Despite the plethora of things that I write on this weblog, one post still accounts for more than 50% of all the search engine traffic to it. I’m talking about, of course, the entry named “15 Ways to Help you Wake Up“. Fatigue and sleeplessness plagues people all over the world, and so many people are looking for a quick fix to their sleep-related problems when most of the time the answer is simply “cut back on caffeine intake and try to go to bed earlier in the evening”. Today, I’m going to revisit the old adage Mens Sana in Corpore Sano; “A Healthy Mind in a Healthy Body”. Just like you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, a human being should be more than just a healthy body.
There are so many things in our lives that we can improve upon that a person deciding to become all he can be will usually not find any time for anything else. We simply cannot have a perfect mind in a perfect body, but we can all try our best to improve on the places where we have obvious failings. Now; I’m not suggesting that all my readers should do all of these things, but I would like you to consider if any of these fields are places where you feel you have any deficiencies.
Improve your memory!
This one should be a no-brainer to most people. Our lives are filled with things that we need to remember and our dependencies on storing people’s telephone numbers, addresses, birthdates and e-mail addresses in our phones and address books has taken away a great deal of the practice our memories once got. We rarely go to the stores anymore without a shopping list written down in one way or another. Improving your memory, however, is so easy that it would be an insult to your mind not to do it.
A few months ago, I wrote an entry about remembering numbers which I suggest you all read through (again). It’s thanks to this technique that I rarely have to write down telephone numbers, hotel room numbers or PIN codes anymore. I could be standing at the hotel counter and be told that I’m in room 174, and my mind would quickly conjure up a room where the bed is shaped like an enormous lighter (Lighter = LTR = 174, for those who know the mnemonic skill). This visual image would help me remember the room number better than trying to memorize the number itself. Even longer numbers, like the zip code to my office, 16426, breaks down into “Leper nap”. I could far easier visualize a small army of lepers taking a nap all over the office area than remember the numbers.
However, numbers aren’t all we need to memorize. I’m going to explain this system better in a future entry, but for now let’s focus on a brief description of the Linking System. Assume you need to remember the following list:
- Bottle
- Book
- Pants
- Glasses
- Telephone
- Car
- Knife
- Passport
- Envelope
- Screwdriver
It’s a weird list, I know, but just run with me on this one. I dare say that most of you, even given a minute or two to study this list wouldn’t be able to recount it perfectly. If you’re anything like the common person, you might get the first four or five right. Six if you’re lucky. Even if you manage to get more than that, you’d run into trouble if I suddenly asked you to read it backwards. Now try reading this:
- Bottle / Book: You open a bottle, hoping to get something good to drink, but instead, all that happens is a bunch of books come pouring out of the opening. What a disappointment!
- Book / Pants: You’ve decided that you too can be a top fashion guru, so you go to the bookstore and buy all the books you can about your favorite subject; pants!
- Pants / Glasses: You put on your pants one leg at a time and feel very proud of the accomplishment until you sit down. CRUNCH! Oh no! You just broke your glasses!
- Glasses / Telephone: You’re the coolest guy on the block now, since your glasses aren’t just ocular impairment correction devices anymore. Oh no, they’ve got a built in telephone! All you need to do is touch the glasses a little – looking a little silly as you do so, of course, but that’s the price for technological perfection – and hey presto! Instant telephone connection!
- Telephone / Car: For some reason, you just can’t find your telephone anywhere. You wonder if you forgot it somewhere … Eventually you find it inside your car.
- Car / Knife: This must be the coolest car you’ve ever seen! Not only does it drive fast and look sharp, but built into each seat is a genuine Swiss Army Knife!
- Knife / Passport: You’re in trouble now! You got caught smuggling a knife through customs and now they’re going to take away your passport!
- Passport / Envelope: Buy now while stocks last! A passport that doubles as an envelope! Put things inside it and post them! What will they think of next?
- Envelope / Screwdriver: Ooh, you’ve got an envelope waiting for you in the mailbox! Whatever might be in it? … Aw, what a disappointment, just a lousy screwdriver.
Read through this chain twice and I’m sure you won’t have any problems remembering the list. Try it! It starts with bottle; and that leads you to …
Read, read, read!
While this might not be the most popular suggestion to the high-pace MTV soundbite-attention span youth of today, I sincerely recommend reading the classics and some of the modern literature that exists all around us. The literary treasures that form our mutual cultural heritage achieved this status for a reason, and that reason wasn’t that “They hadn’t invented the cinema yet” – even though I assume that helped slightly. Not only will reading these books be interesting and teach you things, it will allow you to have a better grasp of history, a better mind for words, an improved speaking ability and – let’s not lie about it – a degree of sophistication. People look up to people who are well read and intellectually affluent. Here’s a list of books amongst “the classics” to get you started:
- The Illiad by Homer (No, not Simpson)
- Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
- As You Like It and Much Ado About Nothing and The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- Ulysses and Dubliners by James Joyce
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Paradise Lost by John Milton
- Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
There are many “modern” books to suggest as well. This list will include some other genres than the classics and includes fantasy, science fiction, crime and thrillers.
- The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
- Neuromancer by William Gibson
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Illuminatus! by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea
- VALIS, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K. Dick.
- Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
- American Gods by Neil Gaiman
- Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson
I’m sure I’m missing several, but those are the ones that pop into my mind at the moment.
