The Power of Forgetting (9 page)

So how exactly is perceptual learning relevant to my ideas and exercises? The two are kissing cousins. The ability to take untraditional shortcuts in math, see equations and words in a whole new light, and generally manipulate and capitalize on pattern recognition in the ways I’m describing in this book is the very stuff of perceptual intuition. What I love about this concept is that it celebrates the art of guessing from an intuitive side of ourselves that we rarely tap but that can be incredibly resourceful when we nourish and utilize it. Said another way, perceptual learning pushes you to get creative where you never had permission to get creative before, and it turns tradition on its head. It forces you to cast aside
—forget
—facts and data in favor of pure intuition. With perceptual learning, the door is wide open for breaking old rules and discovering new ones that will work for you just as well—or even better. When it comes to memory strategies, you have to find what works for you and stick with that. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. And this is
the soul of grooming the brain of a productive thinker who can become more effective by creating brain shortcuts that free up mental space.

Perceptual learning also helps to address one of the most widespread problems I see in people, adults and students alike: the “I give up” syndrome. All too often I watch individuals try to solve problems by doing only what they’ve always been told to do, and if that doesn’t work they give up. They get stuck and refuse to think of other ways—kind of like hitting a wall in a maze and stopping right there rather than trying a different route. They also tune out their own inner gut instinct, which can be incredibly helpful and valuable. But with exercises and lessons based in perceptual learning, you’re forced to try what makes sense to you and, if that doesn’t work, to keep trying. You’re compelled to seek another way out, another path to the answer.

Again, the brain is very good at sorting out patterns if you give it the chance and the right feedback. Sometimes it helps to remind yourself that the solution isn’t always the first thing you think of.

So not only could there be multiple ways to solve a problem, but it may take time to find the best one that works for you. And in that regard, patience and determination become essential.

The actual science behind perceptual learning is quite stunning. Extensive research has demonstrated that, with practice, neurons in certain areas of the brain specialize to identify these signature patterns. And finding such patterns frees up mental resources for deductive reasoning, which can then be used to check answers or to move on to harder problems. Is this another way of saying that perceptual intuition
is a new form of “cheating”? Not really. While it’s true that creating brain shortcuts is like developing useful “cheats,” they ultimately free up mental space, allowing you to reach a destination sooner. In other words, they let you tap the power of forgetting. Anything that enables you to forget the long road and take an effortless shortcut to a solution is a valuable tool in becoming an efficient thinker. Which is exactly why perceptual learning can be such an innovative, effective way of approaching problems and can outpace traditional problem-solving methods.

It’s what a lot of highly successful people do, probably without even realizing it. Do professional basketball players really think through their steals and layups? Do doctors mentally thumb through their medical files and old textbooks when they diagnose a patient’s illness? Do singers, actors, dramatists, and public speakers have to focus intently on every single word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph they utter to get through their song, act, or speech? No, they don’t.

They forget all that previously recorded data rely instead on their intuition, which of course is developed over time and entails practice. To use an analogy I mentioned before, perceptual learning is like speaking a language intuitively. Anyone who has mastered a second language knows what it’s like to go from thinking through every sentence and grammatical rule to letting the tongue just rattle off whole paragraphs in another language. At some point the brain takes off and knows how to navigate on its own. It hits cruise control, forgetting the nitty-gritty details. That’s the power of intuition, which is also among the most underappreciated and underdeveloped skills in the learning sphere.

Perceptual training goes far beyond adding a layer of
practical context to abstract principles. It also prepares us to apply such principles in other situations, an ability known as transfer. This happens all the time when we’re not even aware of it but can gain a huge advantage from increasing our ability to literally transfer knowledge—even if it’s just a perception—from one subject area to another. You can, for instance, transfer a knack for cooking to a talent for improvising in a creative session at work during which you’re ill prepared and asked on the spot to offer ideas. Or you may find yourself transferring an innate skill in understanding esoteric financial data to an ability to give practical advice to amateur investors who need your help in picking stocks. Indeed, most of today’s entrepreneurs and business professionals owe their success to perceptual learning in some area. Their ability to leverage that skill through valuable products and services that others need is key.

Although it’s argued that we don’t know the best way to provide training in perceptual learning, I disagree. The six skills you’re about to hone in these next chapters are not labeled “perceptual learning skills” per se, but I believe that if you practice them you’ll simultaneously be developing your capacity to establish habits that reinforce perception and pattern recognition.

If you can make a habit of noticing and perceiving patterns everywhere you look and even in how you think, your success rate will be all the better for it. And for those of you who worry that you don’t have the eye to identify patterns, try the following exercise. Pick two people you interact with on a regular basis and allocate some mental energy over the next week to pinpointing specific patterns in those individuals. These patterns can be anything—from what they wear
to how they comb their hair, which foods they typically eat, how they walk, their habits, and so on. Make it a goal to come up with at least three patterns in each person, and if possible, find an additional two that are on the “unusual” side, such as your friend always twirling her hair in her fingers when she’s bored or nervous or your brother routinely saying, “I’ll let you go,” when he’s trying to end a conversation and hang up the phone. Maybe you’ve got a boss who leaves the office at precisely 5:20 most days but for some reason leaves at 5:45 on Thursdays.

People’s behaviors are often a great starting point for noticing patterns in everyday life. We all communicate with other people on a daily basis, and being able to recognize and respect the patterns in our relationships is an essential first step toward having a constant awareness of and appreciation for all the patterns in our world, including those that are more subtle, obscure, irregular, and rare.

Once you’re more naturally inclined to discern patterns, you’ll soon find yourself picking out patterns that few others can see and that give you an advantage that will accelerate your success overall.

And that’s what patterns really provide: access to greater understanding and greater success … for those who take notice!

Now that your brain is primed with a new understanding for patterns and habits, it’s time to turn to the next part of the book, which will teach you to trust and tune your perceptual intuition using six important skills. This will ultimately help you develop the mental habits of a highly effective person. And as you can guess, one of these habits is all about forgetting on cue when necessary. Overall, the goal
of the these six essential skills is to unleash your brain’s full potential in ways that will help you to do the following:

That’s my ultimate wish for you. Now, with that possibility in mind, let’s turn to the heart of the matter.

Can You Focus on Your Concentration?

Focus and concentration are two separate skills, but they are uniquely tied together. For myself, I’ve come to define focus as the ability to stay in the moment—to remain on target and attentive to whatever is before you in that moment without getting distracted.

Concentration, on the other hand, encompasses the bigger picture; concentration is being able to look at what’s in front of you as a whole. When you’re driving an unfamiliar route to a new destination, for instance, concentration accomplishes the overall goal of getting you to your end location, but focusing gets you there without an accident. Focus is the point-by-point, stoplight-by-stoplight attention that
moves you along without incident. Although one can define focus and concentration separately, since for our purposes they are so inextricably interwoven, we’re going to deal with them together in this chapter. You need both to streamline your mental faculties. And you need to form habits that help you to employ focus and concentration at the right time to handle incoming information smartly.

Take a moment to think about the types of jobs that require high levels of focus and concentration for extended periods of time. Surgeon. Test pilot. Race car driver. Member of the special forces in the military. Champion chess player. People who go into these lines of work or who take up hobbies that demand intense precision and rigor must train their brains to achieve exceptional levels of concentration. They have to be able to combat potentially distracting threats in the form of interfering thoughts—ranging from annoying songs that are “stuck in your head” to recurrent reflections on personal stresses or family problems, and even positive thoughts that can bombard the brain unexpectedly like a kamikaze.

Unfortunately, just telling yourself not to think about incoming thoughts doesn’t always work so well (and science has actually proved that the attempt is usually futile). If something is preying on your mind, it’s not going to go away so easily.

Aside from being able to deal with intrusive thoughts that take your mind and eye away from the task at hand while you’re trying to focus and concentrate, there’s the other side of the coin to consider: being able to conjure focus and concentration at a moment’s notice and sustain them at a high level. Think about the last time you forced yourself to focus
or concentrate really hard. You were probably under pressure, maybe taking a test, maneuvering in traffic to avoid an accident, preparing for a presentation, or figuring out your next move in a game or an ongoing problem at work.

Sometimes we have to will ourselves to focus and concentrate, to virtually and silently chant,
Concentrate! Pay attention!
in our heads. In this regard, a certain level of self-control and willpower is involved in keeping your attention on a single thing.

I’ve known for a long time that my brain—and everyone else’s—uses a lot of energy when it’s fully engaged in solving a complex problem (or just trying to get me safely across a busy street). Thinking hard is mental exercise. So is navigating daily activities, from the mundane to the unanticipated things that must be taken care of at a moment’s notice. And when we’re tired, it’s difficult to stay focused on a single task for a long time and much easier to let intrusive thoughts steal precious mental energy and thwart our focus. For this very reason, learning how to preserve mental energy and habitually shun distractions has allowed me to “outfocus” most other people. But you, too, can master this skill and, in turn, achieve a level of willpower that makes prolonged focus and concentration virtually as instinctual as they are for me.