This blog works very well as a commitment device. Today, two people have mentioned my “I’m going to memorize the countries of the world” promise, forcing me to sit down and do some creative memorization following the techniques in the “Moonwalking with Einstein”. I had actually already memorized Central and South America and successfully recited the countries to a friend almost two days after the memorization took place. OK, I left out Argentina (ironically, that was one of the few countries I could identify before this exercise). But that’s still an over 90% retention rate.

I’ve moved on to Africa now. It’s much tougher than South America. The memorization techniques calls for coming up with images that evoke the country names (e.g., “guacamole” for Guatemala). The crazier the image, the better. It also has to be concrete (e.g., you won’t be able to remember Mauritania by thinking of “moratorium”). So what am I supposed to picture for Ghana? And why are there three countries with the word “Guinea” in their name?

I’m about halfway done with Africa (Mauritania is Maury Povich). It’ll be interesting to see how much more I can memorize without forgetting Latin America.

Please leave this field empty

Want to be notified when I write a new blog post? Sign up here.

Email Address *

I don’t spam!

Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.