I met with amnesiacs and savants, educators and scientists, to try to understand what memory is, why it works, why it sometimes doesn't, and what its potential might be. Joshua Foer More Quotes by Joshua Foer More Quotes From Joshua Foer If you want to live a memorable life, you have to be the kind of person who remembers to remember. Joshua Foer motivation inspiration memorable Our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by … not paying attention? Joshua Foer short-life motivation memories ...who we are and what we do it is fundamentally a function of what we remember. Joshua Foer who-we-are function remember Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Joshua Foer memories world ideas Memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human. Joshua Foer training party memories How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by losing ourselves in our Blackberries, our iPhones, by not paying attention to the human being across from us who is talking with us, by being so lazy that we're not willing to process deeply? Joshua Foer short-life iphone talking The way to get better at a skill is to force yourself to practice just beyond your limits. Joshua Foer learning skills practice Memory is like a spiderweb that catches new information. The more it catches, the bigger it grows. And the bigger it grows, the more it catches. Joshua Foer information bigger memories What makes things memorable is that they are meaningful, significant, colorful. Joshua Foer significant memorable meaningful One of the great challenges of our age, in which the tools of our productivity are also the tools of our leisure, is to figure out how to make more useful those moments of procrastination when we're idling in front of our computer screens. Joshua Foer productive-work procrastination challenges The more we remember, the better we are at processing the world. And the better we are at processing the world, the more we can remember about it. Joshua Foer processing remember world The best memorizers in the world - who almost all hail from Europe - can memorize a pack of cards in less than a minute. A few have begun to approach the 30-second mark, considered the 'four-minute mile of memory.' Joshua Foer europe memories cards During the Middle Ages they understood that words accompanied by imagery are much more memorable. By making the margins of a book colorful and beautiful, illuminations help make the text unforgettable. It's unfortunate that we've lost the art of illumination. Joshua Foer beautiful book art We've outsourced our memories to digital devices, and the result is that we no longer trust our memories. We see every small forgotten thing as evidence that they're failing us. Joshua Foer forgotten-things digital memories It is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human. To make sense of the world, we must filter it. "To think," Borges writes, "is to forget. Joshua Foer essence writing thinking To the extent that experience is the sum of our memories and wisdom the sum of experience, having a better memory would mean knowing not only more about the world, but also more about myself. Joshua Foer knowing memories mean If you want to make information stick, it's best to learn it, go away from it for a while, come back to it later, leave it behind again, and once again return to it - to engage with it deeply across time. Our memories naturally degrade, but each time you return to a memory, you reactivate its neural network and help to lock it in. Joshua Foer locks going-away memories All across Africa, the Pacific and the Americas, we find cultures that didn't know about mouth kissing until their first contact with European explorers. And the attraction was not always immediately apparent. Most considered the act of exchanging saliva revolting. Joshua Foer kissing mouths culture Part of being creative is not being super-duper focused. Joshua Foer be-creative focused creative Kissing could have begun as a way of sniffing out who's who. From a whiff to a kiss was just a short trip across the face. Joshua Foer kissing faces way
