This is a very simple, very easy-to-use memory technique. You can learn to do it in one minute.
Having a strong emotional response to a stimulus tends to reinforce your memory of that stimulus. One could even argue (as some psycho-neurologists have), that the emotional response exists in order to make strong stimuli easier to learn from.
So, as a memory exercise, try this:
Whenever you experience a stimuli you wish to remember, immediately *create* an emotional reaction.
Key words:
Immediately - while you're still in the presence of the stimulus. And do it quickly. Attempt to complete this entire exercise in less than a second.
Create- most experiences are close to being emotionally neutral. However, we can expect some small tendency in some direction. Identify the tendency and then amplify it by saying to yourself, "that makes me feel X." If you can't identify a natural tendency, choose an emotional reaction. I suggest choosing positive reactions the majority of the time. When you choose a reaction, consciously amplify it by constructing a particular reason for feeling that way.
When you wish to remember a particular moment that you've coded with "fast emotion," you have multiple options for entry.
1. Recall the tangible, real-world context and work inward.
2. Recall the constructed reason for feeling the way you felt and work sideways.
3. Replay the emotion itself and work backward.
The nature of this technique lends itself most readily to concise, discrete events. You can use these events, however, to reconstruct a much larger context. By sprinkling moments of fast emotion through an experience, you can make the whole thing more memorable.
A bit of advice: Don't try to be consistent- matching the same emotion to the same stimulus each time it reoccurs. Rather, use the conflict between, for instance, positive and negative reactions to make both stimuli more memorable.
This technique can be used to see your surroundings- especially your personal artifacts- as mnemonic anchors. When you look at something you haven't already coded with fast emotion, the most prominent emotional content of your history with that item should tend to pop to the foreground. Firm anchors can be re-used numerous times.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
You Are Your Gym
First, some a disclaimer:
If you want to look like a body builder, go to the gym. Almost every day. For three years. That's the only way. If you want to be healthier, lose weight, and have more energy, then let's be realistic.
Second, some assertions:
1. Everyone should get more exercise. Half an hour a day, at least. If you are sedentary, you need more because just sitting there is bad for your health (even if you exercise the rest of the time).
2. Many people intend to do more exercise, so they sign up for gym memberships. That usually doesn't work. Having a special place to work out means that working out becomes special. You only do it when you're in that special place. The gym becomes an excuse not to exercise.
3. Having a gym membership actually means you're less likely to exercise because, even when you mean to do it, you might not have time. Going to the gym- just dressing, packing, driving, checking in, going to the locker room, and then going to the work-out area, are steps that, taken together, can double the length of a workout (easily to over an hour)- especially when you take into account that you have to reverse all those steps. Most of those things are not exercise.
4. Let's define a "short" workout as anything less than twenty minutes. A long workout is at least twice that long. Because of their length, a long workouts must be carefully timed so that you're not interfering with the rest of your day. Going to the gym and doing a short workout is a waste of all the effort mentioned in item 3. Long workouts, which are worth the effort, are even more challenging. Therefore, gyms are only efficient as deterrents.
5. Long workouts make you really sweaty. You need a shower afterwards. A shower takes about seven to fifteen minutes. Why am I mentioning this separately? Didn't I already say that?
Why? Because a very short workout doesn't have a chance to make you significantly sweaty. What is a very short workout? One to five minutes.
6. Many people try to do everything in the course of a workout- work every muscle group. Many mix cardio with strength training in a single long visit. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the cross training effect. The cross training effect means that you don't have to use every muscle group in every workout to get a "full body workout." You only have to exercise some of the larger ones on a day-to-day basis, and less prominent ones on a week-to-week basis.
7. Many of us don't need the heavy weights and complex machines to exert ourselves enough to get a good work out. Most of us have enough weight in our own bodies to get good exercise by just moving in certain ways.
Conclusions:
A. Be realistic. Don't expect the money you spend on your membership to motivate you to visit the gym.
B. Don't define a workout in such a way as to make a very short workout not count. If you can achieve failure in a single muscle group, even if you're not doing multiple sets, that's better than doing nothing at all.
C. Because of the danger of the habitual sedentary lifestyles- even among those that exercise- breaking up unavoidable periods of sitting with micro workouts is better than going for hours, days, even weeks between actual workouts.
D. Instead of (maybe) doing a single short workout every other day, do five mini-workouts over the course of every day. They can be spread out over the whole day- two in the morning, two in the afternoon, one in the evening- or they can be close together- all five within a couple of hours. Together, they amount to a single short workout. You body gets the health benefit of remaining more active, on average, and- therefore- will maintain a higher level of metabolism overall. What you'll lose is the cumulative intensity of consecutive sets. Therefore, it is important that individual sets reach their highest level of intensity.
Each five-minute workout should involve less than a minute of rest. The objective should be to reach a state of temporary exhaustion by the end- something that can be easily recovered from without disrupting the course of your day.
Attempt to do five exercises focusing on the following five areas:
Arms (Push-ups from a wide stance, pulsing to generate extra force moments; chin-ups, one-arm pushups- or one arm assisted).
Core (flutter kicks, sit-ups, leg lifts, crunches).
Legs (one-legged swats, burpees, sprints)
These are exercises that don't require equipment.
What if you don't have even five minutes to privately exercise? Well, that's a problem.
It's a purely cultural problem. We respect exercise, but we don't allow it to invade our normal lives. We simply do not exercise in public- in the same way that we do not wear bikinis anywhere but the pool and beach. We are as ashamed of working out as we are of being naked. So, we don't do it in front of others.
So let's imagine a cultural shift.
(See my most recent blog entry)
If you want to look like a body builder, go to the gym. Almost every day. For three years. That's the only way. If you want to be healthier, lose weight, and have more energy, then let's be realistic.
Second, some assertions:
1. Everyone should get more exercise. Half an hour a day, at least. If you are sedentary, you need more because just sitting there is bad for your health (even if you exercise the rest of the time).
2. Many people intend to do more exercise, so they sign up for gym memberships. That usually doesn't work. Having a special place to work out means that working out becomes special. You only do it when you're in that special place. The gym becomes an excuse not to exercise.
3. Having a gym membership actually means you're less likely to exercise because, even when you mean to do it, you might not have time. Going to the gym- just dressing, packing, driving, checking in, going to the locker room, and then going to the work-out area, are steps that, taken together, can double the length of a workout (easily to over an hour)- especially when you take into account that you have to reverse all those steps. Most of those things are not exercise.
4. Let's define a "short" workout as anything less than twenty minutes. A long workout is at least twice that long. Because of their length, a long workouts must be carefully timed so that you're not interfering with the rest of your day. Going to the gym and doing a short workout is a waste of all the effort mentioned in item 3. Long workouts, which are worth the effort, are even more challenging. Therefore, gyms are only efficient as deterrents.
5. Long workouts make you really sweaty. You need a shower afterwards. A shower takes about seven to fifteen minutes. Why am I mentioning this separately? Didn't I already say that?
Why? Because a very short workout doesn't have a chance to make you significantly sweaty. What is a very short workout? One to five minutes.
6. Many people try to do everything in the course of a workout- work every muscle group. Many mix cardio with strength training in a single long visit. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the cross training effect. The cross training effect means that you don't have to use every muscle group in every workout to get a "full body workout." You only have to exercise some of the larger ones on a day-to-day basis, and less prominent ones on a week-to-week basis.
7. Many of us don't need the heavy weights and complex machines to exert ourselves enough to get a good work out. Most of us have enough weight in our own bodies to get good exercise by just moving in certain ways.
Conclusions:
A. Be realistic. Don't expect the money you spend on your membership to motivate you to visit the gym.
B. Don't define a workout in such a way as to make a very short workout not count. If you can achieve failure in a single muscle group, even if you're not doing multiple sets, that's better than doing nothing at all.
C. Because of the danger of the habitual sedentary lifestyles- even among those that exercise- breaking up unavoidable periods of sitting with micro workouts is better than going for hours, days, even weeks between actual workouts.
D. Instead of (maybe) doing a single short workout every other day, do five mini-workouts over the course of every day. They can be spread out over the whole day- two in the morning, two in the afternoon, one in the evening- or they can be close together- all five within a couple of hours. Together, they amount to a single short workout. You body gets the health benefit of remaining more active, on average, and- therefore- will maintain a higher level of metabolism overall. What you'll lose is the cumulative intensity of consecutive sets. Therefore, it is important that individual sets reach their highest level of intensity.
Each five-minute workout should involve less than a minute of rest. The objective should be to reach a state of temporary exhaustion by the end- something that can be easily recovered from without disrupting the course of your day.
Attempt to do five exercises focusing on the following five areas:
Arms (Push-ups from a wide stance, pulsing to generate extra force moments; chin-ups, one-arm pushups- or one arm assisted).
Core (flutter kicks, sit-ups, leg lifts, crunches).
Legs (one-legged swats, burpees, sprints)
These are exercises that don't require equipment.
What if you don't have even five minutes to privately exercise? Well, that's a problem.
It's a purely cultural problem. We respect exercise, but we don't allow it to invade our normal lives. We simply do not exercise in public- in the same way that we do not wear bikinis anywhere but the pool and beach. We are as ashamed of working out as we are of being naked. So, we don't do it in front of others.
So let's imagine a cultural shift.
(See my most recent blog entry)
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