One of the things that I enjoy about writing these email is that some of you write back to me with great stories, resources, ideas…A good story makes ideas come alive. I’d rather hear several good stories about the power of compound interest “Janitor Retires as Millionaire at Age 65” than look at the math behind the process, for example.

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Here is a short story from one of my readers responding to yesterdays email:

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“The hand transcription has applications today. When I took the bar exam in NY, like everyone else, I took a review course. The one I took had no printed materials. We sat in an auditorium with the teacher (John Pieper) and wrote down, word for word, everything he said. So unlike those who took the other courses with printed materials, we got the material in our heads before the others by writing it all down. It worked perfectly.”

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I am sure you know that the slippery beasts we call thoughts and memories have a physical life inside of our bodies. Phrases such as “neurons that fire together, wire together” summarize that there are physical pathways in our brains that we build through the repetition of focused practice.

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And the more intensely physical the process, the faster we learn and retain information. Hand transcription is more intense than listening or reading. Reciting a quote or passage is more intense than thinking it. I find reading about music theory almost totally useless – I have to hear whatever is being written or talked about. I started singing the notes of the circle of fifths a few months ago after seeing Jacob Collier do that in a video. I feel like I’ve made more progress using that tool in the last few months than I have made in the last few years…

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When there is something I want to remember, part of my process is to find as many physical layers I can stack as part of the process. I’ve recently started being more agressive at remembering people names. I’ve struggled with this all my life. I was recently at a local brewery with my wife and ran across a couple I have known for 40 years and I blanked on their names. It drove me nuts. I kept telling myself that the names would come back. No dice. So I finally decided to call a mutual friend and get the names so I could write them down. As I was walking to the phone the first name popped into my head. After a short phone call I had the other name. Now they are both in my contacts and as a pencil note in my journal. The funny thing was that the guy’s name was already in my contacts along with a phone number, but I could not look it up cause I could not remember the name…So now I am repeating their names and visualizing them and next time… I have a good chance of making an introduction instead of a duck and run.

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I learned a great crooked fiddle tune a few years ago called “Chinkipin Hunting” – it has an extra beat in one measure that threw me into the ditch over and over. I ended up inventing dance moves to do while I played that tune and it really helped me to nail down that extra beat…

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I know people who have had things they never EVER want to forget tattooed on their arms. That is drastic, but it works! I am seriously thinking of getting DWYSYWD tatooed on my arm. It collapses about a million words worth of advice into a single phrase: “Do What You Say You Will Do” It is also a visual palindrome, which is a fun thing…

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So there you go – a little reminder to get physical when you want to remember something. Memories come alive when they are associated with vivid physical experiences. Thanks for reading this!

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Have a great day!

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Richard