which is everything in it. Everything that is consciousness right now

It is no secret that we are all constantly in a state of self-examination. While some people may be more “self-aware” than others, no matter where you are on the spectrum, there is a constant need, a persistent desire to “Know Thyself.” The greatest task in that knowing, above all else, may be the biggest question, and, more complicated therefore, to answer, the question of “Why?” Today, more than ever perhaps, we are being challenged to slow down, to examine our priorities, to reflect on who we are and what motivates us. Whether that is an intentional choice, or the current state of the world has given you the gift of more time in the form of working from home and eliminating your commute, or governmental measures have encouraged a “safer at home” mindset, now is no better time for working towards that answer. My guest today is Arthur Worsley. He is the man behind The Art of Living blog, the author of the TRACKTION Planner, and the Moments app. He is an entrepreneur, graduate of Oxford where he studied psychology, philosophy, and physiology. Thumbs up for the Tracktion Planner! We discuss his mission of guiding others to find their motivation, through practical, executable, analog tools. Arthur provides a real, honest look at a difficult situation that became his catalyst for self-discovery, and, through coaching, and his own journey, the roadblocks that others faced that were similar, and how they, and you, in turn, can also overcome them. He even shares his own experience with answering that big question of “Why?” as he applied for Oxford. In his words, it was “terrifying” to see one’s future residing in such an empty space. The question of why was intentional, providing a blank canvas, open to interpretation. He learned how to navigate and fill that space for himself, and with the tools and methods he has created, you can also learn to answer that all-important question of “Why?” If you’re struggling to find your motivation for your everyday…. Or maybe the bigger challenge of your life’s purpose… Just take note of where you’re starting from. As you begin to answer that question, and, unavoidably, the others that arise, know you are enough. That self-doubt? It can serve you. That questioning is good. That questioning means growth. And why then wouldn’t we take that opportunity as we ask that very thing of ourselves? Press play now above to listen in as Arthur shares: How physiology, psychology, and philosophy can not only live in harmony as disciplines, but how they actually, in fact, intersect and can help you improve your focus The evolution of the Pyramid of Needs for modern day society – what’s missing, and why The gap that exists between effort (what you do) and motivation (why you do it) What loss of religion means practically, and the problem that “lack of faith” can create The reason behind the current resurgence of Stoicism, and what questions that philosophy can answer. Why meaning must be found in purpose, and not purpose within meaning The relationship (that’s necessary) between decision making and data collection The pros and cons to the novelty effect The most common reasons planners fail, and how you can overcome them with just a few simple tools The problem with perfectionism and its relationship to procrastination (often related to not having a feedback loop) Why reading isn’t always beneficial – and how you may need to tweak your reading style (were you aware you had one?) How problem solving can be addictive, and what mindset is required to achieve cyclical solutions Why connection is such a critical why – even for an introvert And even more! Further Resources on the web, this podcast, and the MMM Blog: The Art of Living (Now defunct) The Wheel of Life Book Recommendations Book Summaries Arthur Worsley on the Nomad Podcast Optimizing Evernote and Other Productivity Software for Better Memory Olly Richards on Crazy Language Learning Goals and Mastering Motivation Mindset, Memory and Motivation with Sam Gendreau How Many Languages Can You Learn At Once?

Dr. Bruno Furst created a number of memory improvement courses and You Can Remember! is one of the most famous. He was a German lawyer and his full name was Johann Franz Bruno Fürst. People familiar with the long tradition of memory techniques will probably think he chose to go by “Bruno” to attract the attention of people already familiar with memory techniques. It’s impossible to know, but I personally find it hard not to think about one of the most famous memory teachers, Giordano Bruno. Since “der Fürst” can mean “prince” or “ruler” in German, I have often wondered if the entire name is invented to say something about Giordano Bruno’s constant influence. Given that this Bruno Furst fled Germany after Hitler came to power, this idea that he may have changed his name is plausible. Very little is known about him. The only Wikipedia page about him is in French and the New Yorker has their article about him locked in an archive. But the fact that he has a profile in that magazine gives us a clue to his prominence during his era. The question is… does his memory training work? The answer depends on you, your goals and your willingness to go on what Furst calls, “Adventures in Memory and Concentration.” This printed pamphlet is an advertising piece designed to increase your desire to become a memory master. Notice the many dated professions and conventions of the era Furst was addressing. This pairing of memory with concentration is important because you really can’t have one without the other. The good news is that improving one naturally improves the other. So with that in mind, let’s take a deep dive into this flagship memory training from Dr. Bruno Furst. I hope you enjoy this You Can Remember review. You Can Remember!: Everything You Need to Know First, it’s important to realize that Dr. Furst recycled his material often. That means you might be disappointed if you already have these books: Stop Forgetting: How to Develop Your Memory And Put It To Practical Use The Practical Way To A Better Memory: A Simple, Easy-To-Use Method of Training Your Memory I love collecting memory books and courses. You Can Remember! by Dr. Bruno Furst is quite unique. Although these books do have some differences in them, what makes You Can Remember! unique is a method of segmenting the different skills into ten sessions. These sessions are split up into ten small booklets of about 30 pages each. The package comes with four separate envelopes, each packed with “examinations” or “model answers.” The exams typically ask you to spend 20 minutes reading a magazine. You then quiz yourself and self-assess your accuracy. Inside, you’ll find simple questions on typewritten sheets. Finally, the box comes with the “Number Dictionary.” This small booklet is packed with words that fit the Major System from 00-1000.   Overview of the 10 Sessions Bruno Furst faces the same challenge all memory experts run up against: There is no perfect place to start learning memory techniques. But I feel that Dr. Furst made the best possible choice by starting where I also introduce students to the art of memory, with the Memory Palace technique. Session 1: In his work, Dr. Furst uses the terminology of his era: The Memory Checkroom. Instead of calling each stop in the Memory Palace a “Magnetic Station,” he talks about coat hooks, each with a number. So that you can remember the numbers of each “hook,” you learn the Major System. The session concludes with a test of how you interact your different hooks with daily chores. Session 2: Furst extends the Major System in this session and helps you extend it to three digits. He shows how you can use it to memorize “telephone numbers, price lists, addresses, formulas of every kind – in short, everything connected with numbers in practical life.” The session ends with showing how flexible this number system is by sharing various mnemonic devices you can apply to different kinds of information. A historic image of Dr. Furst shows that he likely taught even more advanced uses for numbers in his live training sessions. You see him with specially printed playing cards that include 3-digit numbers, for example, but I don’t know exactly what he had in mind for these. Encoding past 00-99 is not covered in any of his material I’ve read. Session 3: This session goes further with extending your Major System and explains how to remember prices. Session 4: Here Dr. Furst discusses applying the techniques to memorizing information from newspapers and short stories. You are given a number of still photographs to work with. You also go through scenarios where you might want to remember an anecdote and how your mnemonic devices can help trigger the memories. Session 5: Dr. Furst explains the different types of memories and then extends the techniques to memorizing faces and then names. He explains how to apply the techniques at parties. Dr. Bruno Furst discussing how to memorize faces. Session 6: Her