The Power of Forgetting (34 page)

When Art Silverman of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a nonprofit group that educates the public about nutrition, was charged with conveying to the public that movie-theater popcorn is unhealthy, he could have told moviegoers that their bag of popcorn contained thirty-seven grams of saturated fat. But rather than just state the fact, he instead decided to craft a message that put the fact into a context that people could quickly understand.

At a press conference on September 27, 1992, he said: “A medium-sized ‘butter’ popcorn at a typical neighborhood movie theater contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch,
and a steak dinner with all the trimmings—combined!” The people at CSPI added insult to injury by laying out the full buffet of greasy food for the television cameras. And the message was heard loud and clear, causing an immediate sensation in the media. The story was featured on CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN; it made the front pages of
USA Today
, the
Los Angeles Times
, and the
Washington Post
’s Style section; Leno and Letterman cracked jokes about fat-soaked popcorn; and reporters had some fun with the news, too, writing headlines such as: “Popcorn Gets an ‘R’ Rating,” “Lights, Action, Cholesterol!” and “Theater Popcorn Is Double Feature of Fat.”

Well, the idea wasn’t going anywhere. It stuck. Moviegoers, repulsed by these findings, avoided popcorn in droves. Sales plunged. Service staff at movie houses grew accustomed to fielding questions about whether the popcorn was popped in coconut oil, the “bad” oil. Soon after, most of the nation’s biggest theater chains—including United Artists, AMC, and Loews—announced that they would stop using coconut oil.

I won’t go into the details of the Heaths’ main lessons other than to say that you should read their book and all of the richly detailed stories from their research. While the book isn’t designed to help you maximize your personal memory, it can undoubtedly assist you in mobilizing more of your creative energy and expressive talents, which can in turn nourish your mind’s overall processing abilities—in short, your ingeniousness.

Q:
I am a manager. How can I use these techniques to keep my team sharp and motivated and morale high?

A:
Once you master the six skills, you should automatically find that your job, including the component of managing others, gets easier. Now that you understand the value of these skills in your own personal and professional life, you can show others by way of example how to value the same skills and develop them over time with conscious effort. You may find it helpful to set aside an hour or join your team over lunch and share your experience with the information contained in this book. Just as you’ve worked at strengthening your own logical, creative, and imaginative side and honed your ability to organize data efficiently and retain more information in your brain, you can encourage your colleagues and teammates to do the same. Create a culture that celebrates unconventional thinking and new ideas that make old ways of doing things obsolete. Push your staff to think outside the box at meetings and employ the power of forgetting to make the most of their day and mental bandwidth.

Help your team members, especially the underexperienced employees, to organize their thoughts—and their time—better when it comes to tricky projects or campaigns and inspire them to find their own solutions to problems, even if that means doing things differently. And be sure to reward the good work that results from their focus and concentration. Just as kids need to be complimented and to feel a strong sense of independence and uniqueness, so do adults—especially in corporate or business settings. Remember, it is in these settings that we can feel invisible because we’re surrounded by peers who share similar qualities and levels of competence. Breaking away from the pack and standing out becomes all the more challenging. Yet when you help members
of your team do just that, it will go a long way toward motivating them while stimulating their loyalty and generating their best efforts.

Q:
In addition to your Web site and the sites you mentioned in the book, what other Web sites are good for math resources, games, and other mental challenges?

A:
In the following sections are a few you might find useful.

Lumosity is one of the most developed Web sites for mental fitness and brain training. A lot of money has clearly been put into the site, which means your experience is great. The games are fun and interesting. There is a free seven-day trial, if you want to give it a try.

This Web site has over one hundred original mind games, puzzles, and other brain exercises. Spend some time surfing here to find games that appeal to you and to see the full range of ways to exercise your brain.

Happy Neuron is a Web site with games and activities divided into five critical brain areas: memory, attention, language, executive functions, and visual/spatial. The Web site
costs $9.95 a month and has a free trial offer so that you can see if you like the approach.

The online Brain Gym costs $9.95 for three months. It is full of games, puzzles, and other challenges to improve your mental fitness. The Web site recommends ten minutes of brain training twice a day for the best effects. The Web site also has a twenty-one-day basic training program that claims to improve your mental speed.

Queendom is a completely addictive and free Web site that has thousands of personality tests and surveys. Queendom also has an extensive collection of “brain tools” for you to use in exercising and testing your brain.

Founded in 2004, BrainBuilder offers cognitive exercises, an online “trainer,” tracking of your brain progress, and baseline testing to provide comprehensive brain training. The fee is $7.95 per month, with a free seven-day trial offer available.

Visit Braingle for tons of user-submitted tricks and tools for a bunch of cool concepts. You can also learn more about cryptography, probability, and optical illusions.

I go to this site every day. It’s a great place for a variety of word games and other mental challenges. I love the Daily
Dose, a word-based quiz that changes every day. You can also keep track of your scores and invite your friends to challenge you.

I know that some of us just can’t get enough of brainteasers, puzzles, games, riddles, and optical illusions, and the people at BrainBashers seem to also know this. Check it out.

You get what you’d expect on this site: a boatload of puzzles to try.

For a jigsaw puzzler’s paradise, go here. Anyone who needs more help in pattern awareness would do well to check out this site.

Puzzle Baron comprises a family of sites filled with challenging exercises and games, including cryptograms, acrostics, and logic puzzles. The printable-puzzle site at
www.printable-puzzles.com
is where you can download print-quality, high-resolution PDF puzzles to solve the old-fashioned way, with pencil and paper.

Even though kids are this site’s target audience, any adult can find its brainteasers, puzzles, and riddles fun and engaging.

This site features an archive of “brain boosters” that you can solve.

If you’re looking for a place with a huge amount of math resources, this is a good place to start. MathWorld covers everything from the simplest to the most complicated subjects.

A great resource for learning and connecting with people for anything math related. Puzzles, mentoring, research—it’s all easy to find here.

You’ve been learning all along in this book that math can be fun, but if you need a reminder, the Math Is Fun Web site will help with that! It even includes a mathematics dictionary with more than five hundred definitions.

If you’re an adult, don’t be dissuaded by the “kids” factor. Coolmath 4 Kids is a really fun site that can help with all sorts of math concepts, whatever your age. If you need some math flash cards or want to learn some new games or methods of division, I encourage you to check this out.

Go to this site to read a great history of mathematics, as well as some info on famous mathematicians. For even more fun, there are some entertaining games to play, too.

At Cut the Knot, you will find hundreds of Web-based programs to explain many different mathematical concepts—from algebra to calculus and beyond, you won’t run out of things to learn here!

Again, don’t be put off by the “SuperKids” in the name if you’re looking to improve your math skills, as this site appeals to everyone. You really couldn’t ask for a more useful Web site than this worksheet creator. As you have learned, the best way to learn new math concepts is through repeated practice. Here you can make customized worksheets and answer sheets for averages, fractions, and much more.

Plus Tricks to Amaze Your Family and Friends

This appendix is meant to supplement all the chapters in the book and provide additional exercises that will reinforce the six essential skills. These exercises aim to work your brain in ways that maximize its fullest potential while making the process entertaining and engaging.

Whether you’re playing with a nine-year-old or a ninety-nine-year-old, the goal is to extinguish any anxieties you may still have about math—and learning in general—and to increase your chances of success in all that you do. I’ll start with fun games for everyone, and then I’ll mention a few games that specifically help kids empower their minds so
they have the greatest chance to succeed academically. Note, however, that kids aren’t the only ones who can play these super-kid-friendly games. You might find these tricks enjoyable to try out yourself on friends and family at your next social gathering. They’ll leave you feeling like the smartest person in the room.

This game is best for just two players. The object is to outwit your opponent by thinking two or three steps ahead. Here’s your chance to put all your spelling, vocabulary, and organizational skills to good use. It gets easier the more you play, so give it a try.

Player 1 thinks of a word that he keeps to himself. He then tells player 2 the first letter of that word. Player 2 now thinks of a word starting with that letter and then tells player 1 what the second letter in that word is. It’s then player 1’s job to think of a word starting with those two letters. He then tells player 2 the third letter of this new word. Once a word is four letters long and a player says a letter that forms this into a full word, that player loses and has to record a G. The first person to do this five times and record G-H-O-S-T is the loser.

Here’s how to challenge and outwit your opponent. If you say a letter and your opponent thinks that he can’t use this letter to think of a word, he’s allowed to challenge. If
you then can’t think of a word, you get a G. If you can, your challenger loses and gets the G. Let’s take an example: