Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

by Joshua Foer

“What you have to understand is that even average memories are remarkably powerful if used properly,”

One thing is clear, however: The nonlinear associative nature of our brains makes it impossible for us to consciously search our memories in an orderly way. A memory only pops directly into consciousness if it is cued by some other thought or perception—some other node in the nearly limitless interconnected web. So when a memory goes missing or a name gets caught on the tip of the tongue, hunting it down can be frustrating and often futile. We have to stumble in the dark with a flashlight for cues that might lead us back to the piece of information we’re looking for—Her name begins with an L . . . She’s a painter . . . I met her at that party a couple years ago—until one of those other memories calls to mind the one we’re looking for. Ah yes, her name was Lisa! Because our memories don’t follow any kind of linear logic, we can neither sequentially search them nor browse them.

According to Ericsson, what we call expertise is really just “vast amounts of knowledge, pattern-based retrieval, and planning mechanisms acquired over many years of experience in the associated domain.” In other words, a great memory isn’t just a by-product of expertise; it is the essence of expertise.

Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next—and disappear. That’s why it’s important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.

“The natural memory is that memory which is embedded in our minds, born simultaneously with thought. The artificial memory is that memory which is strengthened by a kind of training and system of discipline.” In other words, natural memory is the hardware you’re born with. Artificial memory is the software you run on your hardware.

believe that they who wish to do easy things without trouble and toil must previously have been trained in more difficult things,”

The brain is a costly organ. Though it accounts for only 2 percent of the body’s mass, it uses up a fifth of all the oxygen we breathe, and it’s where a quarter of all our glucose gets burned. The brain is the most energetically expensive piece of equipment in our body, and has been ruthlessly honed by natural selection to be efficient at the tasks for which it evolved.

The brain best remembers things that are repeated, rhythmic, rhyming, structured, and above all easily visualized.

These technologies of storing information outside our minds have helped make our modern world possible, but they’ve also changed how we think and how we use our brains.

As books became easier and easier to consult, the imperative to hold their contents in memory became less and less relevant, and the very notion of what it meant to be erudite began to evolve from possessing information internally to knowing where to find information in the labyrinthine world of external memory.

keep from drowning in a sea of meaningless trivia. So much of remembering happens at the moment of encoding, because we only tend to remember what we pay attention to.

With

When you want to get good at something, how you spend your time practicing is far more important than the amount of time you spend.

Regular practice simply isn’t enough. To improve, we must watch ourselves fail, and learn from our mistakes.

The secret to improving at a skill is to retain some degree of conscious control over it while practicing—to force oneself to stay out of autopilot.

In fact, more than anything else, the art of memory is learning how little of an image you need to see to make it memorable.

My experience had validated the old saw that practice makes perfect. But only if it’s the right kind of concentrated, self-conscious, deliberate practice. I’d learned firsthand that with focus, motivation, and, above all, time, the mind can be trained to do extraordinary things. This was a tremendously empowering discovery. It made me ask myself: What else was I capable of doing, if only I used the right approach?

Remembering can only happen if you decide to take notice.