As Bad As We Are At Remembering

Our Lives Are Structured By Our Memories Of Events. Event X Happened Just Before The Big Paris Vacation. I Was Doing Y In The First Summer After I Learned To Drive. Z Happened The Weekend After I Landed My First Job. We Remember Events By Positioning Them In Time Relative To Other Events.

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.

The Way To Get Better At A Skill Is To Force Yourself To Practice Just Beyond Your Limits.

What Distinguishes A Great Mnemonist, I Learned, Is The Ability To Create Lavish Images On The Fly, To Paint In The Mind A Scene So Unlike Any Other It Cannot Be Forgotten. And To Do It Quickly. Many Competitive Mnemonists Argue That Their Skills Are Less A Feat Of Memory Than Of Creativity.

Jonah Lehrer Is One Of The Most Talented Explainers Of Science That We’ve Got. What A Pleasure It Is To Follow His Investigation Of Creativity And Its Sources. Imagine Is His Best Book Yet.