I’m backlogged on my reading and I have just gotten around to reading this interesting (but lengthy) piece from Wired about some cool psychology hacks. I’m going to distill the key points for easier (read: less time consuming) mass consumption here. This is a very interesting memory trick. Simply put, I’m sure everyone could use a better memory.
Piotr Wozniak found a trick of how to remember stuff, and his software SuperMemo is a tool to help accomplish just that.
The problem statement and the general theory behind the solution:
SuperMemo is based on the insight that there is an ideal moment to practice what you’ve learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you’ve forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you’re about to forget. Unfortunately, this moment is different for every person and each bit of information. Imagine a pile of thousands of flash cards. Somewhere in this pile are the ones you should be practicing right now. Which are they?
The benefits:
Twenty years ago, Wozniak realized that computers could easily calculate the moment of forgetting if he could discover the right algorithm. SuperMemo is the result of his research. It predicts the future state of a person’s memory and schedules information reviews at the optimal time. The effect is striking. Users can seal huge quantities of vocabulary into their brains.
I love this next part. Sometimes the very gifted, us non-gifted just label as “well, this person was just born with this innate ability, and I will never ever come close, so I might as well just give up and not try”. Everyone agrees that Tiger Woods is perhaps one of the best most gifted golf player of all time. But does everyone also know about how hard he has worked to get to where he is today?
We are used to the idea that normal humans can perform challenging feats of athleticism. We all know someone who has run a marathon or ridden a bike cross-country. But getting significantly smarter — that seems to be different. We associate intelligence with pure talent, and academic learning with educational experiences dating far back in life. To master a difficult language, to become expert in a technical field, to make a scientific contribution in a new area — these seem like rare things. And so they are, but perhaps not for the reason we assume.
Okay, so the lesson here is that if you try really really hard, you too, can be what others refer to as “intelligent” and “gifted”. Even if you are not fortunate enough to be a trust-fund baby and you are not a descendant of Albert Einstein. Imagine that.
Philosopher William James once wrote that mental life is controlled by noticing. [...] I find myself thinking of a checklist Wozniak wrote a few years ago describing how to become a genius. His advice was straightforward yet strangely terrible: You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life. It is a severe prescription.
Severe and painful indeed. Basically, it’s about self-discipline and sticking to your commitments, the stuff you have set your eyes and made your goals. It’s a prescription I have chose to adhere by (yeah, I don’t have much a social-life, so there!) although I don’t take this to the extreme like Wozniak does. I think it’s a small trade-off, and I view it as an investment whose return will pay off soon enough.
And .. on looking towards the future!:
By projecting the achievement of extreme memory back along the forgetting curve, by provably linking the distant future — when we will know so much — to the few minutes we devote to studying today, Wozniak has found a way to condition his temperament along with his memory. He is making the future noticeable.
Tags: memory, psychology