Our Culture Is An Edifice Built Of

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.

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.

Growing Up In The Days When You Still Had To Punch Buttons To Make A Telephone Call, I Could Recall The Numbers Of All My Close Friends And Family. Today, I'm Not Sure If I Know More Than Four Phone Numbers By Heart. And That's Probably More Than Most.

If You Want To Make Information Stick, It's Best To Learn It, Go Away From It For A While, Come Back To It Later, Leave It Behind Again, And Once Again Return To It - To Engage With It Deeply Across Time. Our Memories Naturally Degrade, But Each Time You Return To A Memory, You Reactivate Its Neural Network And Help To Lock It In.

Experts Step Outside Their Comfort Zone And Study Themselves Failing.