How To Remember Everything

I was in my second year of engineering and my results started to decline rapidly. By the year end, I had accumulated 6 backlogs. I got a feeling that it would take me an extra year to clear my degree. This thought haunted me and gave me sleepless nights. I didn't know what to do.

Somewhere in late October our university was having a small workshop on "Brain Power". The guest was world record holder of memory, Mr. Mohammad Faisal. He was a simple man with simple attitude. I really didn't attended much of workshops in my college, but had a bit of curiosity as to what he was going to say. I loved reading about improving your brain power and brain techniques in books, it was time to actually see one of its practitioners in real life.

Mr. Faisal entered the the seminar hall. He gave a brief introduction about himself and then gave us an example of his excellent memory. There were two white boards in each corner of the hall. One by one he asked a student to tell the last two digits of his mobile number. After having about 40 numbers. He went on to the other board and asked another bunch of students to tell any random objects. After having done that, he asked the audience as to how much time would it take for him to memorise all the numbers and objects by heart. Some told it would take five minutes and some told ten. He told them with a smile he has already memorized them while writing!

The workshop went on for about an hour. I came back to my hostel room and lied on the bed, thinking...

I knew about this technique before and had applied it for fun. The idea of using it in my studies seemed quite far fetched for me. I had come across this technique quite often in my life. It can be found in the book "Secrets of Mind Power" by Harry Lorayne. Later in the years I found this amazing technique is called "Memory Palace" or "Mind Palace". If anyone of you have watched the series "Sherlock", you will know what I am talking about and what are its capabilities.

I knew if it went on to learn the things the traditional way (wrote memorization) , I sure might get another backlog. The problem with wrote memorization is that if in the judgement day you can't recall the first word, you won't be able to recall the whole paragraph.

So, with one and a half month to go for the semester exams, I started my preparations. I was amazed to not only by the power of this technique but also the excitement in doing it. Suddenly the subject was not so boring anymore. What I was actually doing was that I changed the way I used to learn things. The pros of this techniques was too much. And all in all, I was able to clear my semester and all of my backlogs.

So if you want to know about this amazing technique. I can only tell you about in brief, but that is actually all that you would be needing.

Mind Palace is an incredible tool that every one has

Memory Palace Technique

It is an established fact that people are good at spatial memory. That is to memorise something by picturing it in your mind. A very old example of it would be the word "apple". What is the first thing that came into your mind? See what I mean?

So to apply this method. Let me give you an example and show you a glimpse of what your mind can do.

We'll try to memorise the following list of things:-

1. Book
2. Chair
3. Wallet
4. Badminton Racket
5. Orange

Now If you try to memorise these things in the traditional way, you will be able to recall it for a day or two, but if you apply the memory palace method, you can recall it after a week without practice.

So, lets begin. First we have the word Book. Imagine a Big Book lying in your room. Make the book a bit interesting, like paint it with your favourite colour or something. Imagine yourself picking up that book and placing it on a chair. Again you can imagine that chair to be of any material. Be sure to visualise yourself picking up that book and placing it. Next you open the book and see that in between the pages you have your wallet. You pick up your wallet and throw it on your badminton racket that is hanging on the wall. Nothing happens. You go and pick up that racket and somehow notice that the bottom handle of your racket is suddenly changed to an orange.

Now, you can apply this method and go on to visualise more than just 5 words. I have done it with 100 words in one go. It was fun. It was also impossible to miss any word as the story would not move forward from that point.

Note
You would need some space in your head to place the things you imagine. A good starting point would be your home, school, college or some place you can imagine pretty much every aspect of it.

Now, I knew about this method a long time back. I applied this in my academics. For one particular subject I didn't needed any predefined space. I vividly imagined it on my own. I ended up placing various things that not only were there but moving as too. When you imagine things, try to see it from not only your perspective but have a bird's eye view as well.

Have you played MineCraft? You can use that as an excellent tool to build your Mind Palace.

Well, I can go on and tell you more about Mind Palaces but that is beyond the scope of this post. Do check my other post as well. Here are some references you would find useful with regards to this Memeory Palace techniques.

References

• How to build a Memory Palace.
• Method of Loci
• Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer

Intense Health and Fitness Tips

• Drink 8 to 10 glasses of water everyday.
• Wake up every morning before 6.
• Going to office or school should not be the first thing you do in the morning.
• For Lazy people keep the thumb rule: walk in the morning and jog in the evening.
• Eat a balanced diet or if you don't know what that means , eat less oil , boil and not fry.
• Keep your motivation level high to get fit , you need that in times when you are in the verge of quitting.
• Keep a photo of a hot model in your room , in your diary or in your underwear and strive for that perfect physique. 
• People with more weight burn more calories.
• Do yoga daily, if you are not into it, do it on 21st of June every year.
• Cut out on junk foods...okay you can have one Mc burger but that should be for twice in a month.
• Get a nice grinder, put onions , tomatoes , cabbage , cucumber , capsicum(optional) and grind it. Add lemon and taste for salt. Do this every alternate day. It feels good and you get positive vibes.
• Be optimistic. Meditate in the morning or afternoon. 
• Take any ayurvedic plant, put it in a transparent glass, fill it with water and put it on a window of your room. Can you feel it?
• Have one outdoor hobby and one indoor.
• Do not take stress, you will change the color of your hair to white.
• You know you have time to do the above things. 
• Keep your attitude positive. Your body is nothing but a house of your brain and the brain is greedy. It wants a palace not a shabby 2 room broken apartment.
• Take a photo of your body fully naked today and follow the above steps and take a photo of it then. Abracadabra!

If you can interpret this pic. You are going in the right direction.

How to type fast without seeing the keyboard.

Three years ago, around this time in March I was sitting in my hostel room thinking to myself what great pleasure it would be to type without seeing the keyboard at all. It almost gives you a geek feeling to do something like that. Since that point on I have been practicing quite a while. I have reached a point where my average typing speed is 70 wpm (words per minute). From my own learning experience I would like to share it with the rest of the world on how to start typing and get good at it. It took me around 6 months to get a hang of things but don't you worry about the duration because if it wasn't for fun I wouldn't have noticed the time passing by.

For my readers I would like to make it clear that this post is for people learning to type on "qwerty" keyboard. This is the most popular keyboard used by 80% of the world's population - other being "dvorak" and "colmak" and there might be others but I don't know about them.

What you guys need is a keyboard and an internet connection. Once you get a little better at typing, you won't need the internet. You can do it on any notepad. The last and the most important thing you need is honesty. I'll tell you about that later.

So you ready to learn?

The posture

The only thing I didn't gave much importance. But as I got along, it really did matter what is your posture when you are typing. Trust me, posture affects your speed. You can slouch later , but when you are in a learning stage , you should maintain some discipline. Your fingers are not the only thing active when typing, its actually your whole arm. The correct way is to position yourself in a comfortable chair, and your hands should be in a right angle with the keyboard, like an "L" shape. And try to adjust the key "B" in the center of your chest. One more thing which I didn't follow was to place your eye level to the screen, but I think you can adjust the screen slightly lower than that.


Which finger goes where?

When I started to learn typing, I had to know which fingers go where. So like everybody else I googled and found it. This was very simple. The picture says it all.

For learning purposes, I recommend to put this as your desktop wallpaper.

Now for extremely beginners, if you would have noticed there is a small elevation on keys "F" and "J" and if you have numpad, then on the key "5" as well. These keys are used as reference for professional typist to navigate their fingers throughout the keyboard. The first thing you want to know about a keyboard is that it is made up of segments. The keys zxc... is called the bottom row. The keys abc... onwards is called the middle row or the home row. The top row is the numbers 123... and so on.

The home row is the row we would place our fingers initially. This is a must for every typist in the world. Look at the diagram above carefully to place your fingers accordingly.

The left index finger on the F key, the right index finger on the J key.
The left middle finger on the D key, the right middle finger on the K key.
The left ring finger on the S key, the right ring finger on the L key.
The left little finger on the A key, the right little finger on the ; key.

See the diagram above for which finger to use for the numbers.

Additional Notes

The only thing remaining is your thumb. The thumb is used for spacebar only. Now depending on your own personality , it depends which thumb you are comfortable with. There are people who use both the thumbs for spacebar. But I use my left thumb only. Which means I use 9 fingers, instead of 10 if you got that impression ;)

Now, I recommend you to go on to this site where I spent my first week in practice.
Keep in mind from here point on "You shall never see the keyboard again". It is important that you make mistakes early in this phase, as your mind will be in adjustment mode to know where you are going wrong and it will register and alert you on that particular key in future.

Never concentrate on your speed, concentrate on your accuracy. Speed will come naturally. You will automatically type the words that often repeat itself such as "the" , "an" , "that" , words ending with "ing", "ser" , "ious"etc.

If you want to type a capital letter, it is very simple. Hold the shift key with your other finger. What I mean is suppose if you want to type capital "J", then hold the left shift key with your left little finger. In contrast to this if you want to type capital "E", hold the right shift key with your right little finger. That's it.

You have to understand you are not training your fingers , but actually its your brain!!
Your fingers does not change shape or become something else, they remain the same by appearance. It is your brain that has been trained. Practice is the key.

Just spend one week on the site and then come back here.

How to make learning fun

Once you are  done with the above things. It is time for you to have fun while learning at the same time. Thanks to the internet we have those things at our disposal.

For anyone who is beginning to learn how to type , log in to this site - typeracer. Register for free and race with other people or your friends. It will keep a track of your progress over time. This is a wonderful site, way better than those typing tutor softwares and you will thank me for it.
Now if your are in an area without an internet connection, just open notepad and start typing anything that comes to your mind.

Well that is it folks, hope you become a better typist. Share your views and your success story with me once you have mastered the art of typing.