
Simple Ways to Be Better at Remembering - aaossa
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/smarter-living/simple-ways-to-be-better-at-remembering.html
======
dub
I highly recommend "Moonwalking with Einstein" to anyone curious about what
our memories can do and how we can make better use of them:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonwalking_with_Einstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonwalking_with_Einstein)

The author won the US Memory Championship after just a single year of learning
and practicing mnemonic techniques.

~~~
rgrau
I read that book recently and it triggered my interest in "the art of
remembering".

Then I moved to "how to develop a perfect memory"[1]. It gives practical tips
for remembering lists, numbers, appointments, faces.... It works surprisingly
well. The thing is that nowadays, we usually use technology to remember those
kind of things.

I think there's a huge difference in the types of contents that are "hackable"
and the ones that have to be learnt by assimilation. I can remember 50 digits
without any problem, but remembering subtle content from a book, how to use a
new API,... it's much more difficult to find mnemonics for that in my
experience.

Anyway, I think it's great fun to "hack" yourself to be more efficient, and
this, along with speed reading and lucid dreaming could have exponential
effects. I'm on it. on both. We'll see.

1\. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2691332-how-to-
develop-a...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2691332-how-to-develop-a-
perfect-memory)

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keiferski
No mention of Anki? I use it every day for basically everything (foreign
languages, life memories, trivia, world capitals, etc.) and it's
unquestionably changed my life.

~~~
j7ake
I have some nice flash card decks on anki but have failed to make it a habit
to look at them. Did you have any ideas on how to make it a habit to do these
reviews? For me some of these flash card decks are kind of heavy (e.g.
Deriving some equations) and I think my brain just does not always want to get
into it.

~~~
qznc
In my experience it does not work for "heavy" questions.

I successfully developed a habit for "quick" questions, where you know the
answer instantly once you learned it. Examples: Capital of Malaysia? "Car" in
chinese? Phone number of Mom? Images work well, like "what country does this
map show?"

For heavy questions the repetition feels like too much work. Deriving
equations is probably heavy. Another example would be: List all states of the
US.

Deriving equations is not fun for my mind, because it takes seconds or minutes
of concentration. For the quick questions, I receive success dopamin before I
even notice that it is work. Fun. It becomes a game and I sometimes did a few
cards on my smartphone while waiting, for example.

One strategy is to split heavy questions into many quick ones. Unfortunately,
I don't know what to do if splitting does not work.

~~~
ruricolist
Clozes could help, if the question can be expressed as a series of steps or as
individual facets.

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1wd
I recently read [1]: "There are three ways in which information may be learned
or committed to memory: by rote, assimilation, or use of a mnemonic device.

By Rote. Material to be learned is repeated [...] It seems to be the least
efficient way of remembering.

By Assimilation. Information is learned by assimilation when the structure or
substance of the information fits into some memory schema already possessed by
the learner. The new information is assimilated to or linked to the existing
schema and can be retrieved readily by first accessing the existing schema and
then reconstructing the new information. Assimilation involves learning by
comprehension and is, therefore, a desirable method, but it can only be used
to learn information that is somehow related to our previous experience.

By Using A Mnemonic Device. A mnemonic device is any means of organizing or
encoding information for the purpose of making it easier to remember. [...]
Any form of processing information in this manner is a more effective aid to
retention than rote repetition. "

Is this information (from 1980) outdated? Is "spaced repetition" a newer idea?
Is it more effective than assimilation or mnemonic device?

[1] [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-
intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-
intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-
analysis/art6.html)

~~~
Jtsummers
SRS is not really an alternate, SRS is a scheduling of study. You still use
your mnemonic devices and attempt assimilation, or even memorize by rote. But
SRS spaces out the practice of these things to try to attain optimal recall.

If you are using rote, like studying a language's vocabulary, you may have
1000 vocabulary cards that you study over a few weeks or months. SRS will have
you practice reviews based on your ability to answer the cards. If I see
"cabeza" and think "cabbage", clearly I don't know the word and I mark it as
bad. I'll review it the next day. If I get it correct ("head") then the next
review will be, approximately, double the time between the previous two
reviews (rough progression then of 1 day, 2 days, 4 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1
month, 2 months, 4 months, ...).

If I'm trying to study by assimilation (true comprehension), the cards may be
more complex or harder. Translate a full sentence (from or to Spanish).
Practice a math problem (some tools in Anki let these be generated
automatically so you practice the techniques and don't just memorize some
answers). It may even be a prompt rather than an explicit Q&A card.

If I'm using a mnemonic device ("The Cab in New Mexico Is Land Cruiser" for
the tarsal bones), I may have a card that has "tarsal bones" and on the back
has the mnemonic. I may have the mnemonic and the question "T?". I may have
the full list of the mnemonic and the bones on the card with parts covered
over. It's still using a mnemonic, but, back to SRS, SRS just schedules my
practice of it based on my ability to recall in the review session.

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TheLilHipster
There is actually some really good ted talks on this:

* [https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone...](https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ebJlcZMx3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ebJlcZMx3c)

Make more connections to the things you need to remember. Make a tune out of
the specifics or make a quick phonetic story out of it.

Good stuff.

I haven't been able to forget my ex's anniversary date because I remember it
as "she's a 10/10" (oct 10).

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pbhjpbhj
>Forget cramming. It didn’t work in college, it doesn’t work now. Spaced
repetition might be the best way. //

Cramming worked for me, it's just short-term, which can be a problem depending
on your goals.

~~~
mrspeaker
Ha, I was thinking the same... reading "forget cramming, it didn't work in
college" just brought back very vivid and terrifying memories of my first year
statistics course, where I "learned" the entire course contents in a night.

Personally I've tried spaced repetition so many times and things don't stick
for me... it just feels like repeated cramming: I'm great while I'm doing the
Anki, but next session it's back to square one.

~~~
fossuser
Have you ever learned how to play an instrument? That’s a space where the
effectiveness of spaced repition is obvious. It’s like there’s a maximum
amount you can improve between sleep cycles.

~~~
trendia
One of the amazing results of Ericsson's study of performance musicians was
that those who napped during the day had a huge imprvement over those who
didn't.

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aeto
+1 for spaced repetition. I automated a schedule (1, 7, 17, 35 days) based on
the SuperMemo algorithm for stuff that I read that I want to remember.
Currently exists as a browser extension:

(Chrome) [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/harvest-grow-
your-...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/harvest-grow-your-
mind/dejecgndbecimagkaefkfdaedaimamji)

(Firefox) [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/addon/harvest-
gr...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/addon/harvest-grow-your-
mind)

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dorfsmay
Read blogs from Piotr Wozniak, he did a lot of research on the subject and
created supermemo.

[https://www.supermemo.com/english/company/wozniak.htm](https://www.supermemo.com/english/company/wozniak.htm)

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j_s
There were a couple parallel sub-discussions earlier this week, but no mention
of spaced repetition:

Training exercise boosts brain power, Johns Hopkins researchers say |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15508714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15508714)
(Oct 2017, 138 comments)

>pdog: _Do you know the best exercise for your brain? Actual exercise_

>JamesBarney: _I hit dual n back pretty hard trying to improve my IQ_

[https://www.gwern.net/DNB-meta-analysis](https://www.gwern.net/DNB-meta-
analysis)

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primordialsoup
I would love to increase my focus. Even if I force myself to sit tight, often
times I catch myself reading paragraphs after paragraphs all the while
thinking about something else. Meditation can help? What else?

~~~
visarga
> I catch myself reading paragraphs after paragraphs all the while thinking
> about something else.

Take notes as you read? Taking notes is great because you're doing both
information input and output, which helps a lot in memorization and
assimilation (information fits with previous information).

~~~
lhuser123
Also, repeat or explain what you just read in your own words while not looking
at the text. Corroborate if you can remember.

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susi22
I'm a big fan of spaced repetition. From a mathematical standpoint it's also a
very interesting question: You have your forgetting curve and which gives you
the probability that you still remember the association. I think there is
still some rooms for improvements around there. For instance, I'm not sure if
the big plays in the area adjust the forgetting curve for each individual user
after they have enough data points.

Shameless plug: I actually just developed a new spaced repetition platform the
last few years. I'm not official launched but it's online and works. If
anybody is interested in taking part of the beta testing, email is in my
profile.

