Extraordinary episodic memory and good concentration in both visual and linguistic tasks are possible with attention alone.
The only way to enhance your learning and attention is by mindfulness practice. What I am going to share is not easy to practice. Undistracted mindfulness is not possible without meditation, exercise, or perfect reading ability though.
There are a few background behaviour changes that are needed along with these time-tested hacks experienced by me. I spent more than half of my life learning things to remember and ideate based on them.
It came through mindfulness amidst noise and distraction.
There is a disorder where people listen more in noise because of a middle ear pathology called otosclerosis. The term used for this syndrome is Paracusis of Willis.
Like the bone gets sclerosed, likewise we need to cause sclerosis of our senses and sharply focus them on our task. No amount of noise then can backfire on your productivity machine.
You need to do these things:
- Kill your curiosity about everything else except your goals. You should eat, drink, and sleep it; the rest of the things revolve around it, mostly everything around it.
- Focus on the present moment with respect to your target; always reflect and think about the day, date, and time, followed by what you have completed with respect to your goal and how far you have come, and what you should do next to grow in the right direction. Also during such moments, you have to look up at people and things around you so that the back of your mind forms emotional connections for you to remember. As we always say that a person always remembers how you make them feel.
A very typical test of mindfulness is that you possess a very sharp episodic memory.
You can even raise your kids while thinking about the enthusiasm-filled opportunity that you got at your workplace. You can read many books and stay fixed on your exam for most crucial hours of the day and study for it religiously for 2 hours daily on a routine-bound day and around 12 hours before the exam.
Time can be utilized in such a manner by sheer mindfulness, and to develop it, you have to cut down on your ubiquitousness digitally, socially, and psychologically.
You will talk about things that are goal-oriented and structured, and your pass-times will be to get back to your primary goal.
For example, if your goal is to enhance your vocabulary, instead of reading for meaning, you will start studying and criticizing the word art used in an article.
I have experience reviewing and writing research articles and writing books. For writing research, I have to analyze data, and to review them, I first look at the methodology and then the analysis. While I write a book, I put a lot of meaning into it, innovate, illustrate with the help of lucid charts, and read for information gain and meaning. But if I am proofreading the written work, I only cover the language part of it, without judging the meaning or facts that I put in. Facts and comprehension were already done while writing and correcting 3-4 times while it was a first draft.
My entire body moves in the direction of writing. All senses perceive only what I am supposed to do to produce my work. Nothing else matters. And this I can utter word by word to my colleagues if I need to discuss with them.
This is how I remember a chemical phenomenon studied in 7th grade, the map of Africa, and its revenue based on its wildlife. I remember that black surfaces (tiles) are colder than the white ones outside in a temple during the scorching heat of the hot tropical sun. I could describe it to my deceased uncle at 11 or 12 years of age at Devi Talaab in Jalandhar, the city known for its sports goods in urban Punjab in India.
I remember because I am mostly a person who keeps applying what she reads. And those who churn and eat books are like that, but my processing is sometimes distracted. I need to articulate or sleep soundly to really get by with concentration, while I know many who can perform well despite many sleepless nights. They might have been brilliant since inception; I am not.
Every scholar who is focused first understands the subject matter and not drink the material by rote. If one has a sane mind, nothing else needs to be done. I know of a few friends who are like that.
Someone crazy might be a doctor of medicine but makes time to solve the Olympiad questions for a third-grade son of hers and read books for an 11-year-old to understand and explain the difference and evolution of the concept from B.C. to BCE.
With all this, they remember an interstitial pneumonia patient, a bronchial asthma-affected woman who needs attention in the coming week, and the prescription that did not work for them, while also remembering the amount to be paid for the maid, the cost allocated to vegetables, plus the lectures one has to take for their students for the entire month, for which a plan has been constructed already with optimal time allocation, and ruminating about previous moments when the person sat with it and on which day and how many days are left before an assignment can be completed for the course on environmental health.
I know such people who are inspirations but don’t need any recognition. All they portray is vibrance and dedication. And it all comes with mindfulness, by being curious only about few things that matter and reflecting frequently about the time, day, and dates during some vague moments when you give attention to that color of your bedsheet or the face of your maid’s daughter while you were doing some long stitch embroidery or that necklace that you bought for her from Janpath in Delhi, which was appreciated by them, reluctantly, as they preferred something colorful.
All this is possible when you have a restricted curiosity and ability to reflect, control your sensual reflexes, with emotional cues while being in-depth meditating inside you and doing what is necessary to become sharp at what you have planned for any kind of task completion and consuming time efficiently. Such people usually never get deprived of success. This behaviour change is phenomenally experienced by people like Steve Jobs, who were exceptionally resilient in their life’s journey.
Try offbeat ways; hacks are plenty, but imbibe them only after the two methods that I have described for mindfulness: keep restricted curiosity and look around, remember temporal information, at least the year when you visited a place and contemplated a research in the hotel room for which you read 5 articles saved in your hard drive.
It is not impressive but quite possible in the life of laborious people who really like to live and indulge.
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