eye swelling, and try to feel how
painful it would be. The more senses you can use, the better.
That simple exercise creates a
set of links between your memory
of the person’s face and name. The
technique works because it forces
you to engage more deeply with
the person’s name than you’re
used to. The more you think about
something — the more you can
engage in what psychologists refer
to as “elaborative encoding” — the
more memorable a piece of information is likely to be.
If attention and engagement are
the secret to remembering, then
that raises an interesting question.
How much of our lives — our already short lives — are we comfortable losing because we’re buried in
our smartphones, or not paying attention to the human being across
from us, or because we’re simply
too lazy to try to engage deeply
with the world around us? The
MORE ON
TED WEEKENDS
HOW FLAWED
MEMORIES
TEACH US
HUFFINGTON
03.31.13
JOSHUA
FOER
Voices
DECORATING
A BARREN
MEMORY
PALACE
feats of memory champions prove
that there are incredible memory
capacities latent in all of us, but if
you are going to live a memorable
life, it takes effort. You have to con-
If it’s a woman named
Abby, imagine a bee stinging
her eye. If it’s a guy called
Bill, imagine him with
a duckbill for a mouth.”
stantly force yourself to pay attention, to make information meaningful, to engage deeply. You have to
be the kind of person who
remembers to remember.
Joshua Foer is a science
writer and author of
Moonwalking with Einstein.
A selection of the week’s related blogs
HEADLINES TO VIEW BLOGS ABOUT THIS WEEK’S THEME
YOUR
DIABOLICALLY
LAZY BRAIN
THE SKINNY ON
REMEMBERING
THE CREATIVE
POWER OF
MEMORY