Your Own Mind - the Greatest Search Engine on Earth

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Your Own Mind - the Greatest Search Engine on Earth

Friday, April 17th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

Do you tend to forget the things you should remember? Poor memory can be related to depression (have you taken a online depression test?) Depression is however not the only cause of bad memory recall. Maybe you are not using your own mind to the fullest of its abilities, because your mind can be the greatest search engine on earth – if used as intended.

There are basically two things that can be wrong when “processing your searches” 1) You do not store what you learn 2) You cannot recall what you have stored.

1) The former. I will focus on the most important thing when it comes to successfully learning new knowledge – attention. Your own mind has this use it or lose it capability. If you don’t use what you have stored, then eventually you will discard that knowledge. Attention is particularly important for new knowledge you store. If you do not give it a few moments of attention, then you will quickly discard the knowledge.

Small breaks & repetition are two things you can use to give attention to the new knowledge, that you want to store. Yes, it is counter-intuitive, but breaks are good at providing attention to what you have just learned. Even though you quit reading the new knowledge, you do not quit processing it for a while. The reason this works is because you don’t take your attention away to other new data that also must then also be processed and stored. Taking several small 5 min. breaks while learning lots of new data will enable you to better store the new information.

2) The latter. What do you do when you use a search engine on the Internet to find what you are searching for? If you need to find what you are looking for, then you must already know what you want to find! It is the paradox of search.

You will neeed a search phrase to locate what you are looking for. The text you input into a search engine that describes what you are searching for is named a search phrase. It is something that you think is associated to whatever it is you want to find. If a person has placed the information that you wish to find on the Internet and also has assigned the same search phrase to that piece of information, then you will be able to locate it. If he has not assigned the same search phrase to that information, then you will not locate it using that search phrase.

Your mind is the best at associating what it learns. How you recall data is similar to how it works with the Internet search engines. If you have associated a number of search phrases to the data you need, then you can use either one of those to recall the knowledge at a later time.

You associate a search phrase to what you later need to recall by first thinking of your search phrase, and then thinking of whatever it is you want to recall, when you later think of your search phrase. Your search phrase does not need to be a word; it can also be a picture or a sound.

Finally, I wrap this up with an example. If for instance you need to remember to buy a tooth brush the next you are at the supermarket, first recall a picture of your supermarket (your search phrase) and then recall a picture of your toothbrush (what you want to remember). Next time you enter your supermarket, you might be thinking you need to purchase a tooth brush.

Your association capability is very useful if you know how to use it. Go play with it.

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