Habits

Moonwalking with Einstein: 8 key ideas

by Joshua Foer

The core ideas of Moonwalking with Einstein, each in under a minute, written in our own words. Want the full depth? Get the book.

1. IDEA 1 OF 8

   A journalist became a memory champion

   Foer went to report on the USA Memory Championship and ended up training to compete.

   Within a year, coached by memory athletes, he took part himself, showing that unusual memory skill can be learned.

2. IDEA 2 OF 8

   Memory champions use old techniques

   Foer learned that competitors were not born with special brains.

   They used ancient memory techniques, turning dull information like numbers or card orders into vivid images that are far easier to remember.

3. IDEA 3 OF 8

   Build a memory palace

   The core method is the memory palace, or method of loci: imagining a familiar building and placing images of things to remember along a route through it.

   Walking the route in your mind brings the items back.

4. IDEA 4 OF 8

   The method dates to ancient Greece

   Foer recounts the legend of Simonides, a poet who survived a collapsed banquet hall and identified guests by remembering where they sat.

   This story is traditionally seen as the origin of the memory palace.

5. IDEA 5 OF 8

   Vivid images stick in memory

   Memory athletes make their images strange, funny or exaggerated, because the brain remembers unusual things more easily.

   Foer explains how his coach Ed Cooke taught him to make mental pictures memorable.

6. IDEA 6 OF 8

   Combine images into PAO systems

   For numbers and cards, many competitors use a person, action, object system.

   Each number becomes a person doing an action with an object, allowing long strings to be compressed into a single striking image.

7. IDEA 7 OF 8

   Break through the OK plateau

   Foer describes the OK plateau, when skills stop improving because we perform them on autopilot.

   Deliberate practice, meaning focused effort on weaknesses combined with feedback, helps people break through and keep getting better.

8. IDEA 8 OF 8

   Memory shapes who we are

   Foer reflects that in an age of phones and search engines we outsource memory.

   He argues that remembering still matters, because what we hold in our minds shapes our thinking, our sense of time and our identity.