Mirzhan Irkegulov’s Reviews > How to Remember Everything > Status Update

This book is nothing but trash. Short, derivative, just as underwhelming as Wiseman's ‘59 Seconds’. This guy was trying to make a quick buck from ripping off Lorayne et al, relying on the general public still not knowing about mnemonics. Don't waste your time, read Lorayne/Lucas for methods, Foer for journalism, or Higbee for science instead. I'll donate this rubbish to David Wilson library, as it's a space waster.

Mediterranean diet: unsaturated fat and Omega-3 fatty acids (veg, fruit, olive oil, salmon, tuna, pumpkin seeds, brussel sprouts, walnuts). Also blueberries. Claims they are good for short-term memory.

Learn etymologies of common names and surnames (and celebs sharing those names) to make it easier to remember other people's names. That is probably useful for cities/countries as well.

What bothered me when I started reading is how derivative the book is, not a single new idea since Higbee, Lorayne, O'Brien or Foer. At least Foer (pronounced ‘four’ hehe) had an original story to tell. And it's £9.99 for 64 pages!

Finally, p23 has an original idea: associate months with visual stuff, e.g. May ↔ Brian May from Queen.

I just realized: I learned about the Pulaski (ax) from Firewatch. Pulaski is also a character in GTA: SA. Never made connection strong, so forgot the ax name. 2 lessons:
1. Make strong visual connections! Use imagination!
2. Learn characters in addition to real celebrities, especially characters that matter to me.

He uses an ax for 7, where I currently use a compass. I didn't realize how many tools look like numbers, 7 could be a hoe, pickax, scythe, whereas sickle is probably 2 or 5. (I should learn tool names).

007 is James Bond. What other number associations can enrich my skeleton? US Executive Orders (e.g. Reagan's 12333), asteroids, phone #s & codes of diff countries, Integer Sequences, film/song/&c names, highways, slang (grand for 1000), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

Ch1 “Johnny Mnemonic”. I don't like mnemonics that are themselves sub-optimal to remember. “My Nanny Eats Mostly Old Noodles In Cans” has nothing to do with mnemonics (same with ‘container of coffee’). But even “Doesn't It Always Run Rather Horribly Over Each Ankle” isn't the best, because, e.g., I can forget the word ‘rather’ and say ‘quite’ instead? And acrostic mnemonics are parochial by design.