Memory skills and the ability to do quick arithmetic in your head (the two go hand in hand). I would suggest reading some of Dominic O’Brian’s books, and then visit the various mnemotechnic forums. Most of the techniques you will find are geared towards memorizing for competitions, but with slight adjustments they can be used anywhere.
It seems a little silly at first, but it has probably been the biggest return on investment I have ever made. I started practicing these techniques last summer, and when school started I used them (Method of Loci especially—basically you just imagine a spatial location you know well and place images representing the things you want to memorize at unique points in your spatial journey) to memorize as much as I could, using spaced repetition software (mentioned somewhere else on this thread) to lock the most important things in.
Now, instead of writing down copious amounts of notes in class and not understanding a single thing, I just sit, listen, and memorize. I’ll also write down broad labels for things I need to make sure I remember (i.e if we are talking about “normal subgroups”, I will write down “normal subgroups”, but memorize the rest. This is just to have a hook to the topic so I can look it up later if I don’t remember something). By focusing on the images I am creating in my head, I’ve noticed that it even helps me focus more intensely on the topic that the images are referencing. By the time class is over, I can run through the entire lecture as if I was reading a book. This is the best part, really; it’s completely flipped my idea of studying on its head. Now I can just sit in the park and think, and it will qualify as studying because I have an entire book in my head with images to play around with.
I’ve also used it to memorize entire textbooks (not word for word, more like “page for page”). Again, it seems silly and pointless at first, but it really works wonders when you get the hang of it. Instead of belaboring over a topic that you don’t understand and then an hour later looking back 10 pages to see the illuminating point, all you have to do is rewind a “walk through your friend’s house” or “a drive to the beach”. At first it will take 10 times longer to do this than it would to just read the book. Currently, it only takes me about twice as long. I just have to make sure I go back through it in my head later on so I can plant it in my long term memory (spaced repetition is amazing for this).
It takes a hell of a lot of work though, if you want it to be more than a gimmick. And there doesn’t seem to be much information for people who want to use it for scholarship rather than for their shopping lists. Even posts I’ve seen here about the method of loci seem pretty dismissive of its utility, that it doesn’t help you understand. I think these claims are somewhat valid, but it’s like using Mathematica to solve integrals and then claiming that it doesn’t help you understand them. Well, yeah. But you could construct a 3d plot of an integral, and even make it interactive to see how it changes when you change some of the variables. Surely that will help you understand more. It’s the same thing for mnemonics. I could memorize a book word for word using these techniques and not understand a single thing; or I could take concepts and ideas from a page, mold a visual representation of them in my head, and make sure that my notion of how the representation acts and looks is congruent with these concepts and ideas. Then as I learn more, I go back and adjust this image for any discrepancies, and also use the image in later scenes when the concept/idea comes up again. Kind of like OOP in your imagination. They don’t have to be valid physical models for your concept, only approximations of the idea as you understand it in visual form. It surprised me how illuminating these approximations can be—more than once I have attempted to create a visual image only to get stuck and realize “Ah, that’s what I don’t understand!”.
Even if creating images doesn’t help you understand, using this method is still an amazing way to create hooks for stumbling points in your reasoning. It’s like having a jumper cable for your mind at all times. For any topic or concept you know you understand but have trouble at certain points, just make an image reminding you of the key elements and place it in your chosen spatial journey. When you need your reasoning, moving through your spatial journey and seeing these images will trigger a domino effect and you’ll slide right through with no trouble.
Anyway, sorry for the jumbled wall of text. I’m trying to communicate how fucking useful this has been for me, but it’s a little difficult with this kind of personal topic. So even if you find my reasons too subjective, I implore you to really try it. Not with the mindset that it’s a stupid little parlor trick, but that it has the possibility to be a huge improvement in how you assimilate knowledge.
Let me add to your description of the “Loci method” (also the basis of ancient Ars Memoria). You are using spatial memory (which is probably the evolutionarily oldest/most optimized) to piggyback the data you want to memorize.
There is an easier way for people who don’t do that well in visualization. Divide a sheet of paper into areas, then write down notes on what you are trying to remember. Make areas somewhat irregular, and connect them with lines, squiggles, or other unique markers. When you write them, and when you look them over, make note of their relative position—formula A is in the left top corner, while formula Z is down and to the right of it, just beyond the spiral squiggle.
For a lot of people, this works just as well as Ars Memoria, and is a lot easier to learn and execute on the fly.
I wonder how many brain hacks become awesome if you just lean on them hard enough. Could we all increase our effective waking hours by a factor of 1.2 by learning to lucid dream consistently, for instance?
I don’t believe you can. REM sleep is intrinsically fragmented into multiple short episodes, and you generally get little more than an hour all told anyway. (And time is distorted in dreams, so these are upper bounds...)
That really depends on the person… many people have several hours of REM each night in fairly long blocks.
I average 2.5 hours of REM/night (measured via ZEO), and apparently 2 hours/night is average for demographic of men aged 17-29 (per ZEOs user stats).
I typically have at least one solid non-fragmented hour long block, and a second block of at least 30 minutes with the remaining hour from small blocks.
Mindfulness meditation seems like another good example, especially since the required time investment for you to start seeing benefits seems to be pretty large.
My experience with mindfulness meditation differs from the standard narrative. Once I had practiced long enough to be able to meditate for 15 min. with no problems, I found meditation much more useful for inducing a concentrated state or taming bouts of internal turbulence than any longer-term effects.
Second this anecdote, and also the parent. I think depending on how you intend to apply it, you may be more or less observant of the short term effects of meditation, esp. mindfulness.
Anecdotally, sitting shikantaza style (just sitting, subtle attention to posture, returning from daydreaming or distraction when you’re aware it’s happening) has so far had two effects—short term I’ve found some immediate benefit in terms of being able to apply attention (which was a goal for me), over the span of 1-2 years I’ve (subjectively) noticed changes in how I react and make decisions which have been re-enforced by other peoples observations.
Further to this I’ve noticed it’s easier to apply some learnings, for example techniques from less wrong. Internally it feels as if there’s a longer period after an event happens to internalise and construct a response, instead of an immediate / knee jerk reaction.
Memory skills and the ability to do quick arithmetic in your head (the two go hand in hand). I would suggest reading some of Dominic O’Brian’s books, and then visit the various mnemotechnic forums. Most of the techniques you will find are geared towards memorizing for competitions, but with slight adjustments they can be used anywhere.
It seems a little silly at first, but it has probably been the biggest return on investment I have ever made. I started practicing these techniques last summer, and when school started I used them (Method of Loci especially—basically you just imagine a spatial location you know well and place images representing the things you want to memorize at unique points in your spatial journey) to memorize as much as I could, using spaced repetition software (mentioned somewhere else on this thread) to lock the most important things in.
Now, instead of writing down copious amounts of notes in class and not understanding a single thing, I just sit, listen, and memorize. I’ll also write down broad labels for things I need to make sure I remember (i.e if we are talking about “normal subgroups”, I will write down “normal subgroups”, but memorize the rest. This is just to have a hook to the topic so I can look it up later if I don’t remember something). By focusing on the images I am creating in my head, I’ve noticed that it even helps me focus more intensely on the topic that the images are referencing. By the time class is over, I can run through the entire lecture as if I was reading a book. This is the best part, really; it’s completely flipped my idea of studying on its head. Now I can just sit in the park and think, and it will qualify as studying because I have an entire book in my head with images to play around with.
I’ve also used it to memorize entire textbooks (not word for word, more like “page for page”). Again, it seems silly and pointless at first, but it really works wonders when you get the hang of it. Instead of belaboring over a topic that you don’t understand and then an hour later looking back 10 pages to see the illuminating point, all you have to do is rewind a “walk through your friend’s house” or “a drive to the beach”. At first it will take 10 times longer to do this than it would to just read the book. Currently, it only takes me about twice as long. I just have to make sure I go back through it in my head later on so I can plant it in my long term memory (spaced repetition is amazing for this).
It takes a hell of a lot of work though, if you want it to be more than a gimmick. And there doesn’t seem to be much information for people who want to use it for scholarship rather than for their shopping lists. Even posts I’ve seen here about the method of loci seem pretty dismissive of its utility, that it doesn’t help you understand. I think these claims are somewhat valid, but it’s like using Mathematica to solve integrals and then claiming that it doesn’t help you understand them. Well, yeah. But you could construct a 3d plot of an integral, and even make it interactive to see how it changes when you change some of the variables. Surely that will help you understand more. It’s the same thing for mnemonics. I could memorize a book word for word using these techniques and not understand a single thing; or I could take concepts and ideas from a page, mold a visual representation of them in my head, and make sure that my notion of how the representation acts and looks is congruent with these concepts and ideas. Then as I learn more, I go back and adjust this image for any discrepancies, and also use the image in later scenes when the concept/idea comes up again. Kind of like OOP in your imagination. They don’t have to be valid physical models for your concept, only approximations of the idea as you understand it in visual form. It surprised me how illuminating these approximations can be—more than once I have attempted to create a visual image only to get stuck and realize “Ah, that’s what I don’t understand!”.
Even if creating images doesn’t help you understand, using this method is still an amazing way to create hooks for stumbling points in your reasoning. It’s like having a jumper cable for your mind at all times. For any topic or concept you know you understand but have trouble at certain points, just make an image reminding you of the key elements and place it in your chosen spatial journey. When you need your reasoning, moving through your spatial journey and seeing these images will trigger a domino effect and you’ll slide right through with no trouble.
Anyway, sorry for the jumbled wall of text. I’m trying to communicate how fucking useful this has been for me, but it’s a little difficult with this kind of personal topic. So even if you find my reasons too subjective, I implore you to really try it. Not with the mindset that it’s a stupid little parlor trick, but that it has the possibility to be a huge improvement in how you assimilate knowledge.
Let me add to your description of the “Loci method” (also the basis of ancient Ars Memoria). You are using spatial memory (which is probably the evolutionarily oldest/most optimized) to piggyback the data you want to memorize.
There is an easier way for people who don’t do that well in visualization. Divide a sheet of paper into areas, then write down notes on what you are trying to remember. Make areas somewhat irregular, and connect them with lines, squiggles, or other unique markers. When you write them, and when you look them over, make note of their relative position—formula A is in the left top corner, while formula Z is down and to the right of it, just beyond the spiral squiggle.
For a lot of people, this works just as well as Ars Memoria, and is a lot easier to learn and execute on the fly.
As a data point, I was always horrible at visualization. My friends used to make fun of me for not being able to navigate my hometown.
That is interesting though, I hadn’t heard of this method. Thanks!
Do you every worry about running out of space? Or, conversely, of having so much memorized that you can’t find what you need when you need it?
Worries of running out of memory have, to my knowledge, always been a theoretical question and never shown up in practice.
While the human mind cannot have endless reserves of memory, I think even the most extreme use of memory cannot lead one to run out of space.
I wonder how many brain hacks become awesome if you just lean on them hard enough. Could we all increase our effective waking hours by a factor of 1.2 by learning to lucid dream consistently, for instance?
I don’t believe you can. REM sleep is intrinsically fragmented into multiple short episodes, and you generally get little more than an hour all told anyway. (And time is distorted in dreams, so these are upper bounds...)
That really depends on the person… many people have several hours of REM each night in fairly long blocks.
I average 2.5 hours of REM/night (measured via ZEO), and apparently 2 hours/night is average for demographic of men aged 17-29 (per ZEOs user stats).
I typically have at least one solid non-fragmented hour long block, and a second block of at least 30 minutes with the remaining hour from small blocks.
Mindfulness meditation seems like another good example, especially since the required time investment for you to start seeing benefits seems to be pretty large.
My experience with mindfulness meditation differs from the standard narrative. Once I had practiced long enough to be able to meditate for 15 min. with no problems, I found meditation much more useful for inducing a concentrated state or taming bouts of internal turbulence than any longer-term effects.
Second this anecdote, and also the parent. I think depending on how you intend to apply it, you may be more or less observant of the short term effects of meditation, esp. mindfulness.
Anecdotally, sitting shikantaza style (just sitting, subtle attention to posture, returning from daydreaming or distraction when you’re aware it’s happening) has so far had two effects—short term I’ve found some immediate benefit in terms of being able to apply attention (which was a goal for me), over the span of 1-2 years I’ve (subjectively) noticed changes in how I react and make decisions which have been re-enforced by other peoples observations.
Further to this I’ve noticed it’s easier to apply some learnings, for example techniques from less wrong. Internally it feels as if there’s a longer period after an event happens to internalise and construct a response, instead of an immediate / knee jerk reaction.