Visualization, memory, reading and research skills
Some of our students wonder regarding nature vs nurture controversy. The subject is very much open. See for example this nice article or these inspiring quotes. I will try to share some of my own experience. Back in 2008 came this amazing book which claimed to determine some of the factors that contribute to high …
Memory champion Wang Feng uses a very simple and efficient chunking method. Wang Feng is arguably the fastest mnemonist alive, so his method works. The simplicity of this method is only superficial, and you need a lot of practicing to master it – more than other methods we teach. Influenced by the structure of his …
While some training requires high level of skill, other exercises may be started as soon as you want. What skills can you train right away? Linking markers Creating short stories that include given words is a very simple way to remember things. Practice linking markers exercise in several ways. Level 1: Create stories with words …
One of the things that limit our reading speed is the speed of creating markers. If we were required to create a marker per detail within a text, we would end up with a choice between 250wpm at 80% retention and 1000wpm at 20% retention. In fact, one of the reasons that other speedreading courses …
Once in a while we write about doodling (or freestyle annotation) and its benefits. Students drawing in their papers where mistreated by generations of teachers. They were asked to focus, to stop fooling around and to listen to the teachers. However, the human spirit is stronger than education fashions, and student persistently doodled in school …
Continue reading “Doodling at school and at work will boost your productivity”
We have students of all ages. Our intelligence changes with age, and what works for one age will not necessarily work for another. Typically our course works well for ages between 13 and 65, however it can be easily adapted for wider age ranges. Before age of 13 kids simply do not read fast enough …
A very small percentage of people (~2%) is born with extremely good autobiographic memory: they remember every student in their class and every event of their life. Yesterday I met some classmates whom I have not seen for 26 years. Some things remained the same, but one thing that changes was my perception of childhood. …
Continue reading “Building timeline and visualizing history”
The mnemonic major system is quite ancient. In its most pure form, each number is a letter and letters form words that can be easily remembered. Ancient alphabets and new champions When we consider the Hebrew alphabet, each letter is a number, and Kabbalah is using this to achieve miraculous deeds. In Hindu there is …
Memory palace/loci is the oldest method available for memorization, and still it feels like we are very far from using its full potential. If you are interested using memory palace for any specific application, I suggest you to try Anthony Metivier’s books. Anthony has demonstrated how memory palaces can be used virtually for anything with …
So far I have referenced Tony Buzan books for mindmapping. I am realizing that I need to give my students a short and useful explanation of how to use mindmapping and why. This post is intended to be useful, so I will not go into historical, classical and programmable aspects of mindmapping, but focus on …
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