Moonwalking with Einstein
Joshua Foer's year training for the US Memory Championship, and what memory really is
Science writer Joshua Foer set out to report on competitive memorizers and ended up winning the 2006 US Memory Championship after a year of daily practice. The book explains the techniques behind that, chiefly the memory palace, a visualization method from ancient Greece, and the finding that ordinary memory is excellent for what we care about and poor for random facts. Its wider point is that memory and understanding grow together and can be trained on purpose. Foer is clear that it takes months of serious practice.
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Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Bill GatesRecommends
Microsoft co-founder · Gates Notes reading lists
One of the most interesting books he read that summer. It convinced him he could improve his memory with the visualization techniques Foer describes, though he admitted he had not started trying, and he warns it takes months of practice.
Source: Gates Notes: Training your brain for recall
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Book entry · notes paraphrased from cited sources, quoted excerpts copied from the transcript they link to. Not medical advice. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by anyone listed. How this works.