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Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer – book review

Moonwalking with Einstein - book review

Jim Kwik’s book “Limitless” gave me a lot of energy and motivation to work on my mental abilities. One of many books referenced there is “Moonwalking with Einstein”, which was labeled as groundbreaking. If you are the one who thinks human memory of a healthy human* can’t be improved, you definitely need to read the book.

*There are brain damages that destroy long therm memory, thus making memory improvement impossible.

Joshua Foer’s interest in memory training started with an unrelated visit at a Weightlifting Hall of Fame, where he watched a photo of a strongest man in the world. He questioned himself if there is also a title for the smartest person of the world. A good portion of googling did not provide him with an unequivocal answer. He stumbled on a name of Ben Pridmore – the world memory champion at that time. In one of his interviews, he revealed that anyone could train their memory and achieve similar results as he.

In 2005 Josh went to the US memory championships to write an article about not so popular at the time competition. His true motivation, though, was led by curiosity of how do the contestants perform such tricks. The participants of these championships called themselves mental athletes. It amazed Josh how these apparently ordinary people had the ability to remember so many things in seconds. He tried to talk to some of them to find out what special talents they possess. To his confusion, they all stated that there is no special power needed to memorize a deck of cards.

Journey to the depths of the memory

Josh followed the participants to know them better and with time they become friends. He kept thinking about the fact that anyone can do a memory training and he decided to train for the 2006 championships. One of the memory grand masters from England, Ed Cook becomes his mentor. 

Research led him to the Human Performance Lab, where Anders Ericsson and researchers are examining the top performers to find out what makes some people experts. Josh knew that if he wanted to place high during championships, he needed to become an expert within one year. Ericsson agreed to provide him with his feedback in exchange for the granular data from his everyday practice. This win-win solution provided Josh with constant progress analysis and support on how to improve. Ericsson received the possibility to track the process of building expertise from a novice to an expert.

The main story line covers author’s preparation for the Memory Championships, however the author has a brilliant way to plot his research results into the story. Starting from Simonides, who is the first person we know of, inventing memory techniques. Josh guides us through development of mnemonics and reveals how and why these techniques were used during the history of a mankind.

The number one takeaway from the book is that we can achieve the goals we set if we undertake a deliberate effort. What the Experts and top performers are doing we can replicate to achieve expertise. By harnessing focus, planning and constant feedback we can quickly find when our development reaches a plateau. This could be overcome by increasing difficulty or stepping out of comfort zone.

It might be comforting that years of practice are not equivalent to expertise. One can perform action for several years and still suck at it. Only a deliberate effort to improve can bring progress.

Memory training has not provided Josh with superpowers. Even after the comptetion he frogets things that he not focused on remembering. He still forgets where he put his keys. Despite this fact he learned to value memory as a necessary ingredient of creativity but also personality.

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Innercise – by John Assaraf – book review

innercise book review

When you enter the phrase ‘unlock your brain’ in Amazon.com’s search bar, one book that will always come up very high in the results page is ‘Innercise’ by John Assaraf. According to his ‘About’ page he has built 5 multimillion dollar companies and is now a CEO and founder of NeuroGym.

What struck me most about the author is that he was not born with the silver spoon in his mouth. In fact, he was far from success at the beginning of his career. With help of a friend who then became his mentor, he changed his life and achieved the success he always dreamed of.

John uses his experiences and the studies from newest cognitive science to create the book, a guide to overcome our minds’ limitations. The contents of this easy-to-read work are divided into 3 parts. Author begins with a description of the Brain and how it works. Although the brain is not a muscle, it needs to be trained to become and function better. Training of the brain is the primary motive of the book, and even the book’s title relates to this. John Assaraf emphasises, not only our body requires training but also our mind. Yet the exercise is of another form and nature, it is directed to the inside, hence the name Innercise.

Gorilla inside of us

Through our experiences, uprising and interactions with other people, our brains have been hard wired in a unique way. This wiring enables automaticity and causes our brain to work more effectively. Therefore, we can drive a car without focusing on all activities as it was the case when we first learned it. In fact, most of our actions and behaviours are being controlled by the subconscious mind, which the author compares to a gorilla living inside of us. 

Gorilla stands guard over our safety and efficient functioning of the brain. Once it notices some of our actions might be a potential threat, it steps into action. Have you ever heard this voice in your head, dissuading you from doing some kind of new thing. After you’ve came up with a brilliant idea, there is a phase when you are bombarded with doubts. It’s the gorilla speaking with our voice. This mechanism exists to keep us in safety and away from dangers. However, it also might block us from progressing with our dreams.

Tame the gorilla

The advances in neuroscience show neuroplasticity is a fact and thus we can rewire and change some automations that are ingrained in our brains. The second part of the book shows how to do it. We should direct our focus inside of us. What are the reasons for setting goals and not reaching them? There might be several reasons, and this part is revealing them step by step and providing solutions. Fears, habits, excess stress and false beliefs might have steered you in the direction where you are. But encouraging is that we are not a fixed product and we can change with a bit of help. We don’t know what we don’t know so the first step would be to read this part of the book to check what has blocked us from achieving our potential, and while we know what options are there, we can become aware. Awareness is, as I think, already a partial success.

Effective goal setting

Backed up with the discoveries of neuroscientists, we can set up goals which will not fade out. With the help of innercises we can keep them alive and what’s more we can finally take actions and succeed.

“Innercise” is useful to uncover why despite the efforts we take, we don’t achieve our goals. Following sentence is often attributed to Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”. By reading and learning things described in the book, you can expand your thinking, gain new insights and create an alternative approach to changing unuseful habits or thoughts and finally maybe changing your life.

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How to unlock your brain – Limitless by Jim Kwik – book review

Limitless by Jim Kwik - book review

When I hear the word limitless I immediately remember the movie ‘Limitless’ with Bradley Cooper where the protagonist finds a pill which unlocks the full power of the brain and helps him to excel in every area of his life.

I bet Jim Kwik, the author of the book “Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life” was dreaming once of a similar pill to become limitless and he really had a reason for it. An accident in kindergarten, when he fell and injured his head, changed his life and caused a lot of learning problems. He couldn’t keep up to learn at the same speed as his colleagues, so much that he started reading three years later than his peers.

He found inspiration in comic books and superheroes became his best friends. Noone can doubt he was motivated to learn. In college Jim studied so hard that he neglected vital things like sleep, eating or exercise and ended up in hospital. A mug on the table triggered an association to a quote: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. Because he remembered what Einstein once said, his mindset changed, and he viewed the problem from another angle. He was learning hard, but it was time to learn smarter.  

Jim overcame his disadvantages and proved that the brain with proper training can overcome its impediments. He founded Kwik Learning and started coaching  students, seniors, entrepreneurs  and educators and many CEO’s around the world. He set on a mission to teach as many people as possible how to learn, so nobody will suffer like he did.

“Limitless” is not a book where the author will throw at you some random techniques and facts about learning so you can use them and suddenly become better. This is a guide where he has deconstructed the main pillars of a better learning process but perhaps also a better life. Book focuses on areas: Mindset, Methods and Motivation and the author underlines their importance to becoming limitless. Although Jim’s knowledge is so broad that he could write a separate book about each area, he provides basic necessary information for each group, which forms the toolset to become limitless.

I find very practical the usage of activity boxes where author encourages the reader to take action. This is important as the book will only be of great value if you follow the activities and incorporate them in your daily routine. I have myself performed all the activities and saw significant improvement in speed reading (60% improvement after using Jim’s suggestions) and memorization.

Jim structures the material in such a way that’s easier to learn from. He also uses acronyms with the goal to help to remember the book contents with ease and for a long time. Such a difference to what has been provided to me in school.

Going back to the first association with the Limitless movie, Jim debunks common myths about learning and the brain. One of them is that we are not using the entire brain, which is false for several reasons. One counter argument is that there is no brain area, which could be damaged, without causing a loss of some ability. Hence the myth of not using the full brain can not prevail. By learning how the brain functions and how to learn, we can use our supercomputer more effectively.

Am I limitless after reading the book – no, but I have seen immediate effects in some areas. And this is a process of, as the author is saying: “unlimiting” yourself from bad habits, bad beliefs, bad thoughts.

Limitless is a great book to get started with learning how to learn. Best suitable for people who have some learning impediments or just haven’t really been taught how to study effectively. Better learning is a journey, and this book lays a very good foundation for this journey to success. This would be also a great resource for the teachers who could prepare their lessons in a more brain-friendly way and inspire their students to learn smarter.

Even if you are still unsure if it’s worth reading the book, I can tell you it will definitely pay off, because each book we read opens our minds, exercises our imagination, hence is valuable to our brains and your future self will thank you for each one.