- Memory
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Joshua Foer Quotes
Most Famous Joshua Foer Quotes of All Time!
We have created a collection of some of the best joshua-foer quotes so you can read and share anytime with your friends and family. Share our Top 10 Joshua Foer Quotes on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Memory
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Once upon a time, this idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory was not nearly so alien as it would seem to us to be today.
- Live
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
If you want to live a memorable life, you have to be the kind of person who remembers to remember.
- Colleagues
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
As bad as we are at remembering names and phone numbers and word-for-word instructions from our colleagues, we have really exceptional visual and spatial memories.
- Memories
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Great
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Being
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by losing ourselves in our Blackberries, our iPhones, by not paying attention to the human being across from us who is talking with us, by being so lazy that we're not willing to process deeply?
- Information
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Sequencing - the careful striptease by which you reveal information to the reader - matters in an article, but it is absolutely essential to a book.
- End Product
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Woodworking requires a completely different kind of thinking and problem-solving ability than writing. With writing, you take a set of facts and ideas, and you reason your way forward to a story that pulls them together. With woodworking, you start with an end product in mind, and reason your way backward to the raw wood.
- Life
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Important
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Like
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Languages are something of a mess. They evolve over centuries through an unplanned, democratic process that leaves them teeming with irregularities, quirks, and words like 'knight.'
- Design
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English, Mandarin, or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today.
- Flaws
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Since at least the Middle Ages, philosophers and philologists have dreamed of curing natural languages of their flaws by constructing entirely new idioms according to orderly, logical principles.
- Most
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Invented languages have often been created in tandem with entire invented universes, and most conlangers come to their craft by way of fantasy and science fiction.
- Journey
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
One trick, known as the journey method or 'memory palace,' is to conjure up a familiar space in the mind's eye, and then populate it with images of whatever it is you want to remember.
- Long
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
The 'OK Plateau' is that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something. Take typing, for example. You might type and type and type all day long, but once you reach a certain level, you just don't get appreciably faster. That's because it's become automatic. You've moved it to the back of your mind's filing cabinet.
- Opportunity
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
We've forgotten how to remember, and just as importantly, we've forgotten how to pay attention. So, instead of using your smartphone to jot down crucial notes, or Googling an elusive fact, use every opportunity to practice your memory skills. Memory is a muscle, to be exercised and improved.
- Creative
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Part of being creative is not being super-duper focused.
- Memory
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Many memory techniques involve creating unforgettable imagery, in your mind's eye. That's an act of imagination. Creating really weird imagery really quickly was the most fun part of my training to compete in the U.S. Memory Competition.
- Memories
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
We reserve the term 'genius' for people who are creative, who are innovators, who think in ways that are entirely new. In the Middle Ages, the term 'genius' was reserved for people with the best memories. That is telling.
- Beautiful
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
During the Middle Ages they understood that words accompanied by imagery are much more memorable. By making the margins of a book colorful and beautiful, illuminations help make the text unforgettable. It's unfortunate that we've lost the art of illumination.
- Future
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Culture
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Fly
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Fire
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
There are two possibilities: Either the kiss is a human universal, one of the constellation of innate traits, including language and laughter, that unites us as a species, or it is an invention, like fire or wearing clothes, an idea so good that it was bound to metastasize across the globe.
- Always
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
All across Africa, the Pacific and the Americas, we find cultures that didn't know about mouth kissing until their first contact with European explorers. And the attraction was not always immediately apparent. Most considered the act of exchanging saliva revolting.
- Kiss
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Kissing could have begun as a way of sniffing out who's who. From a whiff to a kiss was just a short trip across the face.
- Never
- |
- Nov 07, 2020