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rajasuba 's review for:
Amazing read ! This book completely ate my mind. When I started reading I was curious to learn about different techniques which mental athletes follow to remember things - but what completely blown my mind is "the gift of forgetting". The author also quoted few examples of great people who had extraordinary memory, found it very difficult to get rid of the minute details.
Gift of forgetting
The author also mentioned about the most forgetful person, all that the subject could remember is the current information which is on the screen (ie' in his main memory) if the information in the main memory got swapped with new pages then he could not remember the previous pages - he lives a sedentary life, completely free from worry. He is happy all the time. Very happy. May be because he didn't have any stress in his life? He is termed as the most happiest man in the world. Did you notice the irony here, "the person who forgets most is the most happiest man" .
"Too much of anything can make you sick."
Memory techniques
And as title of the book hints, the author spoke about multiple memory techniques for training mind like
* Chunking (breaking information into multiple pieces eg; individual digits to group of chunks),
* Associating context, relating an information with another (forming strong connections with already known items),
* Elaborative encoding (taking the kind of memories our brains aren't good at holding eg; numbers and transform them into the kinds of memories our brains were built for eg; pictures),
* Memory palace (laying the information in the place you know well eg; can be the house where you have grown up and walking over the place to collect the stored information),
* Bradwardine's system (breaking the word into its constituent syllables and then creating an image for each syllable.
* Extended memory (or) surrogate memory (the hard disks where we store our memories - the videos and photos captured), Google - where all we need to remember is the right search terms to access humankind's collective memory.
* Major system - This is for remembering numbers - this method is nothing more than a simple code to convert numbers into phonetic sounds. Those sounds can then be turned into words, which can in turn become images for a memory palace. Eg; 1 (T or D), 6 (Sh or Ch) or 33 (mom), 34 (dad).
* PAO System - Person/action/object system is where you convert every two digit number from 00 to 99 as a single single image of a person performing an action on an object. Eg' 34 Ram (person) plays (an action) a guitar (object)
Deliberate Practice
When we try to learn a new skill, during the first phase known as the "cognitive stage" we will be intellectualising the task and discovering new strategies to accomplish it more proficiently. During the second "associative stage", we will be concentrating less, making fewer major errors, and generally becoming more efficient. Finally when we would reach "autonomous stage", where we would figure out that we have gotten as good as we need to get at the task and we basically start running on auto pilot mode. As a task becomes automated, the parts of the brain involved in conscious reasoning become less active and other parts of brain take over. We call it as "OK plateau", the point which we decide we are OK with how good we are at something, turn on autopilot and stop improving.
"Deliberate practice" is one where we develop strategies for consciously keeping out of the autonomous stage while we practice by doing three things: focusing on the technique, staying goal-oriented, and getting constant and immediate feedback on the performance. In other words, to force oneself to stay in the "cognitive phase". Deliberate practice, by its nature, must be hard.
The author relates it with chess players as - the single best predictor of an individual's chess skill is not the amount of chess he has played against the opponents, but rather the amount of time he has spent sitting alone working through old games.
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 mode.
“There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you.” - Bruce Lee.
Interesting facts about our brain
* Brain accounts for only 2 percent of body's mass, it uses up a fifth of all the oxygen we breath, and it's where a quarter of all our glucose gets burned.
* Brain best remembers things that are repeated, rhythmic, rhyming, structured, and above all easily visualised.
Just reading all these techniques would not make us a master unless we practice it :)
Thanks for reading till this ! Have a great day :)
Gift of forgetting
The author also mentioned about the most forgetful person, all that the subject could remember is the current information which is on the screen (ie' in his main memory) if the information in the main memory got swapped with new pages then he could not remember the previous pages - he lives a sedentary life, completely free from worry. He is happy all the time. Very happy. May be because he didn't have any stress in his life? He is termed as the most happiest man in the world. Did you notice the irony here, "the person who forgets most is the most happiest man" .
"Too much of anything can make you sick."
Memory techniques
And as title of the book hints, the author spoke about multiple memory techniques for training mind like
* Chunking (breaking information into multiple pieces eg; individual digits to group of chunks),
* Associating context, relating an information with another (forming strong connections with already known items),
* Elaborative encoding (taking the kind of memories our brains aren't good at holding eg; numbers and transform them into the kinds of memories our brains were built for eg; pictures),
* Memory palace (laying the information in the place you know well eg; can be the house where you have grown up and walking over the place to collect the stored information),
* Bradwardine's system (breaking the word into its constituent syllables and then creating an image for each syllable.
* Extended memory (or) surrogate memory (the hard disks where we store our memories - the videos and photos captured), Google - where all we need to remember is the right search terms to access humankind's collective memory.
* Major system - This is for remembering numbers - this method is nothing more than a simple code to convert numbers into phonetic sounds. Those sounds can then be turned into words, which can in turn become images for a memory palace. Eg; 1 (T or D), 6 (Sh or Ch) or 33 (mom), 34 (dad).
* PAO System - Person/action/object system is where you convert every two digit number from 00 to 99 as a single single image of a person performing an action on an object. Eg' 34 Ram (person) plays (an action) a guitar (object)
Deliberate Practice
When we try to learn a new skill, during the first phase known as the "cognitive stage" we will be intellectualising the task and discovering new strategies to accomplish it more proficiently. During the second "associative stage", we will be concentrating less, making fewer major errors, and generally becoming more efficient. Finally when we would reach "autonomous stage", where we would figure out that we have gotten as good as we need to get at the task and we basically start running on auto pilot mode. As a task becomes automated, the parts of the brain involved in conscious reasoning become less active and other parts of brain take over. We call it as "OK plateau", the point which we decide we are OK with how good we are at something, turn on autopilot and stop improving.
"Deliberate practice" is one where we develop strategies for consciously keeping out of the autonomous stage while we practice by doing three things: focusing on the technique, staying goal-oriented, and getting constant and immediate feedback on the performance. In other words, to force oneself to stay in the "cognitive phase". Deliberate practice, by its nature, must be hard.
The author relates it with chess players as - the single best predictor of an individual's chess skill is not the amount of chess he has played against the opponents, but rather the amount of time he has spent sitting alone working through old games.
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 mode.
“There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you.” - Bruce Lee.
Interesting facts about our brain
* Brain accounts for only 2 percent of body's mass, it uses up a fifth of all the oxygen we breath, and it's where a quarter of all our glucose gets burned.
* Brain best remembers things that are repeated, rhythmic, rhyming, structured, and above all easily visualised.
Just reading all these techniques would not make us a master unless we practice it :)
Thanks for reading till this ! Have a great day :)