Recommendations for what to do / read after checking out the book? It sounds like you've put some time and effort into this, so it'd be great if you could provide further recommendations.
[1] Even without jumping into the amazing world of memory palaces, you can still take away a lot of little gems from the book, including seemingly obvious things that you probably never bothered to think of. For example, the author says, "Words that rhyme are much more memorable than words that don’t; concrete nouns are easier to remember than abstract nouns; dynamic images are more memorable than static images; alliteration aids memory. A striped skunk making a slam dunk is a stickier thought than a patterned mustelid engaging in athletic activity."
For example, I'm trying to learn German right now. It seems obvious that you would use images of the English translation in your memory palace, but then you would just have the problem of remembering the German word that each image signifies.
Or going the other way, from German to English, what images would you use in your memory palace to represent German words? How would you tie them back to English?
help?
Spaced repetition lends itself a lot more naturally to memorizing foreign language vocabulary words than the method of loci, so you might want to use that approach instead. Within spaced repetition, you can also use vivid images as a sort of scaffolding to increase the odds you'll remember the word before the next review, and you can eventually let that image go once you start recalling it easily. The more connections you form to other thoughts, the more firmly a fact will be anchored in your mind, so you might as well use mental images if you can come up withthem, even in spaced repetition. James Heisig uses visual mnemonics to teach several thousand Chinese characters in Remembering the Kanji[1] (Chinese characters for use in Japanese) and Remembering the Hanzi[2] (Chinese characters for use in Chinese), and communities like AJATT[3] and Reviewing the Kanji[4] advocate combining Heisig's approach with spaced repetition.
[1] http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/Rem...
[2] http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/Rem...
I will stick with spaced repetition =)
That being said: doesn't Rosetta Stone use a technique that basically relates pictures to common words? I've never tried that program, and only looked at demos briefly, but I've heard great things about it.
I don't think the efficiency penalty is that bad if you do it, say, every other day - I doubt the algorithms are precise down to the day.
The techniques described in Moonwalking with Einstein require serious time investment up front, but allow you to cultivate a memory that rivals that of people with savantism (who incidentally tend to use the same general techniques but do so naturally). Spaced repetition doesn't produce as amazing results but doesn't require initial time investment and is a far more efficient method of memorizing data than conventional approaches. The only downside to spaced repetition is that most software implementations of it require daily review and don't work optimally if you miss a day (recent versions of the proprietary SuperMemo, Piotr Wozniak's own software, are supposed to be much more forgiving), but you don't need to invest much time each day.
So how exactly do these two memory techniques work? Spaced repetition is predicated on the notion that the longer you wait before reviewing data, the longer that information will stick in your head. That is, as long as you are able to recall the data when you review it. If you wait too long, you'll completely forget the data. So there exists an optimal length of time to wait before reviewing a piece of data, and as with the American game show The Price is Right, you can approach that optimal value by increasing your estimate, but the moment your estimate exceeds that optimal value, it becomes less useful than all possible underestimates. The goal of spaced repetition systems (SRS), such as the software programs SuperMemo, Mnemosyne, and Anki, is to adapt to the user's mind and figure out this optimal interval to wait before showing a flash card again, as opposed to conventional flash card systems that review each card every day. Not only does spaced repetition greatly increase the value of each time you review a card by committing it further into your long term memory, but it also greatly decreases the number of flash cards you need to review each day.
The art of memory (aka method of loci), which is the technique described in Moonwalking with Einstein, works by taking advantage of the fact that our visual and spacial memory is far better than our memory for arbitrary facts. The gist of the technique is to convert data that you want to memorize into vivid images (the funnier or cruder the better) and arrange those images at discrete points in a predefined order along a spacial layout you know well (the layout is called a "memory palace", but it can be your home, school, office, neighborhood, favorite video game map, etc.). To recall the data, all you have to do is retrace your steps and remind yourself what each image means. Combining this technique with spaced repetition, you can commit thousands of pieces of data to a memory palace, wait a few hours to retrace your steps to recall the information, retrace your steps again the next day, then again a few days later, then again a week later, then a month later, etc. In this way, about two or three hours distributed over 5 or so weeks (maybe with one more review the next year) will let you memorize thousands of pieces of data permanently. The stuff you can do with your mind once you know more efficient memory techniques is truly amazing.