How to remember

How can some restaurant servers remember how you like your eggs when you haven't eaten in that restaurant for a year or more? It has more to do with training and discipline than with intelligence or even a superior memory. These same servers probably forget where they left their car keys as often as you do.

Joshua Foer explores "the art and science of remembering everything" in his entertaining 2011 book Moonwalking with Einstein.

In the manner of A.J. Jacobs, author of books about reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica and attempting to follow every law in the Bible, Foer immerses himself in the techniques used by those with the best memories in the world and within a year wins the United States memory championship. Yes, there really are competitions for memorizing playing cards in order and people's names and phone numbers.

The basic trick is something called a memory palace. You think of a building that you know very well, such as the house where you grew up, and imagine yourself walking through it while conjuring up outrageous images, such as Einstein moonwalking, at various points. You link these images to whatever it is you are trying to remember. 

I know this works because I tried it myself several years ago when I wanted to remember the books of the Bible in order. To remember the Book of Judges I pictured some local judges I knew holding court in my refrigerator. A mental image of a tiny Esther Williams swimming in my bathtub helped me remember where the Book of Esther is to be found.

The author writes that a dirty mind helps us remember simply because we are more likely to remember salacious images. Perhaps I should have pictured Esther Williams without the swimsuit.

Foer writes about many of those who have developed outstanding memories, as well as those who memories result from autism or some other mental quirk, such as the man whose story became the subject of the film Rain Man.

At earlier times in history people seemed to have better memories than we have today. That was because better memories were once necessary for survival. Today we have books, shopping lists, phones that store all the addresses and phone numbers we might need and Google to tell us in an instant practically anything we want to know. Good memories are now developed mainly by those, like servers in restaurants, who use them for their jobs, and those like Foer himself who use them for sport.