Journalist and writer Joshua Foers TED Talk caught my attention by describing how he learned to train his memory and win the U.S. Memory Championship. What caught my attention was anyone can do it. I made an active decision in my late teens to actively avoid memorizing anything I could look up. Dumbest. Idea. Ever! Now I struggle to memorize complex commands with syntax that changes between language or tool types, long difficult rules and methods. In a nutshell, it is hard for me to think on a deep, complex level, when it comes to software, without a lot of work. Visually, Ive learned to master virtually any UI that has my attention. But, wrote memorization is painful. The reality is, our creative ideas are based on the information weve collected. In other words, the more you learn, the smarter you become. Method + material. Its important to master the right information. Becoming a Scala master wont make you good at UI. But, memorizing the right information, internalizing that information, and letting it mingle with more knowledge and more experience will yield better solutions. His TED talk has inspired me to read his book, Moonwalking with Einstein: amazon/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Remembering-Everything/dp/0143120530 His Slate article from 2005: slate/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2005/03/forget_me_not.html Joshuas site: joshuafoer/
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 21:09:43 +0000
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