Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

There is something to be said for collective recommendations like bestsellers list.  I found this title on such list at Fully Booked, read a few pages and decided to buy it.  I was intrigued by the theme of the book which is memory, specifically, how the author started as a journalist covering the US Memory Championships and ended up as a contender in the finals of the same competition one year later.

It claims that with proper training, one's memory can be improved to be at par with the top mental athletes of the world.  Memory training has become an esoteric discipline because we practically do not need to remember a lot these days.  Information is very easy to retrieve from electronic devices and what not.  You just need basic search terms and the Google provides the information you need and more.

Photo from Rainy Day Books

I have to admit I rely on external memory a lot.  I can recall birthdays of my very close family members but outside of that small circle, I have to rely on Birthday Alarm or Facebook.  I keep lists for various things that I need to remember like grocery lists, weekly menu, things to do at work.  I even keep a list of passwords in my local drive.  Don't worry, it's password-protected but I'll be terribly inconvenienced if I forgot the password to that file!  It's not only facts that I have partially relegated to external memory, it's personal timelines, too.  I will have a hard time remembering when things happened if I did not have photos and blog posts about them.  The draw of this book for me was, if the author successfully trained his brain to remember more/better, maybe I can practice the same techniques to improve my memory as well.

This book is not all about the techniques, though.   It reads like a thesis, but an interesting one.  It explores how internal memory was more prized in the olden times when literature wasn't as accessible, as opposed to today where we have numerous means of recalling via external memory.  A large part of it covers history, scientific studies, and interviews with people who have memory loss and on the other end of the spectrum, those who are able to memorize and recall a great deal of information, including savants.  Very educational.

There are people who seem to be naturally gifted with good memory but what Foer proved is that anyone can improve their capacity and it is done by being creative, i.e. visualizing whatever it is you want to remember in the most creative/bizarre manner so that they become memorable.  Foer was coached by British mental athlete Ed Cooke and they went through this exercise, as detailed in the book.  They were trying to remember grocery lists so they would conjure up strange scenarios with items on the list and place them around a familiar place like a childhood home.  For example, imagining wines having a conversation around the dining table... If you walk through the house you can then remember to buy wine.  There are other techniques, too, like assigning characters to each card in a deck, or to numeric digits.

What I got from the book is that improving one's memory takes real effort and discipline.  Foer practiced everyday, which is probably too much for me but I also agree that one cannot not pay attention and expect to remember on a consistent basis.  It takes being present and to recognize something as important and then devise a way to help the mind recall it at a later time.  One step at a time.