I'm racked with indecision. I did a half-hour binary practice today using my 'new' method of linking all my groups of images together and scored 3660. Doing it the old way last week I got 3555. But I know I can do better than that with my usual approach, but then I'm also pretty sure I could do better with the new one too. It's just a matter of deciding which is the best way to go, if I want to get the maximum possible score. I'm going to try an hour cards new-style tomorrow (if I have the time and inclination) and see what happens there. I should go into more detail of what I'm talking about here, I know, but it would take hours and nobody would really be all that interested, so I'll leave it for another time.
This whole thing raises another existential dilemma - I'm doing lots of memory practice lately and that's all well and good, but when I left my job it was in order to experiment with ways of making money from being a memory guy (okay, if I'm honest it was in order to leave a job I didn't particularly like, but the making-money-from-memory thing was the justification for it), and I'm never going to make a living just by winning memory competitions, more's the pity. I should be writing that book that I'm all writer's-blocked on, I should be preparing an impressive pi-memory performance and getting it ready for Ulrich's pi-day festival next month, and I should be forcing people to make documentaries about me in much greater quantities than they currently are. If I'm to have any hope of not going back to accountancy when I run out of money, I need to do something other than mess about with infinitesimally increasing my score in half-hour binary, which I'm already the best in the world at and which nobody's going to throw money at me for doing.
Life is hard. I spend my days doing stuff I enjoy and having fun doing it, and I'm still complaining. I don't know.
Hello Ben,
ReplyDeleteDid you consider doing lectures about memory?
What about teaching seminars in companies?
You can get some inspiration from professional speakers, learning professional speaking skills etc.
What do you think?
I don't want to do lectures, seminars or things like that because there's really no way I could justify to myself charging so much money for teaching nothing of any real use. I'm quite sure that there's nothing I could say that would help businesspeople in the slightest, and I don't want to take advantage of gullible companies who believe in words like self-optimisation.
ReplyDeleteHey Ben,
ReplyDeleteLet me give you some different thoughts on the subject-
What is the reason we are so fascinated about memory sport?
What is memory sport for you?
What is the reason you do it?
Etc.
For me, for example, the challenge is a very strong "drive", also the feeling of achieving something that I could never achieve without the use of Mnemonics, and so on.
Also, think about all the creative ways we try to find in order to maximize our attempts.
What about the training discipline we need in order to maximize our performance.
Etc.
Many of the above aspects, as many others, of memory sports are a great value and inspiration for everyone, not only business people.
At first, it might look like "self-optimisation" (as you put it), but I am talking about real inspirational value that someone can benefit from.
Example- Achieving a world record does not come in one day- one has to go through many "little steps" in order to get there. Just think someone is listening to your lecture and understands that he has to break his current big assignment into "little" ones in order to achieve that goal (it is not obvious for everyone)
Just for example, think how interesting such a lecture can be-
"Goal setting- The world record way"
Also, people like to be entertained- What about giving a memory show (or semi-lecture)?
The lecture can be an inspirational one, an entertaining one, an interesting life story one, a combination of the three and in many other forms.
For some inspiration, you can look at different professional speakers on the net (not memory) and see how different topics become beneficial to others.
You may also look at some memory entertainers for inspiration (Speaking about performing memory feats- I saw your performance on TV with the black custom and it was great!)
Please give it a thought – What is memory sport for you, and how someone else can benefit from the different aspects of it or even as a sole/semi entertainment?
Tell me what you think,
Best regards.