As an engineer, I grudgingly had to concede that the most important discipline is philosophy. It drives us; our daily choices, our lives, our culture, and our society.
For a couple of years, I have the tools to memorize damn near anything, I’ve had a deep think over what should I memorize for long term storage, and I’m oddly hitting a brick wall.
What lists are worthy? What is useful? What will help me in life? In business? In relationships?
For me, I’m middle aged, past my formal education so I don’t have the pressures of studies to memorize for. I don’t compete in memory sports. What is worthy of my efforts, of my memory palaces? I memorized 250 digits of pi, just to prove I could do it, fortunately I realized memorizing more than that is meaningless. I doesn’t impress anyone IMHO. Like memorizing a deck of cards, it doesn’t translate to a useful life skill.
I have a fancy for Asian history, so I chose to memorize all the Chinese dynasties. I know memorizing numbers is useful day-to-day so I have my PAO done and memorized. I’ve got the techniques for grocery lists and street addresses easily done, but those aren’t for long-term storage. Vocabulary for my foreign language is a long term, so that qualifies. Memorizing faces and names, definitely worthwhile.
What lists are worthy?
Perhaps for speed math, all the squares and cubes of 1-99?
All the presidents? Meh…
Capitals, countries? yawn
What have YOU found to be worthy of your skills and efforts?
Where have you found memorizing numbers useful day-to-day? I’m probably just not familiar with what you do for your career; I haven’t applied that too much though I do see use for it.
I’ve recently used the major system to help memorize the fret numbers for guitar scales. I think these tools could probably help with other areas of learning an instrument, such as important points from books on music theory, or video lessons, etc.
I’ve also recently read a bit about “emotional mind palaces,” which can help for boosting your mood and for repeating positive affirmations when you’re in a stressful situation.
I found it both enjoyable and entertaining to learn the Kings and Queen’s of England. I did this by following Ed Cook’s “story” in his book Remember, Remember. It was “done and dusted” in a few hours, and having the list in my head made me curious about lots of things I would otherwise never thought about. I also learned a memory trick or two. Cook used the immage of a Hen (or other bird) for all of the Henry’s. This was a clever and effective piece of “coding”. There was no explicit memory place, but there were loci in the imaginary path that Cook creates as he tells his story. At the end, you also see how his links also encoded interesting bits of history. I found this to be great fun.
You could re-think that.
I’ve heard from people in many disciplines and their conclusions went something like:
Everything is literature…English
Everything is political…Political ‘Science’
Everything is psychological…Psychology
Everything is history…History
I ignore philosophy since Stephen Hawking said we don’t need it.
This is not a suggestion for a list to add to your many skills but a suggestions as to what you might want to do with it. Have you considered your legacy of what you have done for others. Is there a child you know struggling in school that you could help or a group of people who don’t know how to read. The old saying its better to give than receive. Not saying you haven’t of course, what you can give to others can be far more rewarding. I remember helping a student learn to read properly, he was so happy when the teacher asked him to read out loud to the class. Right now I would be happy to remember what my wife said we were doing tomorrow.
