R. Jean Mathieu's Innerspace

SF/F, sociology, some recipes. Updates every other Friday.

Tag: mnemonics

Six Tips for Better Mnemonics

20 January, 2011 /

Having now spent a few weeks working on my mnemonics, and gotten four lessons into the 21-lesson Memory Master course, I’ve discovered a few things.

1) Be Stanley Ipkiss. Watch old cartoons.
It’s not as easy to come up with wacky links as it looks. Especially if this is your fiftieth of the day, and you’re a bit tired and hungry, and you know you’ve got another forty minutes of work ahead of you before you can even think about starting dinner. Putting it in the context of a Looney Tunes or Animaniacs cartoon (or Terry Gilliam animation) helps. Invoking that kind of spirit in your associations (whatever they are) helps. Trying to use violence or disgusting subjects actually makes it harder for me to remember, my brain seems to shy away from remembering those images. Sex helps, but not as much as you’d think. Comedy, comedy, comedy’s the thing.

2) Write it down.
It’s a quantum leap easier to remember information as I write it down. Yes, with a pen. Yes, on paper. Yes, I know they belong in a museum. It slows me down, seems more real…Initial Awareness, remember? We’re trying to raise it. Writing the list down in a notebook raises it, even if I throw the paper away right afterward (or hand it to Marissa so she can check me). It works much better for me than reading the list (from paper or screen) or hearing them aloud. I am working on making my intake of the latter stronger, so that I can apply mnemonics to things which are not easily written down (people’s names, for example).

3) Walk through the list in reverse.
Even if you don’t (or can’t) write it down, walk through the list backwards after you’ve finished forming all your links. This reinforces all the images, and familiarizes you with what it “feels like” in reverse. And, I don’t know about you, but I find it a lot easier to start at the end and work backwards. I used to solve mazes the same way as a kid.

4) Read this list.
My mother sent this to me (thanks, Mum!). Number eleven is basically mnemonics systems in a nutshell, and number fourteen talks about associations. Although it’s geared towards studying for school, most of them are applicable to other situations as well. Seriously, go read it. Memorize it, if you like.

5) Apply spaced repetition.
Use spaced repetition to really cement associations in your mind. Spaced repetition is remembering the material at longer and longer intervals (after one minute, one hour, one day…). Sounds simple, but according to studies like this one from UC San Diego, it’s a remarkably effective way to keep things in mind longer. I can offer my own testimony, in that I memorized the list of observation exercises through spaced repetition over the course of forty-eight hours, first an hour later, then twelve hours later (over my Five Will Get You Twelve, no less), then the next day…

6) Remember your limits.
By that, I mean, keep a few things in mind. Remember that, by and large, you have been memorizing lists of discrete information. They are data, and not knowledge. Knowledge comes from putting things in context, how your data (or facts) are important or relevant. You need savoir faire, not just savoir. You need to know how to use it, not just what it is. Mnemonics will help you keep facts around, but making those facts relevant and putting them in a logical framework to use later is your job.

Roscoe Learns to Think – The Second Week in Review

16 January, 2011 /

I started school this week. I’ve also been running to job interviews, English Corners, and so on. As a result, I haven’t been all that great at budgeting my time, and I’ve found myself squeezing out one aspect or another of Learning to Think all week.

Meditation

I meditated for the first few days in the room, wrapped in a blanket, with my hands covered with the heat pillow. Those were wonderful. For a few minutes each day, I felt the “beautiful stillness.” Then I started running around, and when I wasn’t running around, goofing off. So I took my stolen subway minutes and meditated there, or in the teacher’s lounge, or in the café after lunch, times when I had about twenty minutes and the wherewithal to do something productive with it.

That didn’t really work. I haven’t been able to really keep quiet or sit still in those places, mostly because they are so public and many of them involve necessary distractions (such as the stops being read off on the subway). I need to get back to sitting twenty minutes in my room alone, quietly, each day. Well, thirty, now.

Simulflow

Like last week, I missed a day of sitting with Kahne for an hour. However, I did manage to do some of the drills that day, so it wasn’t a total wash. As I mentioned, I wrote up several lists, and had them all memorized, and had great fun interlacing them and transposing them like we did with the alphabet last week.

But the real gains came in the drills. This wasn’t a terrible surprise to me, it was in the drills that I most felt “stiffness” and the brain-stretching sensation back in Yangshuo. On my last night, as it was clear I had achieved the level of mastery that Kahne demanded (despite my spotty attendance record), I did the drills to round out my hour. I felt stiffness and resistance throughout Drill B, that emerged into full-blown simulflow during Drill C. I again felt the sensation, pure and unmistakable, of my train of thought splitting onto two parallel tracks as I manipulated both sets of words.

I’ve discovered something with both simulflow and mnemonics: They must be taken on faith. I can’t set out or see the whole list or the whole of both words at the outset, I have to trust that I will find my way to the end. I can’t, yet, picture all the provinces I’ve memorized at once, but I can remember one or two and run from there. If I spell out t-i-k and write y-r-d, I can’t necessarily picture the “k” and the “d” when I’m writing “t” and “y,” but I have to trust that they’ll come to mind when I get there.

Have you felt this sensation? The sense that you’re running on parallel tracks, for however short a time?

Petit Perception

I’ve taken to skimping on this one. And I’m sliding back, in terms of being able to see and notice the things around me. Bad form. I still get it one or two a day, clocking a few things or scanning the room, but it’s not enough. Petit perception is difficult, because it’s not something that I sit down and do, like mnemonics practice or Kahne’s course. It’s something that I need to carry with me, running in the back of my mind, all day. And I haven’t progressed enough in Kahne to pull that off yet.

I don’t feel quite ready, or confident, about adding the concentration exercises to my routine yet. But I’m going to press on, if only because I need to memorize some poetry for Kahne’s Double Concentration drill.

However, I want to make note of something. Last night, just after I turned out the lights, I noticed how remarkably quiet it was. The traffic was muted, there were no cries or shouts from the street, the city seemed hushed. I practiced layered listening, listening to the hum of the modem, the trickle of water through the pipes, the muted roar of the city, the honking of the streets below…until I realized, with amazement, that I could go no quieter. I heard the ringing in my ears.

It was a strange moment. I’m glad I was there for it.

Mnemonics

This side of my practice has probably suffered worst this week. No sooner did Marissa and I agree to memorize the provinces of China than we set the list aside and promptly forgot about it. I made a go at remembering the first eight or so (Guangzhou, Guangdong; Fuzhou, Fujian; Hangzhou, Zhejiang; Shanghai, Shanghai; Nanjing, Jiangshu; Jinan, Shandong; Shijiazhuang, Hebei; Beijing, Beijing; Tianjin, Tianjin; Shenyang, Liaoning; Dalian, Jiling; Harbin, Helongjiang; Hohhot, Inner Mongolia) but then kind of dropped off.

I’m not very good, yet, at coming up with substitute words, and I’m not going to get any better without more practice. Therefore, I’m repeating Session C this week, in addition to doing Session D.

However, I got plenty of practice remembering long lists of things that don’t require substitute words (or at least, not very much) in the form of this week’s Kahne exercises, and I can look forward to more, in the form of next week’s.

This Week

This week, Session C (repeat) and Session D in mnemonics. That’s substitute words and people’s names and faces, for those of you playing the Home Game. We’re extending anapana to thirty minutes, and picking up some of the concentration exercises if you’re ready. Exercise III in Kahne, and keep up with the drills when you’ve got a spare moment.

We add Double Concentration this week. However, in this case, Kahne suffers from his age. I can barely remember my own address, much less anyone else’s, for the simple reason of I never need them. And email addresses are too short to cut it for this exercise. Any suggestions on what could replace the four-line physical address, something we’ve all got a small collection of in our heads to work from, that we could write down while reading out bits of poetry?

Roscoe Learns to Think – Momento Contemplari

10 January, 2011 /

So! This week, I start(ed) Exercise II in Multiple Mentality, upped my daily dose of anapana to twenty minutes, started Session C, and continued to practice my observation exercises.

Exercise II, as most of you are now painfully aware, is the assembly of a list of three-letter words, and then the writing of them, from memory, backwards. I’ve found some ‘stiffness’ or ‘resistance,’ unrelated to interest or lack thereof (which plagued me all last week). It is difficult not to write ‘c’ or ‘p,’ for example, backwards. I’ve taken to writing one set in order (taking full advantage of my mnemonics training) and then writing a second (and third) set disordered. It’s hard not to start “going down the list” (writing “miv” [vim] and not following it with the next words: ale, sty, why, how…) when I’m trying to write it out disorderly, and I found myself alternating lists more than once.

So, tonight, I did an experiment. I interwove the list of words I’d selected, exactly as we did with the alphabet last week. I felt a lot of stiffness, trying to write the word forwards, or write it in mirror-script, and getting stuck on items I hadn’t quite linked well enough. I kept jumping ahead to the next item (jumping, by analogy of the alphabet, from B to C, instead of stopping at Y in the middle). But I felt myself start to loosen up toward the end, and felt a kind of brain split.

I’ll try transposing elements from tomorrow’s list.

Also, Exercise II makes the practice in mnemonics dead easy. Every day, I have to come up with and remember a list of at least thirty items (I’ve been doing fifty and will probably up it). Funny, I learned how to do that last week…I’m still having times where I stumble, of course. But practice, constant practice. Ostinate rigore!

I do believe, ladies and gentlemen, we are doing better than Kahne. He expected us to do only one list, whereas you and I, if we have been doing our homework like good boys and girls, can make seven, or fourteen, or as many as we please, and commit them to memory in shorter time. We can make a new list every day. Or, as I did yesterday, we could remember the entire fifty-item list from the day before…and then create an entirely new one.

I hasten to remind everyone, we could not have done this at the beginning of last week. If you wanted proof, there it is, we are better today than we were yesterday, at least when it comes to remembering sequential lists.

Marissa has climbed on board, at least as far as memory is concerned. She’s at her parents’, now, helping her sister move, and she took my copy of Memory Master with her. We’ve committed to memorizing the provinces of China, by region, by the end of the week. For me, this is a test of my ability to substitute words. For her, a test of associative memory.

And she’s testing me. She had me memorize the account number of our landlord for when I have to deposit the rent myself, then she teased me with her phone number. Tonight, she called me, and asked me what her phone number was. At a slow, measured pace, I recited it to her.

She was much pleased. Tom Smid was right, a better memory can improve your sex life social life.

As to meditation, my suspicion at the end of last week was right. Twenty minutes gives my brain time to settle down, get used to the idea of stillness, and lets me climb deeper into the breath. My notes on meditation have become rather …poetic. For example:

“Touched breath, once deeply: beautiful stillness. Hard to focus, Marissa next room (music, dryer, laughter). Looking forward to tomorrow. Roomscanned before opening eyes, felt languid, rich, all the time in the world.” (Thalass, is this similar to the slowing you felt?)

“Everything seems richer, fresher now. Beautiful stillness.”

“The breath is always there. It is patient, like Lila, like Laurie. Like a lover. Always there for me, always waiting. I need only turn to it, and let all else fall away.”

Harry Lorayne’s “final test of meditation” holds: I feel better after my daily sit. This is very different from last week, where I didn’t feel very different at all. I must revise Learning to Think to start with twenty minutes of anapana, unless some of you have a different story to tell?

They don't know where they're going either.

I’ve still been in a bit of a rut, when it comes to petit perception. Room surveys, window shopping, room surveys, window shopping…when Marissa comes back, I’m going to ask her to sit down and play Kim’s Game with me. Maybe even buy some beers or oranges and taste test, or describe the three or four kinds of incense we have. I could be doing more layered listening, I suppose, it’s quick enough. But Shenzhen is so painful to the ear…if you’ve got any suggestions, please do lay ‘em on me.

So how have you been? Thalass, I remember you were doing the futharc, and wraith, your meditating in the steam room, er, inspired me to try meditating while getting a foot massage. And I know there are more of you out there, plodding along with us. Tell us what it’s like for you.

Roscoe Learns to Think – The First Week In Review

7 January, 2011 /

Simulflow:

I wrote in the notes section of one of my pages, ”HAET HARRY KAHNE!” I think many of you can agree with me on that one. But I remember this from the first time around, and the second week is not nearly so … tedious.

The biggest problem that I faced this week, insofar as multiple mentality is concerned, was attention span. As Loweko commented, “I have found Kahne’s exercises magnificent meditation in their own right.” Which is true … it’s almost easier to focus on the breath. I found a couple of ways around the issue of paying attention.

First, I played with the lines. I did variations, like transposing the alphabet in a different order or interlacing “wrong” (ZA instead of AZ). For the past four days, I’ve done the transposed alphabet four ways in one sitting. This usually gets my interest back and makes me pay much closer attention, to make sure I don’t confuse them.

In interlacing the alphabet, I felt “brain split,” like I did back in Yangshuo…but it seemed to happen at random. Tonight, I worked out what it was. As long as I was paying attention to something else, besides what I was writing, I could split my attention. That sounds obvious, but you try getting distracted intentionally. 🙂

The easiest way I could figure was to focus on the last letter in sequence, so I would stare intently at “B” while I was writing “C,” then move on to “Y” while I was writing “X.”

I also found less…sophisticated ways to get it done. Yesterday, when I was gritting my teeth through yet another round of transposed alphabet (ACBD… or alternately ZXYW…), I played “okay, just one more,” with myself from lines 30 to 50. Just get to 30, ok. OK, now 33, that’s the end of the page. OK, just two more and you’re at 35, nice round number. Do one more, just to be a bit over the top, give yourself an edge when you pick up tomorrow. Yes, I know it’s already been an hour. Well, you’re next to 40 now…

I realized earlier, as I was finishing my interlaced alphabet (AZBYCX…) that Kahne probably meant that his students should do Part 1 each day until you got it, then move on to Part 2, then Part 3…instead of, say, trying to write 150 lines in an hour, like some of us who are insane.

*koff*

I didn’t realize this the first time through, and if anyone else tried to do all three at one sitting: I’m so sorry. But look at it this way, we got through more than Harry ever expected, and faster!

Meditation:

My apartment has no heat and it’s hovering around 40 right now. I’ve meditated in here twice, maybe three times. Mostly, I’ve been meditating out in the world, on the subway or in Pacific Coffee. I’m finding that my brain actually settles the fuck down at right around the eight minute mark, and I actually feel calmer and can focus on my breath then. I look forward to next week, and sits of twenty minutes.

I’ve also found that setting an alarm actually makes me more antsy and nervous than checking the clock two or three times during the sit. So, yeah, I’ll just do that, instead of trying to use alarms.

My libido has been having a fun time distracting me. Which makes sense: Nothing distracts me quicker or more profoundly. Or, I try to fight it, and end up getting distracted. I’m going to work on letting that stuff go in the coming weeks.

On the plus side, the fantasies that burble up when I’m trying to meditate are magnificent.

Mnemonics:

I have the basic concepts down from Sessions A and B, but my implementation still needs work. I seem to have a “natural” limit of about ten items at a time, or at least I have pretty significant trouble remembering longer lists. I tried the first list after a day, and could remember it just fine. Same with the Petit Perception lists. But the long list from Session B? After an hour, I’d forgotten “soap,” and after a day, I forgot four items, and misplaced a large chunk of the middle.

I think the problem’s to do with my implementation. I didn’t practice my mnemonics nearly as much as I practiced with Mr. Kahne, so I kind of skimped on that homework (boo hiss). And the images I came up with, while funny in a pedestrian way, didn’t really arrest me or tickle my funny bone. It says something that I immediately remembered chicken, melon, because of the image Smid supplied, as well as baked beans, shampoo, for the same reason. I think I might have to watch old Warner Brothers and Animaniacs cartoons to get a feel for the kind of images I need. Quelle horreur.

More lists. More lists. Need to invent more images, memorize more lists. One a day, with a review of yesterday’s and the one from the beginning of the week, would seem appropriate, and a review of all of them at the end of the week.

I wonder how long you can let something “sit” without refreshing it, and still remember, say, 90% of it?

Petit Perception:

At last, some good news! I’m noticing a quantum leap in my involvement in everyday life after one week of practice. Last night, I saw Marissa drop a piece of sausage in the stir-fried vegetables, and I got it with my chopsticks before she did. My ears perk up at the slightest sound of the kettle or the soup boiling over, and like a shot I’m at the stove and taking care of it. Marissa is already relying on me to know where her glasses are whenever they aren’t on her face.

And it’s not just her. We played a round of room survey in the bar the other night, one of my students, two friends, and I, and they were amazed that I could describe the three people behind me without looking, because I’d clocked them as I sat down. I’m amazing myself, really, because now I see things that I passed by so often before. Diwang glitters in the night, and I never knew. There’s a mahjongg gambling den just down the street that I never saw before. I haven’t been working it, and I can even smell more clearly.

However, I noticed myself falling into a rut when it came to the clocks somewhere about Thursday, always “what color was it?” So I started grilling myself on variations: cut of the jacket, then? Number? How about the person next to him, was it a man or a woman? What are they doing? Hairstyle?

And, having overlooked it six times now, last night, I finally sat down and room surveyed the café where I do work.

I’m still amazed.

At everything I miss.

Conclusion:

Coughed and stumbled on Wednesday, but got back up again. Need to work harder on mnemonics, longer on meditation, and vary my petit perception practice a bit more. Harry Kahne, if I remember right, will look after himself just fine.

How about you? Have you been keeping notes, keeping track? Let us see them! Let us know how you’ve been doing, what you’ve noticed about yourself and your practice. I started all this so that no one of us need feel alone.

Roscoe Learns To Think: Mid-Week

6 January, 2011 /

Well! Got back on the horse yesterday, and it was interesting. I tried meditating on the subway on my way to work (didn’t go so well), I started Session B of Memory Master, and I switched over to doing the interwoven alphabet instead of writing it in reverse (which I can do perfectly well by now).

Meditating on the subway didn’t work so well, mostly because I was still trying to count stops until I reached Gou Wu Gong Yuan. I was still much calmer and more collected when I arrived, though, than when I left, so that counts for something.

As to Memory Master, now I remember why I shoved Sessions A and B together. 😛 They’re essentially the same lesson, taught in slightly different ways. I screwed up one or two entries on the fifteen-item shopping list, so I’m going to try again this morning. I also went ahead and memorized the lists of observation and concentration exercises out of my Petit Perception guide, which are shorter.

The interwoven alphabet (the A-Z B-Y pattern) was interesting. It seems to take me about thirty minutes to get through fifty lines of anything, so, since I have now pretty well memorized the alphabet backwards, I decided to do parts 2 and 3 of Exercise I instead. I felt the weird sensation again, like my brain was splitting in two and moving parallel, that I felt back in Yangshuo. But only when I was working it out, or going back to working it out. I would write A, Z, then focus on A and write the next letter (B), then focus on Z and write the next letter (Y)…and then I felt the brain shift. Later, I got distracted by the arrival of my hot chocolate, and did a few by rote. It felt different.

Also, you may want to try inflicting the room survey or an improvised Kim’s Game on your friends the next time you’re all sitting down to dinner or something. I did it to a few friends and students in my favorite bar last night, and it was great fun for all.

Roscoe Learns to Think – Failure

5 January, 2011 /

So, two days ago, I failed. I screwed around on the Internet until about one in the afternoon, then went out with three things in mind: get a cup, get a new kettle, and sit down with Kahne and Smid for an hour or so. For various reasons, including Marissa coming home early from Hong Kong, I was unable to complete any of these tasks. And unable to do so even until I went to bed.

So, yesterday, I sat down just before lunch and did my multiple mentality exercises. When Marissa and I went shopping for scarves and gloves, I did window-shopping. I memorized the list of observation and concentration exercises (plus a few more that have been suggested to me in private). And I meditated.

I still feel like I let myself (and you all) down. But I don’t want to paper it over and cover it up, so I’m being completely truthful about it. I could try and pull a double today, or let it slide, or knock back the scheduling (switch over to Exercise II on Sunday instead of Saturday, etc.). How do you think I should handle it?

Let me know in the comments. Right now, I believe I have some homework to do…

Roscoe Learns to Think – ‘Well Begun is Half-Done’

3 January, 2011 /

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone’s off to a good start on their new year’s resolutions, especially if you are also Learning to Think.

I’ve got some good news, and some bad news. The bad news is that I can’t upload videos from here. Unless someone gives me some hosting space and an uploading system that can either work through proxies or fly under the radar, I can’t get my test videos up until my next trip to Hong Kong, somewhere in mid-January.

The good news is, I got properly started. On New Year’s Day, I meditated, and did the room scan a few times, but I put off sitting down with Kahne or with my mnemonics. So I ended up doing my Kahnes at the kitchen table at about 12:30 at night, and it was pulling teeth all the way.

For writing the alphabet backwards, I kept transposing KJ to JK, and confusing N and M. I also didn’t have the “fairly even speed” that Kahne asked for, often stuttering as I wrote, “T…S! R, Q” and “I H … G…” My attention kept drifting and I kept speeding up, which only made the areas where I would get temporarily stuck stick out more. However, I found that sounding it out helps both the rhythm and the attention, and slowing down helps a lot.

As to transposing (the ACBD sequence), I now know how the Final Five Cylons felt. Rhyming couplets would form in my head (ABCD, EGFD) which obviously didn’t help on X, H, or L. I think that’s why I kept forgetting what the fourth letter was. And I spent so much time on this, I didn’t have time to do the third section.

I found it easier, and you might, too, to work from memory if you cover up or fold back the line you just wrote. That way, you aren’t tempted to copy it out from what you can read, or to do so automatically when you zone out. It allows for more mistakes, but also works your brain harder, instead of being pointless busywork.
On the second day, I decided to let mistakes lie. In the first place, it helps my rhythm, and in the second, I’m copying this out fifty damn times. It’s not like I won’t get another chance at it. I also switched venues (to my favorite coffee shop) and did my meditating beforehand. Ten minutes of anapana put me in a mind to focus, and I found that my attention held for a lot longer on the task at hand and wasn’t so quick to jump away.

I also fiddled a bit with the ACBD sequence. At one point, while I was very bored, I accidentally wrote ZY XWVU … you know, I started it backwards. All of a sudden, I had to figure out the sequence in reverse while I was writing it. That got me interested! I set aside the last fifteen lines for playing around with it, both ZY XWVU and ZXYW. Reversing and resetting revived and kept my interest, even while I was writing it out forwards. I also felt ‘brain-crunch’ when I did it, my mind was actively working it out instead of passively copying.

Yesterday, I also sat down with Session A in Memory Master. At the top of the page is this quote:

“Training your memory is a little like fighting a boggart. You have to fight silly.”

I was able to remember the given list backwards and forwards a few minutes later, half an hour later, and this morning, all without referring to the document. I found it easier to work backwards in the first test, and I suggest you try it: When you’re done putting the list (or any other list) together, start at the end and walk backwards through your associations.

Also while I was at the café, I kept clocking the room. I didn’t keep count, but I think I got about half of the things I was looking for (gender, or what color their coats were) each time. Sometimes, borrowing a page from Lorayne, I looked at the same table again, and asked a different question (“so all their jackets are black. Fine. What are they drinking?”)

How about you? What have you noticed about your practice?

Roscoe Learns to Think – Allons-Y!

1 January, 2011 /

“Anyone can do what I have done, if they do what I have done.” – F. Matthew Alexander

So, there we go. I’ve explained the self-administered tests that I and the Home Game players will be inflicting on giving ourselves. I’ve outlined the history and philosophy behind the four aspects of the practice (simulflow, meditation, mnemonics, and petit perception). And, in bits and pieces, I’ve explained what I’d like to do.

Today, I’m bringing it all together.

On January 1, 2010, I will administer the first round of the tests I’ve put together. I’ll upload them (God willin’ and the firewall don’t rise) either Saturday or Sunday. I’d like to see a whole group of them, of all of us going all in together, starting the New Year proper. Leave them (or links to them) in the comments. Also on Sunday, I start my practice.

I’ve outlined the whole program, week-by-week, in this PDF. For the first week, I will do Exercise I of Harry Kahne’s Multiple Mentality program, sitting and playing with the alphabet for one hour each day. I will meditate for ten minutes, focusing on my breath, the pressure and level of it, the temperature, the feel of it. I will read and do the exercises in Memory Master, Session A. And I will close my eyes, count things in the room, do mental math, and even memorize four lines of poetry. When I pass shop windows, I’ll remember what was in there, and check that I was right.

This is not going to be easy, or quick. I happen to believe nothing of value really is. But it will be enormously educational. By the first of April, I will be able to better focus, more aware of the world around me, able to do one thing at a time or many things at once. If LeShan is anything to write home about, I will have “a greater efficiency and enthusiasm for daily life.” In many ways, I will be more accomplished, smarter, more involved, more alive. I will have Learned to Think.

Or, I will have learned how not to achieve these things. I will have found problems which are presently insurmountable, approaches that are ineffective, fast-forwards that end up rewinding me. But I will have documentation of it, and if I want to try again, in a year, in ten years, if someone else wants to reach for a better humanity than the one they now know, my records are here to show them where I strove, and how I fell, and, perhaps, how they could avoid doing the same.

More importantly than either, I will have tried. The results are less important than trying itself, than the attempt itself. I’ve made some messy stabs at doing one aspect or another of this practice, but I’ve never organized it and sat down and resolved to do it. I can’t wait to start, and see where it goes. But the game is worth a candle. For the possible outcome of achieving the mental powers I’ve wanted for years, of not only learning to think, but to be more aware and alive, Paris is damn well worth that mass.

As Teddy Roosevelt said,

“the credit belongs to the man who actually is in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs; who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best in the end knows the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

But I am not only some faceless, timeless Human, but a man, born in a particular time and place, and to a particular generation. It’s hard going it alone, doubly so for my generation, known as Y but which will be known to history as The Social Generation. On the one hand, it’s a relief to know that there are others out there, sweating as I do, groaning to face Kahne or Weed or Lorayne again, eyeing the clock subtly, cursing that that desk totally wasn’t there a second ago. I suspect the comments section will become a bitching and moaning and mutual support group that way. A carrot, you might say. On the other hand, knowing I have you all to face, ILF and Jaci and Lachlan and wraith and Mira and Billy and everyone else, and that I have to ante up to look you in the eye, puts my pride to good use (for once). You could call that a stick.

So, ante up. Right here, right now. By April, we could have mental powers to shock and amaze ourselves and the world, to enjoy and join our lives. We could be Holmeses, Mentats, Bene Gesserit, better tomorrow than we are today. Sign up in the comments section, and see your name listed on the wall to the left. Put up your videos on January 1st or 2nd. Join a great experiment, to show off what it means to be human, what we could all be capable of.

I leave you with a question:

Are you a bad enough dude to Learn to Think?

Roscoe Learns to Think – Mnemonics

29 December, 2010 /

When it comes to Harry Kahne, there’s almost no information at all. With mnemonics, there’s almost too much. And why not? The ars memorativa (the Art of Memory) is almost three thousand years old, with a history that touches names like Napoleon III, Aristotle, and that Greek, Simonides. Cicero wrote of it in De oratore, St. Thomas Aquinas recommended it for meditation purposes, and the Puritans banned it for “promoting sensuous and lewd thoughts.” (I am not making this up.)

So why have you never heard of it?

Well, to start with, you have. Most of you remember Roy G. Biv from physics class, and almost all of you remember Every Good Boy Does Fine. Some of us could probably still sing along to this. Or this. Or, for the med students, this one.

The other reason you haven’t heard of it is twofold: First, cheap notebooks and writing supplies are available. Second, for mnemonics to actually pay off (besides one-offs like Roy G. Biv), you have to put a lot of work into it. Like, say, at least three months’ worth.

But why bother, really? We have calculators to free us from arithmetic, Outlook to free us from remembering our appointments, and as to anything non-smartphone-related, there’s an app for that. According to James from the Thoughtscream, a Stross/Doctorow-style augmented reality is just around the corner, rendering most kinds of present information-sharing and -storage moot. Well, I can think of at least five good reasons:

Reasons to Practice Mnemonics
1) I don’t have a smartphone (it’s true).
2) They haven’t invented an app for finding my damn keys.
3) Some of us need to learn a foreign language, for business, pleasure, or because the alternative is starving to death on the streets of China.
4) Facial recognition software is still primitive and flawed.
5) Every so often, in the rustic information-sharing confines known as a university, there are these things called “tests.”

(If you have more, feel free to add them to the comments section! Snark encouraged!)

And even when we’re all wearing contacts that link us to the Facebook profile of everyone we meet (and offer us discount prices on their fine leather jackets), being able to remember jokes, speeches, and the particular words the locals use to insult you will remain viable skills(1).

So how does it work and why can’t we just come up with funny acronyms or songs about everything? Well, we kind of can. Funny acronyms are easy to remember, because they’re either funny, or weird, or politically incorrect, or sexy, or something. One of my favorites involves Sarah Palin waking up naked in the Arizona desert next to an (equally buck naked) Bill Clinton (2). And that’s the key. Hook it up to something easy to remember. All mnemonic systems work on this basic principle.

For Learning to Think, I’m going to be working through the Memory Master course, at about two lessons a week. I’m also going to be liberally borrowing from, referencing, and discussing Harry Lorayne, Tony Buzan, Dominic O’Brien, the Rhetorica ad Herrenium, ludism.org, and whatever else I come across that’s relevant. A lot of the mnemonics literature is very similar, and the principles don’t change much.

In addition, as with simulflow, I’m going to establish a testing procedure and put a video up of me making an ass of myself. At the beginning, first month mark, second month mark, and end, I’m going to do a slightly-modified version of Harry Lorayne’s test. That is, I’m going to see and try to remember:

1.) An unordered list (just a list of objects)
2.) A list in order (the Presidents of the United States)
3.) A set of names and faces
4.) Ten words in an unfamiliar language (in my case, Spanish)
5.) A short but intricate joke
6.) A long number (the Golden Mean)
7.) A set of names and phone numbers

Home Game players! Same rules apply. I want to see you stumbling over who came after Lincoln or being unable to recite your boy/girlfriend’s phone number. Each video wins a no-prize.

A full PDF of Memory Master is available here.

1 – that last one in particular never goes out of style.
2 – I’m never forgetting “Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas.” No matter how hard I try.

Roscoe Learns to Think – Introduction

27 December, 2010 /

Like almost everyone else, I make New Year’s resolutions.

Like almost everyone else, I break them.

Not this year.

When I came to China the first time, back in 2006, I became obsessed with human potential. Not the woo-woo stuff about telepathy and astral projections, but something more like the Mentats or the Bene Gesserit of my beloved Dune, a kind of ultimate flowering of human powers. I explored strange alleys of the internet and obscure sects of Chinese religion and practice, made a couple of hacking attempts at practicing what I’d found. I learned names like Kahne, and Weed, and Lorayne and LeShan, names you’ll soon be familiar with.

This year, I put it into practice.

I’ve collected all my old notes, and sorted them out. Of the wishful fantasy of becoming a Bene Gesserit, I’ve harrowed four abilities that I believe are skills, and which, like any skill, can be learned by dint of practice. These four I call simulflow, mnemonics, meditation, and petit perception.

Simulflow is similar to, but distinct from, multitasking. Multitasking involves giving partial (mental) attention to many things at once. Simulflow is the art of giving your full (mental) attention to several things at once.

Mnemonics is the ars memorativa, the Art of Memory. It involves training oneself in a few brain hacks or mental cheats to assist natural memory in normal tasks, like remembering where you set your glasses.

Meditation, as I’m doing it, is mindfulness meditation, paying attention to one thing at a time. This is harder than it sounds.

Petit perception is clocking the details. You would be amazed at the things you miss. Try closing your eyes and naming the objects on your desk. Then open your eyes and see how much you missed.

I’ve put together a plan that lasts twelve weeks, or three months. I call it Roscoe Learns to Think, and I’m starting on January 1st. By April 1st, I will have concluded this experiment, one way or the other. Either I’ll have finished, and accomplished what I set out to do, or I’ll have finished, and fallen short, or I’ll have given up. Only the latter is failure, as far as I’m concerned.

But this is only partly about me. Mostly, this is about you.

I’m including all this detail as an invitation. You can come along, if you like, and take part in the experiment, see if this stuff really works. If it does, you’ll be able to remember everything at a glance, and rattle it off casually a week later while you’re composing an email and reading one of my stories. And you’ll know where your keys are. If it doesn’t work, and this is the awesome bit, you’ll still be ahead of where you are now.

It’s gonna be tough going. We’re going to need practice, and discipline, and mastery(1) to get to April. I’m going to note my progress, and add snarky commentary, and put up suggestions for application (I’m pretty sure “How to have better sex by sitting around and doing nothing” is going to be fairly popular), and I suggest you do, too. Join me, and we’re in for the long haul. But we’re gonna Learn to Think.

Sound good?

Sign up here in the comments, and I’ll put your name up to the right. Yeah, right there at the top. A long list of men and women, willing to work for their bread and pay their dues, and willing to participate in a grand experiment, to find out what a human mind can do.

This year, I’m going to the stars. I’m going to Learn to Think.

Who’s with me?

————
1 – George Leonard’s Mastery is going to come up a lot, and it’s a great book anyway. You should read it.

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