Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0356: Compartmentalizing your brain

Episode Date: July 20, 2015

Hayden asks about keeping different emotions and ideas in the right mental “compartments”. I talk about the connection between psychology, memory, and productivity, using spatial separation. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 356. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Hayden submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Hayden says, I want to learn how to compartmentalize my brain and psychology. I know it isn't exactly about memory, but it is a huge problem I have trying to keep certain emotions and ideas in the right compartments.

This is an interesting question, Hayden. in Cebu talking about this process of actually physically pretending to place ideas and thoughts running around in your head in different compartments as if there are filing cabinets for different subjects like productivity and marketing and you know all these different things and just taking all the ideas that fly around in your head and physically pretending that it's a file and you're putting it into a separate filing cabinet for each one. The fact is that spatial separation is something that you can relate to psychology, to memory, to productivity, and really to all kinds of different things. And so that's what I went on to describe to him what I teach about memory palaces and how what I do is I place different actual real information in different real locations instead of just putting ideas into filing cabinets that don't really get, you know, the idea is actually put it into real storage and actually access that information again as if I'm physically pulling it out of a filing cabinet because that's what a memory palace is, although it tends to be more memorable than a simple generic filing cabinet. Now, to talk about this on another subject, we have productivity. I personally like to do different activities in different places.

I don't like to answer my email in the same place that I record podcasts because then it just feels like a tedious location. I'd rather be here where I'm recording this podcast right now, and I would rather be here just for recording podcasts. So I'm in the zone for recording podcasts. And then I'll be somewhere else for answering email, and I'll be somewhere else for doing a different type of activity like writing scripts or whatever. I like to have them in different places and that's really what helps me focus on different things in different places. So you may be able to come up with a way of using psychology in a similar way, compartmentalizing different things by putting them in different

places. If you can't physically use a different place for different types of activities or psychological states to be in different places when you're doing different things, it's good at least to associate them mentally with different places. Anytime a particular thought or feeling returns to you, you can try to place it in an actual physical location, a place that you've been. And then if you're avoiding that location in your mind, you're leaving that where it belongs and keeping yourself in the present moment at the place you are now with the activity that you're doing now associated with your current location. So that's how you could apply that psychologically.

To apply it from a productivity standpoint, if you are restricted to a particular place from multiple activities, maybe your work desk and you have to do a whole lot of different things at that desk, including personal and work stuff and including all sorts of different activities, including email and production and things like that, you can still imagine that you're in different places and put yourself into different states for that. Or you could even use different parts of your desk or organize your desk a different way at different times of the day to be in different activities. The point is you want things to be completely separate. You want to be in one state of mind for one activity, another state of mind for another activity, and you don't want to blend them or get them mixed up. Make sure that you can put things in separate places, whether physically or in a memory palace or some sort of mental state that you represent in real geographic locations. I hope that makes sense, Hayden, and I enjoyed doing this episode and I'd be happy to communicate with you further on this as well. If you're willing to leave a review of the show, that could immensely help us out. Just leave us

an honest rating and review in iTunes. Leaving those comments makes a huge difference, and these reviews really have a multiplying effect as to who can see the show. So for anyone listening, if you've had any benefit from this free show, I'd really appreciate you doing that for me in return. Meanwhile, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.