We’re visual creatures. Probably, when we were hunter gatherers… that was the kind of thing that mattered. And remembering, say, phone numbers was, like, not that important when you’re hunting down a mastodon or whatever. Joshua Foer Read Quote
There is a short window at the beginning of one’s professional life, when it is comparatively easy to take big risks. Make the most of that time, before circumstances make you risk averse. Joshua Foer Read Quote
Back when I lived in Brooklyn, I’d sometimes take the Q train all the way out to Coney Island and back, and work on my laptop. There’s something about pushy New Yorkers looking over your shoulder that really makes you produce sentences. Joshua Foer Read Quote
Sequencing – the careful striptease by which you reveal information to the reader – matters in an article, but it is absolutely essential to a book. Joshua Foer Read Quote
We often talk about people with great memories as though it were some sort of an innate gift, but that is not the case. Great memories are learned. At the most basic level, we remember when we pay attention. We remember when we are deeply engaged. Joshua Foer Read Quote
The sport of competitive memorizing is driven by a kind of arms race where every year somebody comes up with a new way to remember more stuff more quickly, and then the rest of the field has to play catch-up. Joshua Foer Read Quote
Memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it’s about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human. Joshua Foer Read Quote
The fact that books today are mostly a string of words makes it easier to forget the text. With the impact of the iPad and the future of the book being up for re-imagination, I wonder whether we’ll rediscover the importance of making texts richer visually. Joshua Foer Read Quote
Today we read books ‘extensively,’ often without sustained focus, and with rare exceptions we read each book only once. We value quantity of reading over quality of reading. We have no choice, if we want to keep up with the broader culture. Joshua Foer Read Quote
