Moonwalking With Einstein

Date

2019/12/25

Description

Amazon Link

Joshua Foer starts as a journalist covering the world memory championships and runs into Ben Pridmore, a multiple World Memory Champion. Ben takes Joshua under his wing and coaches him to compete in the USA memory championships. Along the journey Joshua reveals several memory techniques, including the memory palace, and interviews several people with extraordinary memories. In the end he competes in the USA world championship.

Takeaways

• Memory Palace
  • Uses spacial memory in the form of places you have already been in real life to store bits of information to remember
  • Store them by placing memorable things along the memory palace and “walk” it to retreive the memories
• The memory techniques highlighted in the book can be done by almost anyone
  • There was nothing particularly special about the memory champions brains
  • The techniques did take LOTS of deliberate practice
    • At least 30 minutes a day