Memory, Mindfulness and Imagination

I've already written about what I understand to be the benefits of having a better memory in the modern world. These were namely to aid us in our thinking and to help put things into a shape and form that makes it easy for others to remember. Now, after having contemplated this for a bit …

Memory System Part 3: Imaginary World

In the first and second parts of this series I have discussed the advantages of a memory system as well as proposed a simple technique for organising thinking. A particular focus of the presented technique was to provide a very lightweight way to order thoughts, with minimal requirements to adorn what we want to remember …

Memory System Part 1: Ancient Techniques and Modern Applications

I've recently been thinking about how to become better at dictation or to use speech to compose text. One important area of study that I came across in relation to this is rhetoric. Improving memory in turn is an important part of the discipline of rhetoric. In this article, I will briefly describe some ancient …

Some Thoughts on Learning

Over the past few years I had to study for a few professional certifications and I also spent a very considerable time studying at school and university. Throughout this journey I gained some insights that were useful to me and that I will collect here in the hope that they maybe useful to someone else …

Some Thoughts on Habits

I have long been interested in productivity and the old Benjamin Franklin quest of finding ways to better myself. One of the more recent themes in this field is habits, which I first came across in Duhigg's bookThe Power of Habit. The basic promise here is that if we get ourselves to do something regularly, …

Public, Communal and Familial Spirit

To me there is little doubt that the best way to live our lives is to attempt to do so in the service of others. A hedonistic, self-serving and selfish way of life is thankfully something that does not give us much lasting fulfilment; thankfully so since if we attempt to help others, and others …

Some Thoughts on Goals

With a new year just having started, it is high season for goal setting. I myself had no intention before the turn of the year to make any specific effort to set or revise goals. However, ever since the date switched over to 1/1/2021, it is like some dark gravity pulls me towards wanting to …

Finding Purpose

For most of human history, we shared a strong belief in the supernatural. This anchored our spiritual life and helped us answer some of lives most painful questions; such as what is the purpose of my life and what awaits me after I die. Nowadays we have lost this belief and there is no point …

The Merits of Slack

There are two meanings we generally assign to the word slack. First, we can understand it as a form of laziness or being negligent. If we say a company has slack safety procedures, we express that these are insufficient and that not enough attention and effort is dedicated to these. There are few merits in …

Wholesome Goals for Every Day

I've discussed a number of practices that may aid in the path to enlightenment. Each of these, I believe is valuable and worthwhile to pursue; however, in their sum, they are quite an undertaking to accomplish, and it is very difficult to practice each of them daily. I, for once, fail at that miserably. Thus …