5 brain hacks that give you mind

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5 Brain Hacks That Give You Mind-Blowing

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By:Jamie FlexmanMarch 25, 2013 233,431 viewsAdd to Favorites

Sure, you could improve yourself the normal way, with hard work and years of slow, incrementalprogress. Or you could use some ofyour body's built-in cheat codesand just hack your way toawesometown.

These hacks come with various degrees of difficulty, but no risk or potential for injury. Andactual scientists say that all of them work.

#5. Remember Long Lists With a "Memory Palace"

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The human brain sucks at remembering lists. Think about it: When you go to the grocery store,how many items can you manage before you have to write them down? Three? Five? For most ofus, if there's any more than that, we're going to get back home and find out we forgot the milk

(which by the way was the whole fucking reason we went to the store in the first place).

That's weird, because there are other things in life we have no problem with. For instance, we

don't have much trouble remembering the locations of a hundred different spots around town,even if we don't know the addresses (do you even know the street address of your favorite coffee
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shop?), or the locations of a thousand items around the house. Sure, you couldn't write them all

down, but if a friend asks you where they can find a flashlight, you're probably going to have an

answer. If only there was a way to exploit this strength to overcome the other weakness ...

Digital Vision./Digital Vision/Getty ImagesThere's only so much room on the human body to write it all down. Unless you constantly eat, we guess.

The Hack:

You're able to find your way around because a whole lot of your mental horsepower is devoted

to spatial memory -- learning the layout of your environment. And there is totally a way you cantap into it as a hack to remember long lists. So-called memory championshave been doing it

forever. They call it creating a memory palace.

Here's how it works: You pick a familiar place that you know well and can imagine without

much problem -- the inside of your house, the layout of your neighborhood, whatever. You then

imagine yourself walking along a specific route in that place and associate an item on your listwith each location.

Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images"Shit, that reminds me, I'm out of chloroform."
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So let's say you're trying to remember a long grocery list, and you choose to use your

neighborhood to mentally visualize it. You could imagine the first item on your list -- condoms --

scattered willy-nilly along your driveway. The next thing on your list might be beer -- you couldpicture your neighbor passed out drunk on his lawn, pants down, if you want. Next up is frozen

pizza, so you picture pizza pies replacing all the windows at your drunk neighbor's house. Let

your imagination do the hard work for you -- the more ridiculous/striking the image, the easierit'll be to remember.

It all sounds like a ridiculous extra step, but you soon realize how incredibly easy it suddenlymakes it to recite a list. You're simply forcing the spatial memory part of your brain to help out.

And you can start doing it at any time -- the memory palace (or method of loci) memorization

technique isn't something that requires years of practice.In one 1968 study, college students

were asked to memorize a list of 40 items by associating each item with a specific locationaround campus. Not only were the students able to memorize an average of 38 of the 40 items,

but the next day they were able to name 34 of the original list (and that was in 1968 -- imagine

how much more they would have remembered if the kids hadn't been on so much pot).

Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images

"Two. I can remember two things."

Inanother study, German senior citizens were also asked to memorize a list of 40 words by

associating each word with Berlin landmarks. Before using the method, they could only recall an

average of three words. After associating the German word for "father" with the Berlin zoo, forexample, participants could remember an average of 23 words from the list. Oh, and you don't

have to have one location for each list item, either. In yet another study, subjects just took their

imaginary walk twiceand were still able to remember 34 of the 40 items. Seriously, go try this.

#4. Retain Information by Spacing Out the Reminders
http://snitkof.com/cg156/mnemonics.phphttp://snitkof.com/cg156/mnemonics.phphttp://snitkof.com/cg156/mnemonics.phphttp://books.google.com/books?id=KFMy3h67SGAC&pg=PA105&dq=method+of+loci+study&hl=en&sa=X&ei=D6o7UcKRE8HZqAHUqIHIDw&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=method%20of%20loci%20study&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=KFMy3h67SGAC&pg=PA105&dq=method+of+loci+study&hl=en&sa=X&ei=D6o7UcKRE8HZqAHUqIHIDw&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=method%20of%20loci%20study&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=KFMy3h67SGAC&pg=PA105&dq=method+of+loci+study&hl=en&sa=X&ei=D6o7UcKRE8HZqAHUqIHIDw&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=method%20of%20loci%20study&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=3G-m3OiD6zMC&pg=PA76&dq=method+of+loci+research&hl=en&sa=X&ei=t7U7UbbSLcO6qQGghICoCQ&ved=0CF0Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=method%20of%20loci%20research&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=3G-m3OiD6zMC&pg=PA76&dq=method+of+loci+research&hl=en&sa=X&ei=t7U7UbbSLcO6qQGghICoCQ&ved=0CF0Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=method%20of%20loci%20research&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=3G-m3OiD6zMC&pg=PA76&dq=method+of+loci+research&hl=en&sa=X&ei=t7U7UbbSLcO6qQGghICoCQ&ved=0CF0Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=method%20of%20loci%20research&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=KFMy3h67SGAC&pg=PA105&dq=method+of+loci+study&hl=en&sa=X&ei=D6o7UcKRE8HZqAHUqIHIDw&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=method%20of%20loci%20study&f=falsehttp://snitkof.com/cg156/mnemonics.php


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Jupiterimages/Comstock/Getty Images

The hell of trying to learn anything is that time randomly wipes important information you've

committed to memory -- you can't remember the Pythagorean theorem, but you remember thebase stats of 649 Pokemon. This is why so many of us wind up cramming at the last minute for

exams -- it's not just procrastination, it's fear that if we study a month ahead of time, we'll forget

part of it by exam day. So our only answer is to cram everything into our short-term memory,knowing that we'll lose it right after the test. A hundred grand in tuition well spent!

No, what we need is a way to retain information for the long haul, without doing a lot of work. Inother words, we need a scientific method to arrive at the exact minimum amount of time and

energy we need to successfully retain important information.

Jupiterimages/Goodshoot/Getty Images"Much better: 15 seconds to remember that I need to change the batteries in my stopwatch."

The Hack:

There is a measurable process by which your brain drops information, a "forgetting curve." Ifyou want information to stick, there's a specific hack you can do to work around it. It takes a bitmore practice than the memory palace thing above, but if your job or degree depends on it, it's

worth it. Basically, it's a matter of figuring out the rate at which your brain forgets things and

adapting to it. They call itspaced repetition, and here's an animated gif showing off the simplestform:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_systemhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_systemhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_systemhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system


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ViaWikipediaThere you go. You are now a memory master.

So let's say you're trying to learn Spanish, and you're going to have a big final on it in four

months. The most rudimentary way to practice spaced repetition is to put the words you need to

learn on note cards with the English on the front and the Spanish on the back (flash cards,basically) and get three boxes (or create three piles, if you don't have any boxes sitting around)

marked:

1. Every Day

2. Every Week

3. Once a Month

The labels tell you how often you're going to look at the flash cards. "What?" you say, "I don'tgot time to be studying this shit every day! Besides, I know I can hold this stuff in my brain

longer than that!" Right, you probably can. This method will tell you exactly how long. That's

the point: to arrive at the exact bare minimum amount of time you need to study.
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Creatas Images/Creatas/Getty Images"Well, maybe we can make an exception just this time and study for a couple more hours."

So, the first time you study, yes, you drill yourself with all of the flash cards. The ones you getright you promote to the Every Week pile. Ones you get wrong go in the Every Day pile. The

next day you try it again, but now you've got a smaller pile. The next day, it will be smaller still.

A week later, you'll try the Every Week pile again, and the ones you get right you stuff into the

Once a Month pile. You're just filtering this shit right on down the line, giving yourself less andless to do.A month later, you go through the Once a Month pile to make sure you remember it.

The stuff you've forgotten goes into the weekly rotation again. See what you're doing? You'refiguring out the exact rate at which this stuff falls out of your brain. Breezing through that

monthly box? Great, make it every two months. The spans of time are flexible (conversely, if

you have an exam or presentation in two weeks, you can shorten the whole process -- make your

three piles Daily, Every Other Day, Every Three Days).

If that still sounds too complicated, a Polish psychologist named Piotr Wozniakcreated computer

software that does it for you:

SupermemoviaWired.comCharts are scientists' way of smugly yelling "suck it" at you.

That's just an example graph; yours will be different. But yes, it works. Wozniak actually

conducted an experiment on himself by memorizing thousands of nonsensical syllables ... andfound that he could repeat the list three years later. So when you're walking around the city and
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you see filthy people mumbling nonsense syllables to themselves all day, this is probably what

they're doing. Ask them about it!

#3. Write It Out (Even if You Don't Read It Later)

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Quick! When was the last time you held a pen and wrote something? It was probably while

signing a receipt, wasn't it? A note you left on the parked car you dinged at the mall? Child

support checks? In this age of smartphones, constant texting, and spending half our waking hours

online, most of us have lost the gentle art of holding a pencil and scratching out ransom notes theold-fashioned way. Which is too bad, because if you want information to stick in your brain, you

need to write that shit out by hand.

Jupiterimages/BananaStock/Getty Images"Punching babies is wrong. Punching babies is wrong. Punching babies is wrong."

The Hack:

The act of handwriting actually engages neural activity that you don't get by hammering on akeyboard. During anexperiment at Indiana University, preschool kids who were learning the

alphabet were separated into two groups. The first group was shown letters and told what they

were, while the second group had the additional task of practicing writing the letters. When the

kids were put into a "spaceship" (an MRI machine), the brains from the writing group lit up likesomebody had crammed a road flare into their ears. Their neural activity not only was more
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enhanced, it was more "adult-like," which we presume means they later asked researchers to

check their cholesterol levels while they were there.

John Foxx/Stockbyte/Getty Images"I'm sorry, but you only have two weeks to live. Hahaha! Just a little joke we like to tell the kids."

In other words, it seems to be the same principle as the memory palace thing above -- forcing

another part of your brain into the action to help out with memorization. We invented keyboardsbecause typing is way easier and faster than writing, but making it faster means we're losing

handwriting's unique ability to imprint information in our brain. So those flash cards we had you

make above? Get a pen and write that shit out instead of printing it off your computer. Watchyou score improve.A 2008 study proved that this works especially well when you're doing

something that involves learning unfamiliar characters, like some computer languages, or sheet

music, or Japanese. Again, making your fingers draw out the shape engages a completely

different part of your brain than if you're just staring at it on a screen and saying, "Rememberthis, goddamnit!"

Polka Dot/Polka Dot/Getty Images"And don't you even think about getting up until you know astrophysics."

But of course your brain is good for more than memorizing stuff. For instance, this next hack is

for those of you with rage problems ...

5 brain hacks that give you mind

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