Joshua Foer Quotes
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We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, or invention, or insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least.
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To the extent that experience is the sum of our memories and wisdom the sum of experience, having a better memory would mean knowing not only more about the world, but also more about myself.
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When you want to get good at something, how you spend your time practicing is far more important than the amount of time you spend.
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It is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human. To make sense of the world, we must filter it. "To think," Borges writes, "is to forget.
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Experts step outside their comfort zone and study themselves failing.
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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.
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When we first hear a word, we start putting these associational hooks into it that make it easier to fish it back out at some later date.
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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.
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The way to get better at a skill is to force yourself to practice just beyond your limits.
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...who we are and what we do it is fundamentally a function of what we remember.
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Part of being creative is not being super-duper focused.
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Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older.