Hacking reminiscence

...as in how to trigger and improve your reminiscence of a pleasant experience. (You could do the same for an unpleasant experience, but why?)

Certain stimuli are known to trigger reminiscence. The most well-known is scent. Decades ago, my first job was at a fence company. I spend hours in the shed out back, putting pointed tops on picket boards, using a specially-designed power tool as scary as any chainsaw used in a massacre. To this day, when I smell freshly-cut lumber, it instantly takes me back to that shed.

Then again, one of my first posts here noted how the scent of wood pervaded with incense smoke takes me to a Japanese temple.

Theoretically you can stimulate a reminscence by (1) identifying a relevant scent to the experience and then (2) deliberately exposing yourself to the scent later. The problem with this is that if you leave step (1) to chance, step (2) is likely to be hard to pull off. My suggestion is to artificially associate an unusual but easily obtainable scent with the initial experience, so that you can later expose yourself to the scent at will. 

What kind of scent? Perhaps an herbal oil. These come in small convenient vials. But choose a scent you are not already overly familiar with.

I haven't tried this yet.

A second trigger for reminiscence, as everybody knows, is music. Everyone has songs that trigger memories of a certain time and place, or even a particular experience. Often the experience itself provides the musical trigger. Visit Disneyland, and when you come back you can find the ambient music loops on YouTube. Sometimes the connection is more complicated---I recently wrote about how a certain Quincy Jones song reminds me of walking in Tokyo at night.

But here again you can forge an artificial connection. On my trip to Myanmar some years ago (incredible bit of fortuitous timing), I made a point of listening to the Double song Rangoon Moon repeatedly.  And now listening to it takes me back to that trip.

So next time you are planning a happy experience, design a soundtrack for it ahead of time. Then use your music player while the experience is happening, or on the way there and back.

The Tarot system of tactical time-management

 

I am recently retired.

For many years now the list of things I want to do has far outstripped the time I have available (you too?). Retirement alleviates this situation but by no means eliminates it.

I've also long been interested in "time management," both for practical, selfish reasons and as a theoretical concept. 

In recent months I have been using a new system I developed to help me prioritize my time. I started doing this before retirement. More available time allows the system more room to play but I found it equally useful when free time was scarce. I only wish I had figured this out years ago.

Because the system uses index cards, I call it the Tarot method as a catchy name. Actual Tarot cards are not used.

This system stands on the shoulders of the giants--or at least the fat people--who went before me. Some important perspective can be gleaned from the Eisenhower Matrix. You can visualize this matrix as a sheet of paper divided into half both vertically and horizontally, thus with four quadrants. Each of your obligations goes into one of the four quadrants. 

The left half of the page is for obligations with high urgency--that need to be done soon--and the right half is for obligations with low urgency. Examples: cooking today's dinner is high urgency, since it needs to be done today; starting an exercise program is low urgency, since in the long run it makes little difference whether you start today, tomorrow, next week, or even next month.  

The upper half of the page is for obligations with high importance--feeding the baby, while the lower half is for obligations with low importance--rearranging your sock drawer. (Caveat: what is important or unimportant often depends on your own subjective priorities.)

So the four quadrants we could describe as HIHU (High Importance, High Urgency), HILU (High Importance, Low Urgency), LIHU (Low Importance, High Urgency), and LILU (Low Importance, Low Urgency). The problem many of us have (as Eisenhower described it) is that LIHU obligations tend to take attention away from HILU obligations, which are all too easy to postpone until tomorrow. Generally HIHU obligations get done, and presumably it's ok to ignore LILU obligations altogether (though I'm not sure I agree with this--subject for a future post). The Eisenhower matrix is not really a method so much as a way of looking at things.

(One can refine this matrix by allowing more than two columns or two rows--although understanding the concept might be more important than actually writing down the matrix.)

One of the major benefits of the Tarot system is ensuring that low-urgency obligations are not starved for attention--especially the high-importance ones.

The second pre-existing building block for the Tarot system is the Pomodoro Technique. This is a particular system of timeboxing, based on units of 25 minutes. 25 minutes seems to be a good length of time for maintaining focus on a given task. The standard Pomodoro Method consists of 25 minutes working, 5 minutes rest, 25 minutes working, 5 minutes rest, etc. There are many enhancements but I won't go into those here. A unit of 25 minutes spent on a single task is called a pomodoro. The Tarot method operates in units of pomodoros.

Step 1 of the Tarot method is listing out your priorities. Make a list of the activities you would like to be doing with some regularity. The list should not include anything that is non-negotiable for a given day--getting up and going to work, feeding the baby. You do these outside of the Tarot system. Limit the list to activities to be done in your negotiable time--that gray area between daily obligations and daily leisure time (everyone needs some leisure time).

Some examples of items on my own list (yeah really):

Studying Burmese;

Studying Cantonese;

Studying quantum mechanics (yeah, yeah, I like studying)

...etc... but also:

Playing chess;

Going through my CD collection; making sure I have ripped each one, and deciding whether to dispose of it;

Scanning documents;

Reading a book;

Writing this blog;

Shining my shoes;

...and so on. Currently my list has 35 items on it.

Step 2 of the Tarot method: for each activity on your list, decide what percentage of your negotiable time you would like to devote to that activity. Make this an even percentage--no fractions of a percent. The total percentages for everything should add up to 100%.

What if you have more than 100 items on your list? It could happen. Then you will have to make some tough choices. I suggest keeping a second list of things to work on at some future time. It's also possible to merge two extremely low-urgency items into one and assign that one a 1% priority.

Different items could have very different percentages, but no single item can be less than 1%.

Examples again: the largest percentage on my list is Cantonese, which is 16%. At the 1% level are things like shining shoes and scanning documents.

Step 3 of the Tarot method. Now the cards come into play. Get a stack of 100 index cards. For each item on the list, write that item on the number of cards equal to the percentage given to that particular item. Each card gets just one item. So in my case, "Cantonese" gets written on 16 different cards, while "shine shoes" gets written just one card. Now I have a deck of 100 index cards, each with a single task.

Shuffle the deck well. (It's possible to mix the cards more evenly than a random shuffle, but just shuffling is a lot easier.)

Thereafter you will use this deck to plan your negotiable time. When you have an available pomodoro of negotiable time, take the first card off the deck and do what it says. Move the card to the bottom of the deck. When that pomodoro is finished, take another card off the top and do what it says. Repeat whenever you have a pomodoro of negotiable time.

If you get a card and just can't deal with that particular task at the moment (maybe mowing the lawn, but it happens to be raining), take the second card of the deck and keep that card on top of the deck, so that you will deal with it at the earliest opportunity.

How long will it take you to get through the entire deck? That depends on your life and how much negotiable time you have available. For example, suppose you have an average of 2.5 hours of negotiable time each day--that translates into five pomodoros. So it would take about 20 days to get through the entire deck. Your very low-urgency (1%) tasks would get about one pomodoro of attention in those 20 days. But that is way better than zero.

As life evolves, you can let your deck of cards evolve with it. Take out some cards, add some new cards. It's a rewarding feeling when you wrap up a project and can pull those cards from the deck.

To be honest, there is nothing sacred about the number 100. You can add a card to the deck without subtracting one, so the deck now has 101 cards (or 102, 103...). Be aware, however, that there is always a trade-off. When you increase the number of cards in the deck, each pre-existing item loses a proportional amount of time. So I suggest being honest about these trade-offs by adding and subtracting at the same time.

One aspect of the Tarot system I have come to enjoy is as an approach to handling unpleasant but necessary tasks--like doing your taxes, for example. When the task first arises, I simply put some cards for it into the deck--enough to be sure the task will be completed by the deadline. (For example, doing my taxes takes about four pomodoros. Just a single card is enough to complete them by the deadline, since I go through the whole deck at least four times before then. And putting the card(s) in the deck, I immediately forget about that task for the time being. When the card comes to the top of the deck, I then spend a pomodoro on it and then forget about it again until the card comes around again.

The original Pomodoro method was extremely rigid as to schedules. Each pomodoro is 25 minutes, no more, no less. No interruptions allowed--an interruption immediately cancels that pomodoro. However, I have decided that allowing each pomodoro a little flexibility in reaction to circumstances makes it possible to fit more into a day--more precisely, to have more productive time in a day. So sometimes I keep working on a task for a few extra minutes if it means I can reach a milestone or even finish the project. If I get interrupted, I stop the timer and come back and restart it when I can. 

Emotionally I find that using the Tarot method has freed me from nagging anxiety or even guilt about the various low-urgency tasks that were so easy to neglect. All I have to do is make sure each of these gets at least one card in the deck and progress (may be slow but) is guaranteed.

The big lie. I have described the Tarot method in terms of a stack of index cards because I wanted the simplicity of the underlying principles to come through, and because I wanted to make it clear that the ideas do not depend on technology. However, I actually don't use cards; I use a spreadsheet that I have programmed to emulate the deck of cards. Actually, it's a little more powerful because I can in fact use fractions of a percent, and it distributes the tasks more evenly than pure randomness. But the card method described here works just fine and is easy to get started.

Learn Khmer Script the Lazy-Ass Way: Part Two: The Vowels

 

Photo by Holger Wirth

After long delay (sorry) here is Part 2 of my system for learning the Khmer script. Part 1 was the consonants. Part 2 is vowels. 

Disclaimer. You should be using other materials and methods to study Khmer if you want to make use of this system. The system itself is only a memorization aid. I am assuming you have some basic familiarity with the script.

One of the issues noted with Khmer consonants is that they come in two families. The "A"-series has an inherent "A" vowel; whereas the "O" series has an inherent "O" vowel. This means that if you write just a consonant by itself--no vowel--it will be pronounced with either an "A" sound or an "O" sound, depending on which series it belongs to.

However... the Khmer script also has plenty of vowel symbols as well. Depending how you count them, individual symbols can be combined to make new compound symbols with new pronunciations. In English, for example, we could consider "ea" to be a new vowel formed by combining "e" and "a", so that beat is pronounced differently from both bet and bat.

And moreover, each vowel symbol, whether individual or combined, has two pronunciations, depending on whether the attached consonant is "A" series or "O" series.

Interesting fact about Khmer script: the vowel sound following the consonant might be written to the left, right, above, or below the consonant. Sometimes on several sides at once. Examples;

ជា is the consonant ជ followed by the vowel ា. The dotted circle is something you never see in actual Khmer, and you never see this vowel standing alone either. The circle indicates that the vowel needs a consonant to the left of it.

ពី is the consonant ព followed by the vowel ី. This time the circle shows that the consonant goes under the vowel.

នៅ is the consonant ន followed by the vowel ៅ. The circle shows that the vowel is written on both sides of the consonant.

So to help me remember the pronunciations of the vowels, I needed names which would represent both the "A"-series pronunciation and the "B"-series pronunciation. (Some exceptions are noted below.) 

Each name encodes the pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). I can't give a complete breakdown of every IPA symbol, especially as it applies to Khmer pronunciation, but I'll try to provide a few pointers. 

The important letters of each vowel name are capitalized. To find an appropriate English word containing a given combination of letters required me to reach for some pretty exotic vocabulary. Look them up.

So we start. All in all, there are thirty-seven different vowel symbols in Khmer (most of which have two different pronunciations). Our list of vowels runs as follows:

1 ា AdAmantine IRis. The name has two words, which is typical. The first word AdAmantine encodes the A-series pronunciation, which is æː. In the IPA, æ is a wide "a" sound like "cat" and ː shows that the vowel is stretched out in time. I use A to represent æ and I use two of them AA to indicate the prolongation. This is a general rule of the system: where the IPA uses : to show that a vowel sound is stretched out, my system doubles the letter that encodes the IPA symbol.) The second word IRis encodes the O-series pronunciation, which is iːə. I represents the IPA i, which actually sounds like the "i" in "pizza" and R represents the schwa ə, which is a neutral vowel . I skipped the prolongation symbol for this one.

2 ិ Ebon Ink. The letter E of the first word Ebon encodes the A-series pronunciation e. The letter I of the second word Ink encodes the O-series pronunciation i.

3 ី RIch megatherIId. The letters RI of RIch encode the A-series pronunciation əj. (This is a diphthong, a combination of one vowel sliding into another. English has a lot of these, for example the "oi" in "coin".) Once again the letter R represents the IPA symbol ə. In the IPA the symbol j represents the sound "y" as in English "yes"; notice that this is very close to the IPA i, so I use the letter I to represent IPA j as well as IPA i. The double II in megatherIId represents the O-series pronunciation iː (prolonged i).

4 ឹ     RYe. I used a single word for this one because both pronunciations are simple vowel sounds. Once again the letter R represents the IPA letter ə. The letter Y, used here for the first but by no means the last time, represents the IPA letter ɨ, which can be described as a back unrounded vowel, and sorry, no, I won't explain what that means.

5 ឺ RYpophagous flYbY. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters RY, representing a diphthong composed of the two vowels əɨ (compare to the two separate pronunciations of the previous vowel. The O-series pronunciation is represented by YY, encoding a long version ɨː of the vowel ɨ 

6 ូ OUtsized UkUlele. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters OU, a diphthong rather similar to the "ow" in English "low." The O-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters UU, a long version uː of the vowel u, rather similar to the "u" in English "rule."

7 ួ URethane. I used a single word for this one because the A-series and O-series pronunciations are identical. Both are encoded by the letters UR, a diphthong uːə, prolonged u followed by ə.

8 ើ ARmored oRRery. The A-series pronunciation æːə is encoded by the letters AR. The O-series pronunciation əː is encoded by the letters RR.

9 ឿ hYRax. Once again, I used a single word for this one because the A-series and O-series pronunciations are identical. Both are encoded by the letters YR, a diphthong ɨːə, prolonged ɨː followed by ə.

10 ៀ IRon. Once again, I used a single word for this one because the A-series and O-series pronunciations are identical. Both encoded by the letters IR, a diphthong iːə, prolonged i: followed by ə.

11 េ EIghtfold EEl. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters EI, a diphthong eːi of prolonged e: followed by i. The O-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters EE, a prolonged eː.

12 ែ AErosol Egg. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters AE, a diphthong æːe. The O-series pronunciation is encoded by the letter E , a prolonged ɛː (more like the "e" in English "bed").

13 ៃ AIry YIeld. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters AI, a diphthong aj. The O-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters YI, a diphthong ɨj.

14 ោ AOrtal OOze. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters AO, a diphthong æːo. The O-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters OO, a prolonged oː.

15 ៅ AWned YUrt. The A-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters AW, a diphthong æw. The O-series pronunciation is encoded by the letters YU, a diphthong ɨw.

16 ុ OUtrigger. Once again, I used a single word for this one because both pronunciations are simple vowel sounds. The A-series pronunciation o is encoded by the letter O. The O-series pronunciation u is encoded by the letter U.

17 ំ ALUminum. This letter starts a new series of special nasalized vowels. All are distinguished by the little bubble mark above the consonant (this letter indeed consists of nothing but this bubble). and all are pronounced with "nasalization" like you find in French, for example; i.e., some of the breath is directed through the nose rather than the mouth. For this first one, I used a single word for both A-series and O-series pronunciations. The letters AL encode the A-series pronunciation ɑm. As a rule the system uses the letters AL for this variant of the ɑ-sound. The new combination AL shows the vowel sound ɑ, which is rather like the "a" in English "father." The m here does not indicate a sound like "mama" but marks the nasalization of the vowel. The letter U encodes the O-series pronunciation um, which is a nasalized version of the vowel u.

18 ុំ Marble OUtrigger. Here the word Marble shows that this is a nasalized vowel. The letter O encodes the A-series pronunciation om (nasalized o). The letter U encodes the O-series pronunciation um (nasalized u).

19 ាំ Marble Ashen ORange. Again the word Marble shows that this is a nasalized vowel. The letter A encodes the A-series pronunciation am (nasalized a). The letters OR encode the O-series pronunciation  oəm (nasalized oə).

20 ះ  Hairy Ashen ERaser. This letter starts a second series of special aspirated vowels, each marked by the two bubbles on the right. This indicates that the vowel is pronounced with sort of an "h" sound at the end of the syllable (which is the opposite of where it always comes in English). For all of these vowel names the word Hairy indicates this "h"-sound. Here the letter A encodes the A-series pronunciation aʰ (the small "h" coming at the end of the syllable). The letters ER encode the O-series pronunciation eəʰ.

21 ិះ  Hairy EpIcycle. Again the word Hairy indicates the "h" at the end of the syllable. The letter E encodes the A-series pronunciation eʰ. The letter I encodes the O-series pronunciation iʰ.

22 េះ  Hairy EIghtfold Éclair. Again the word Hairy indicates the "h" at the end of the syllable. The letters EI encode the A-series pronunciation eiʰ. The letter É encodes the O-series pronunciation eʰ.

23 ោះ Hairy ALbino URchin. Again the word Hairy indicates the "h" at the end of the syllable. The letters AL encode  the A-series pronunciation ɑʰ. The letters UR encode the O-series pronunciation ʊəʰ.

24 ុះ  Hairy OUtrigger. Again the word Hairy indicates the "h" at the end of the syllable.  The letter O encodes the A-series pronunciation oʰ. The letter U encodes the O-series pronunciation uʰ.

We come now to the final series of vowel symbols. These differ from all the others in that they are written as independent symbols rather than attached to a previous consonant sound. So far as I can tell they are used only when a vowel sound comes at the beginning of a word (although you can imagine having a word consisting solely of several vowel sounds).

Actually it is technically incorrect to say the vowel does not follow a consonant sound, because in fact it is preceded by a glottal stop--a catch-in-the-throat sound which you do hear in English but is not meaningful. In some other languages (like Arabic, for example) it works as a consonant sound on an equal basis with the others. This glottal stop is represented in the IPA by the symbol ʔ (like a question mark with no dot). This glottal stop is not represented in my names for the symbols.

Since these letters come only at the start of the word, and are not attached to any consonant, they do not have separate A-series and O-series pronunciations; each has a single pronunciation encoded by a single word.

25 ឥ Elephant. The letter E encodes the pronunciation ʔe.

26 ឦ RIxshaw. The letters RI encode the pronunciation ʔəj.

27 ឧ Ocean. The letter O encodes the pronunciation ʔo.

28 ឪ YUppie. The letters YU encode the pronunciation ʔɨw.

29 ឫ RYa. The letters RY encode the pronunciation ʔrɨ. Notice that here the R represents an actual r sound rather than the shwa as hitherto.

30 ឬ RYdberg. The letters  RY encode the pronunciation ʔrɨː. This is like the preceding, except prolonged, and so this one has the longer name. Once again the R represents an actual r sound rather than the shwa as hitherto.

31 ឭ LYceum. The letters LY encode the pronunciation ʔlɨ.

32 ឮ LYme grass. The letters LY encode the pronunciation ʔlɨː. This is like the preceding, except prolonged, and so it gets the longer name. 

33 ឯ AEpyornis. The letters AE encode the pronunciation, which I found described variously as ʔæe; or ʔɛː or ʔeː.

34 ឰ AIrship. The letters AI encode the pronunciation ʔaj. 

35 ឳ AUnt. The letters AU encode the pronunciation ʔaw. 

36 ឱ AOudad. The letters AO encode the pronunciation ʔaːo. 

37 ឩ Udder. The letter U encodes the pronunciation ʔu.

And that's it. This system helped me, taking the problem of learning Khmer script from impossible to merely difficult.

Introduction to Timeboxing

Photo by Linda Giddens

I first learned of the timeboxing technique a few years back. I since have found it a very useful item in my productivity arsenal.

I'll start with a scenario—the naked, unvarnished truth as it happened to me today. I had a report that needed to be worked on, didn't feel like doing it. Why? For no rational reason, just one of those things.

In such a situation it is all too easy to keep busy with other types of "work"—anything I could spend time on that appears useful, so that anyone watching won't think I'm slacking off. (This is true even though I'm working at home and nobody is watching but me.)

So what I did was....

Now that I have you hanging on the edge of your seat, let me digress for a little philosophical discussion. We are used to thinking of Man (and Woman) as the "rational animal," but look up "cognitive bias" and you will see that all too often people behave irrationally, and what's more in well-established ways. Faced with this knowledge, one can castigate oneself for being irrational and resolve to purify one's mind. Good luck with that—you might pull it off.

Or one can accept one's own irrationalities and work around them, even use them at times. Think of your mind as like Biff Tannen's car:

Remember? The one that no one but Biff could get started? In the same way, once you learn the idiosyncracies of your own mind you can learn how to work around them to coax better performance out of the old thing.

Now back to our exciting story. What I did was set my timer for 5 minutes (we'll come back to discuss the timer later), and tell myself to work on the report for just 5 minutes. This much motivation I could muster.

Frequently the hardest part of a task like this is merely getting started. And so it was today. As it turned out, once 5 minutes had gone by I could see I was almost finished and wrapped it up in approximately another 5 minutes. The rest of the day was then better without that report hanging over my head.

If I had required more than 10 minutes of work to finish the report, I would have perhaps done something like this: spend 5 minutes on the report, then spend 5 minutes either working on something else requiring less energy, or just goof off for 5 minutes. Then 5 minutes on the report again, then 5 minutes off, and so on and so on, until the report is finished or I have reached my quota of work for the day. And so I would be working at 50% efficiency. Not ideal, but better than zero.

This is an example of timeboxing, in other words breaking your time into predetermined blocks to be used according to a plan. In this case I used timeboxing to overcome resistance to getting started on a task, but there are other benefits such as time budgeting. You can devise endless alternatives depending on your energy and motivation level, difficulty of the task, other things to be done, etc.:

Plan B (gradual escalation): 

5 minutes on task, 5 minutes rest,

6 minutes on task, 5 minutes rest,

7 minutes on task, 5 minutes rest,

8 minutes on task, 5 minutes rest,

etc.

Plan C (overcoming extreme distaste):

2 minutes on task, 2 minutes rest,

3 minutes on task, 2 minutes rest,

4 minutes on task, 2 minutes rest,

etc.

Plan D (working when fatigued):

2 minutes on task, 5 minutes rest,

2 minutes on task, 5 minutes rest,

etc.

Plan E (balancing several tasks):

5 minutes on Task 1, 10 minutes on Task 2,

5 minutes on Task 1, 10 minutes on Task 2,

5 minutes rest,

5 minutes on Task 1, 10 minutes on Task 2,

5 minutes on Task 1, 10 minutes on Task 2,

5 minutes rest,

etc.

(The 5 minutes and 10 minutes to be adjusted depending on the percentage of effort you want to put into each task.)

All of the foregoing use relatively short intervals. Some would advise against such short intervals, saying that even a momentary interruption requires several minutes to recover from. Personally I haven't noticed this.

The timer. Today the "timer" that I used was a little shareware program called NX Free Light Timer. Other times I use a stand-alone electronic timer, which is easier to put out of sight. Or sometimes I use an old-fashioned mechanical kitchen timer (like the picture above). 

One drawback to each of these options is I would like a timer that goes off with a simple "ding" or other subtle sound. All of the options I can find are considerably more irritating. In particular, any mechanical timer I have found goes off like the alarm bell in the fire house. Apparently cooks have become quite hard of hearing since the old days.

The Pomodoro Technique. This deserves mention as one of the best-known timeboxing systems, and was also my first introduction to the idea. It's called "Pomodoro" because the inventor used a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato. In terms of time intervals it works like this:

The Pomodoro Technique:

25 minutes on task, 5 minutes rest,

25 minutes on task, 5 minutes rest,

etc.

I would say the primary benefit of this schedule is focusing on a task and controlling distractions. 25 minutes is supposedly the maximum time one can focus on work. I would say this may be too optimistic, depending on the nature of the work.  If you read the Pomodoro book you will find several higher-level enhancements to the method, such as distraction tracking.

The Pomodoro technique has gone big-time since I first read about it. I note the Pomodoro site now offers for sale a tomato-shaped timer—for 60 Euros. That had better be one really nice timer.

Yet Another Benefit of Aging

Description of bifocals by Benjamin Franklin

Growing up, I was the one member of my household that did not need glasses. I mocked the other members of my family as they stumbled around the house, bumping into walls (or perhaps I exaggerate). Eventually, of course, time caught up with me. Now, like many or most people my age, I have different vision issues at different distances.

At long distances I am mildly astigmatic. This means that at night the moon and stars appear as vertical smears. I have a prescription pair of glasses that corrects for this, but my astigmatism is mild enough that I generally get by without them ("generally" meaning I haven't put them on in years). They would come in handy if I wanted to do some serious stargazing, for example, so I'm glad to have them on hand.

I also have increasing difficulty focusing on close-up objects. This is due to the increasing stiffness of the lens of the eye with aging. I can still read a newspaper with some effort, but tiny print is essentially unreadable without help. Also reading menus in dimly-lit restaurants, etc. I therefore keep several pairs of cheap reading glasses around. I try not to wear them habitually. This is not an issue of vanity (I have no problem pulling my glasses out and putting them on in front of people) but rather because I find the focusing muscles of the eye weaken if not used (just like other muscles).

Benjamin Franklin of course addressed this issue of different visual problems at different distances by inventing bifocals. As one can see in the illustration above (also photos if you seek them out), the original bifocals had a two-part frame for each eye. This was replaced with a two-part lens and later with bifocals with no visible lines (because needing bifocals is apparently some mark of shame). Personally I find the original two-pane design much cooler:

However, with no aspersions to Benjamin Franklin, I have decided that bifocals are definitely not for me. Not because visually I couldn't use them but as an antidote to multitasking. TV commercials for bifocals always show people instantly shifting attention from the book they're reading to their angelic kids playing in the sprinkler, etc., but what if I don't want to instantly shift my attention?

I've found I rather enjoy putting my reading glasses on as a gesture of deliberate commitment to focus on what is directly in front of me. Or conversely, taking them off as in order to focus on what is happening at a distance. I pity the young punks who have no such physical mechanism for deliberately directing attention.

Mnemonic Tip: Drift to Sleep in a Palace

Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life--Youth

The third in a series of short posts on new wrinkles for old mnemonic techniques. What all have in common is that I have found them useful and have seen them described nowhere else.

The previous post discussed constructing a memory palace from a place you visit. I suggest reading that post before this one.

In any case, this post assumes you have constructed a memory palace, and that it is associated with pleasant memories. This post does not actually deal with a mnemonic technique as such,  but describes a related mental hack. I have found that a pleasant mental palace is a useful tool for falling asleep.

Falling asleep is never an issue for some people, but is an issue at least some of the time for many. That's why drugs are sold with the sole stated purpose of helping one fall asleep.

Assuming that one is prepared physically to fall asleep (i.e., bedroom conditions are suitable, one has not just awoken, etc.), a common source of interference is an overactive mind. On any given day I have at least nine different issues that I am capable of obsessing over while lying in bed. Some may be pleasant, others unpleasant but when trying to go to sleep I don't need them. Calming this internal mental chatter is necessary.

Much easier than trying to think of NOTHING is to replace the mental chatter with some other thought pattern. And for this the memory palace is useful. For me a memory palace typically consists of 50 to 100 locations.

The method consists of this: Breathe slowly and regularly, in and out. With each breath, visualize one palace location in succession. That's all there is to it. With a hundred locations (for example), it would generally take eight minutes to run through the entire palace. Usually I fall asleep before making it that far. Focusing on visualizing the palace locations quietens the mental chatter and replaces it with mental associations.

If you practice this, you may find you become aware of the peculiar mental activity that accompanies the process of falling asleep (the hypnagogic state). Generally I find my thoughts become chaotic or take a silly turn. It is as if dreaming begins before one is fully asleep.

When this happens to you, generally you will lose track of the sequence of locations you were sequencing through. You may come back to full wakefulness and realize this has happened. This is not an occasion for frustration, either because of the losing track or coming back to wakefulness. It is a good sign that indeed you are starting to fall asleep. Just pick up the sequence of locations where you left off.

For stubborn cases, you may practice refinements of the technique. Along with each location, pose yourself a simple problem (to be solved in the span of a single breath). What would the location sound like if your eyes were closed? What would it look like if it had existed in ancient Egypt? If built out of Legos? And so on.

Pleasant dreams.

Mnemonic Tip: Bring a Palace Home from Your Next Trip

Photo by David Yu

The second in a series of short posts on new wrinkles for old mnemonic techniques. What all have in common is that I have found them useful and have seen them described nowhere else.

Many contemporary computers include a GPU, a special-purpose chip for rendering 3-D graphics. This is a big help for computer games that involve running around in a 3-D environment and blowing things up.

There is then considerable interest in hacking the GPU; that is, using all that heavy computing power to do other computations that have nothing to do with graphics. Cracking passwords is one of the shadier options.

I mention this because I like to think of mnemonic techniques as hacking the human brain in a similar way. If we could see a schematic of the brain's design, it would include all kinds of special-purpose processors. There is one that recognizes faces, for example. We know this because in some people the face-recognition processor appears to be broken. Most mnemonic techniques recruit parts of the brain that would ordinarily not be involved in a particular task—by encoding numbers as images, for example, This has been at least partly verified by neuroimaging, and gives some substantive meaning to the unscientific statements one hears that "most people use X% of their brains, but I use Y%." Mnemonic techniques allow you to use more parts of your brain to remember things.

The "Palace" in the title of this post is a memory palace. The point of a memory palace is to leverage the brain's ability to associate things with particular locations for purposes of memorization. The "palace" need not be (and indeed usually is not) an actual "palace", but rather any kind of place familiar to the individual with several sublocations. Generally one visualizes something in each sublocation of the palace in order to fix it in memory. Later, the memorized objects can be recalled by mentally visiting the sublocations in an orderly fashion.

Almost always a particular sequence of sublocations is defined so that the memorized items can be recalled in order. It need not be so, however. One could use the mental map to place memorized items on a two- or even three-dimensional grid. This is a subject for future study.

An obvious choice for a memory palace would be your own house, office, school, etc. This has the advantage of familiarity. It does not, however, make for much fun. After all, you see your own house every day; there is little thrill in thinking about it.

I much prefer to use a location that I enjoy visiting. This way, using the memory palace is not only practical but brings to mind pleasant memories.

For example, the first memory palace I constructed was based on my trip to Svalbard, mostly the town of Longyearbyen, where I spent most of my time (and had an awesome time). The first location is the tarmac of the airport:

(This is how all airplane trips should end. You know you've arrived some place.)

The second location is the airport's single baggage-claim belt:

(Calm yourself, the bear is not alive. The town of Longyearbyen probably has the world's largest per-capita ratio of mounted polar bears. You run across them everywhere. I picture a scene wherein every time some poor decrepit polar bear wanders into town, they shoot it with a sigh and then call around, "All right, who wants this one?")

And so on and so forth, for a total of 54 locations (which is where I ran out of ideas).

I commit the palace to memory using Anki—a card for each location, tying the sequence number to a description of the place. The description only has to be good enough that I will recall what it means. For example, "gear shop interior".

For my last trip, I added a new wrinkle. On the trip I make a point of photographing locations for a memory palace. This differs from usual vacation photos in that it includes a lot of locations that people don't usually bother to photograph—a hotel vending machine, for example. The photos go into the Anki deck, which again raises the pleasure factor of reviewing the cards. One can also cull photos from Google Streetview, Flickr, hotel websites, or the Internet in general.

And the benefit of this memory palace works both ways. Not only is it a tool for memorizing shopping lists or lists or whatever, but by using the palace over time you will reinforce your knowledge and memories of the place in itself, how to find your way around and what's where.

Batman's Sock Drawer

So look what happens at about 1:15 into the following video segment:



Notice what you do not see here: Batman opening a drawer and rummaging through it... "Where is that grappling hook?" That would be bad. Assuming he locates it eventually, he would be distracted and hardly in shape to run out and confront the Joker.

Switching movies for a minute, consider the (hypothetical) mind-expanding pill that forms the basis for Limitless. What is the first thing that Eddie Morra does after taking the pill and becoming a genius? He cleans up his apartment.

Note also that Paul Kyriazi's Rule 3 of the James Bond Lifestyle is: "My base of operations is clean and organized."

A clean, uncluttered environment promotes a peaceful and efficient mind. Or conversely, a cluttered environment is stressful and depressing. Women seem to understand this intuitively better than men, and sometimes cope with stress or melancholy by cleaning house. This is a good idea. It takes little mental or physical energy and promotes a feeling of well-being.

But let's get back to Batman and his organizational skills. Notice how everything he needs is right there. All he need do is reach out and pick it up.

What do you want to bet that Bruce Wayne's sock drawer is just as organized? No digging through the drawer looking for the socks with the little bats on them. All he does is open the drawer and immediately he sees his favorite socks.

You may think you are managing pretty well by at least keeping your socks in a separate drawer from your spoons, but why not level up your life is a small way by organizing your sock drawer like Batman? Thanks to one of the deleted scenes, which inexplicably consists of twenty minutes of Alfred folding laundry, I can now demonstrate for you just how Batman folds his socks:

You can then lay them out in your drawer just like Batman's supply of ninja-bat-stars. Perhaps, though, you have so many socks that the bottom of the drawer is covered before you run out of socks. I can suggest two ways of handling this.

One is to put the socks in edgewise, so that they take about 1/4 the horizontal space. You can fit four times as many socks and still see all of them at the same time. If you still don't have enough room, then face it, you have just too many socks.

The other option (which I use) is to stack socks as necessary, but always stack like on top of like (since I have several identical pairs). Then you can always see one of each type at a glance.

I confess to being inspired somewhat by decluttering guru Marie Kondo, although I haven't read or watched enough of her to actually copy anything. Marie Kondo is about the least Batman-like figure you can imagine, but I gather she does present a spiritual aspect to decluttering.

A Cramming Case Study

Recently a company I do R&D consulting work for asked me to serve as a translator on a conference call with a potential client in Japan. Although I consider myself a fluent Japanese speaker—I literally have no problem carrying on a conversation if roused at 3:00 a.m. (as actually happens sometimes)—this task was somewhat intimidating for three reasons:

(1) Intepreting from Language A to Language B is a specialized skill, for which knowledge of both Language A and Language B is necessary but not sufficient. The ultimate in interpretation is the simultaneous interpreter, who manages to translate the first part of a sentence while listening for how the second part will turn out. But even at a simpler, taking-turns level, interpretation is trickier than you might think if you haven't tried it.

(2) The subject matter under discussion—digital imaging technology—is something that I don't usually discuss in Japanese, so there would be a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary.

(3) (This is a particular issue with Japanese:) the stylistic register of the conversation, being a business meeting, was different from what I am most used to, which are informal, friendly conversations.

I had about three days to prepare. In that time, there was little I could do to address points (1) and (3), but I could hope to do something about point (2)—vocabulary. I did my best to bone up using available tools (all of which happen to be available for free).

I was lucky enough to receive a 30-minute video showing a conversation similar to that I would be required to interpret. I listened to the video and jotted down (in Notepad) words and phrases it seemed would be useful to know off the top of my head. I ended up with a list of roughly 200 terms. I then processed my notes as follows:

1: I copied the list of terms into a single column of an Excel spreadsheet. I could have typed them into Excel to begin with, but this took only a few seconds.

2: I uploaded the Excel document into Google Docs and converted it to a Google spreadsheet.

3: Using the GoogleTranslate() function, I created a second column containing the machine translations of the terms in the first column.

4: Mrs. Gorodish—a native Japanese speaker with however no expertise in digital imaging—did a sanity check of the translations. Most of them did not seem to need fixing. I went back over the list and together we decided on translations for the most easily misunderstood terms (think, for example, how many possible meanings the word "form" has).

5: I downloaded the spreadsheet back into Excel format and cut-and-pasted the contents into a tab-separated text file.

6: Finally, I imported the text file into my Anki deck of Japanese vocabulary.

The foregoing prep time took perhaps an hour, with the bulk of time spent on step 4. It then became a matter of studying the terms over the next three days, taking perhaps an hour a day. Many of the terms were actually easy-to-remember adaptations of English words, but I intentionally "failed" them in Anki in order to make sure they would be presented the next day.

The meeting itself came off well, and all parties declared their satisfaction with the translation. Of course, how would they know? ...since I was the only bilingual present I could have committed the most outrageous translation errors and no one would ever know (including myself).

Life Hack: How to Get the Last Little Drops of Liquid Laundry Detergent out of the Cup Most Easily

Just throw the entire cup into the washer. Just make sure to tip it so that it doesn't end up floating around like a little boat. Retrieve the cup when emptying the washer.