One Trick, Known As The Journey Method

Over The Last Few Millennia We've Invented A Series Of Technologies - From The Alphabet To The Scroll To The Codex, The Printing Press, Photography, The Computer, The Smartphone - That Have Made It Progressively Easier And Easier For Us To Externalize Our Memories, For Us To Essentially Outsource This Fundamental Human Capacity.

Evolution Has Programmed Our Brains To Find Two Things Particularly Interesting, And Therefore Memorable: Jokes And Sex - And Especially, It Seems, Jokes About Sex.

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.

Some Memorizers Arbitrarily Associate Each Playing Card With A Familiar Person Or Object, So That The King Of Clubs Is Represented By, Say, Tony Danza. The Grand Masters Associate Each Card With A Person, An Action, Or An Object So That Every Group Of Three Cards Can Be Converted Into A Sentence.

Our Lives Are The Sum Of Our Memories. How Much Are We Willing To Lose From Our Already Short Lives By … Not Paying Attention?