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![\"memorization](\"http:\/\/provensal.com\/lbb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/memory_palace.jpg\")
<\/a>Credit: http:\/\/bit.ly\/10uAGCa<\/p><\/div>\n
I recently finished listening\u00a0Moonwalking with Einstein<\/a>,\u00a0Joshua Foer<\/a>\u2019s fascinating book about his yearlong quest to become a top \u201cmental athlete\u201d. His journey is really about how our mind\u2019s memory developed and works from an evolutionary and historical perspective.<\/p>\n My reference to\u00a0Gutenberg<\/a>\u00a0is of course about his introduction of movable type printing to Europe and how it revolutionized the inexpensive printing of books. Believe it or not, for hundreds of years prior, going back to Ancient Greece, learned people actually memorized tons of things because there was no book and written materials were very rare and confined to far-away libraries. Anecdotes of ancient and medieval people who were able to commit to memory huge amount of written material abound. It was told that an Ancient Greek named Charmadas could recite the contents of any volumes in libraries as if he were reading them.<\/p>\n And it wasn’t only about memorizing or recalling books; Seneca the Elder could repeat two thousand names in the order they\u2019d been given to him. Think about that the next time you struggle to remember someone\u2019s name at a cocktail\/birthday party.<\/p>\n How did they do it? They used memorization techniques such the poetically named \u201cmemory palace<\/a>\u201d. They were so commonly known back then that very few written records of those techniques were found.<\/p>\n The memory palace mnemonic device relies on the fact that millions of years of evolution\u00a0didn’t\u00a0do such a good job at helping us memorizing people\u2019s name, words, phone numbers, etc\u2026, i.e. the important things in modern life.\u00a0 Instead, our hunter\u2019s brain was shaped to memorize physical locations in order to go hunting (and gathering), remembering the good and dangerous spots and taking us safely back to camp: I left my cave, crossed the river by the big fallen tree, went left at the large boulder, etc\u2026<\/p>\n The mnemonic technique is about associating the things you want to remember (your grocery list) with known locations (the rooms in your house for example). Check out this\u00a0wikihow article<\/a>\u00a0for more details on how to use the technique. Try it! It works amazingly well.<\/p>\n Now you might ask: what\u2019s the connection between memorization techniques and creativity\/innovation which is the driving\u00a0 topic of this blog?\u00a0 The answer comes fromTony Buzan<\/a>\u00a0(a proponent of mental literacy and inventor of\u00a0Mind Mapping<\/a>. Also see my recent blog post on Mind Mapping<\/a>) who\u2019s quoted in the book as follows:<\/p>\n In our gross misunderstanding of the function of memory, we thought<\/i>\u00a0that memory was\u00a0 operated primarily by rote. In other words, you rammed it in until your head was stuffed with facts. What was not realized is that memory is primarily an\u00a0imaginative process<\/b>. In fact, learning, memory, and\u00a0creativity<\/b>\u00a0are the same fundamental process directed with a different\u00a0<\/i>focus.<\/i><\/p>\n The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the ability to form similar connections between disparate images and to\u00a0create something new and hurl it into the future<\/b>\u00a0so it becomes a poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity is, in a sense, future memory.<\/i><\/p>\n If the\u00a0essence of creativity is linking disparate facts and ideas<\/b>, then the more facility you have making associations, and the more facts and ideas you have at your disposal, the better you\u2019ll be at\u00a0coming up with new ideas<\/b>.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Also, as Buzan likes to point out, Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, was the mother of the Muses.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The modern man doesn’t know how to use his memory I recently finished listening\u00a0Moonwalking with Einstein,\u00a0Joshua Foer\u2019s fascinating book about his yearlong quest to become a top \u201cmental athlete\u201d. His journey is really about how our mind\u2019s memory developed and works from an evolutionary and historical perspective. My reference to\u00a0Gutenberg\u00a0is of course about his introduction […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"amazonpipp_noncename":"","amazon-product-isactive":"","amazon-product-single-asin":"","amazon-product-content-location":"","amazon-product-content-hook-override":"2","amazon-product-excerpt-hook-override":"3","amazon-product-singular-only":"","amazon-product-amazon-desc":"","amazon-product-show-gallery":"","amazon-product-show-features":"","amazon-product-newwindow":"3","amazon-product-show-list-price":"","amazon-product-show-used-price":"","amazon-product-show-saved-amt":"","amazon-product-timestamp":"","amazon-product-new-title":"","amazon-product-use-cartURL":"","amazon_featured_post_meta_key":"","_amazon_featured_alt":"","amazon-product-template":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,26],"tags":[72,71,68,70,69,73],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","category-innovation","category-psychology-2","tag-ancient-greece","tag-joshua-foer","tag-loci","tag-memorization-techniques","tag-memory-palace","tag-tony-buzan","category-4-id","category-3-id","category-26-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/provensal.com\/lbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/provensal.com\/lbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/provensal.com\/lbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/provensal.com\/lbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/provensal.com\/lbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/provensal.com\/lbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"http:\/\/provensal.com\/lbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/provensal.com\/lbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/provensal.com\/lbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/provensal.com\/lbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIncredibly effective memorization technique: Memory Palace<\/h2>\n
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\nThe strong link between memorization and creativity<\/h2>\n
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