No Limits: The Art and Science of High Performance

by Mukesh Bansal

His pursuit led him to the study of mnemonics, a technique that dates back to famous Roman orators. One of the most commonly utilised tools of memory is visualisation. It turns out that while language and numbers are recent developments, humans have been processing images and visual information long before they existed as Homo sapiens on earth. This is why when you meet someone after a long time, you almost always recall their face (‘I have seen you somewhere’ is more than a pick-up line!) but struggle to recall their name. Hence, the parts of the brain dedicated to visual processing are much larger and more sophisticated in comparison to the parts that manage language and numbers. Memory experts exploit this and translate most information into a visual format to remember the details better.