What is Bill Gates’ secret to strengthening memory and how to apply it to your routine

The co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates is known for being a pioneer in the field of technology.

But beyond this point, The philanthropist also spends a large part of his time reading books and discover different topics .

In fact, he has a personal blog in which writes articles that refer to several topics .

It is precisely there, in Notes on doors where he recently published a note in which revealed his secret to strengthening the memory .

It is a strategy you learned in the book Moonwalking with Einstein: the art and science of remembering everything (Penguin Books, 2012) by Joshua Foer.

There, the premise is stated that “The average human memory is extremely good for tasks that are important to you and extremely poor for things that are not.” .

Therefore, the same Gates acknowledged that it was easy to remember science and business questions, but not to memorize facts about film. to cite an example.

However, The method promises to help strengthen memory not only in one area, but also on a more general level. .

He even said that it is used by people who participate in memory competitions and that Foer, after practicing it for a year, was crowned at the American Memory Championship. after breaking the speed record for memorizing a deck of cards.

Consists of a visualization technique that Gates described as “memory palace” .

To put it into practice, you have to “literally visualize a house with many rooms and different people and things in each of them, which represent what you are trying to remember” .

“The idea comes from an ancient Greek poet who remembered the names of everyone who died. when a temple collapsed during a banquet. “He had a visual memory of where everyone was sitting,” Gates said.

In other words, it is create imaginary spaces where each item is associated with a factor you want to remember .

To win the competition mentioned above, Foer associated each of the letters with a person, action or place, which helped him memorize them. easier.

“Part of the beauty of this book is that it clearly shows that memory and understanding are not two different things. Developing the ability to reason and retain information goes hand in hand “, said the tycoon, referring to the author’s text.

Of course, Gates pointed out that To carry out the method, you have to practice “for months”, because it does not have an immediate effect. .

“It must be taken very seriously . The book reminds us that in general we all start with the same tools and that we can strengthen them or not,” said the Microsoft co-founder.