Anything that was written before 200 BC had no punctuation, all texts were basically just word strings. If you didn’t already know what you were reading, reading was useless.

In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, and it was all downhill from there.

The memory palace is a technique where you walk along a route you know really well, and put memories in certain locations along the way.

For example, you could go through your childhood home and place the items from your shopping list on the kitchen table. Then, when you’re in the groce...

Memory, and indeed most intellectual skill, is not fixed. Anyone, by using the right techniques and practising, can expand their mnemonic capacity beyond what many people would even think possible—an excellent party trick, or simple a useful tool to remember phone and credit card numbers

The major system allows you to convert numbers into sounds and thus words, thereby making them memorable. Each number keys to a certain kind of consonant, and vowels and some other sounds are unassigned. 1 is T or D. 2 is N.

The Major System is based not around letters but ...

Chunking simply means dividing one string of information into several.

Can you remember 1117200112241999 just by looking at it once? Most people can't; but we can remember 2 dates in a row: 11/17/2001 and 12/24/1999.

By creating 2 chunks of differently forma...

The cognitive stage: The skill is performed consciously and manually. This is when the brain is developing new strategies to do it more effectively. At this stage, there is improvement in fits and starts because the brain is monitoring performance and removing errors.

Before the invention of writing or electronics, people used to keep palaces devoted to memory. Not physical palaces, but mental ones!

1. Think of a place you know well… a childhood home, perhaps, or where you live now.

2. Imagine walking up to that place, and putting ...