Moonwalking with Einstein

Welcome to my Moonwalking with Einstein book summary!

One-Sentence-Summary: Part memoir, part investigative journalism, Moonwalking with Einstein follows the author’s journey to becoming a USA memory champion, lightly sprinkled with memory tips and techniques.

I’ve finished reading Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer.

booboo real-time book rating: ★★★★★ (percentage of books with this rating: 6%)

“..schools go about teaching all wrong. They pour vast amounts of information into students’ heads, but don’t teach them how to retain it.” (p. 11) Why wasn’t I taught, even by one teacher, how to memorize? They required memorization, but didn’t teach the real-world, valuable skill of how to memorize efficiently. That would be like asking someone to swim without instruction – we have the innate skill, but it takes much longer to learn without instruction and some go a lifetime without learning.

“Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it.” (p. 77) I will probably take this with me for life. Boredom makes time go slow, is the common phrase, but actually the opposite – having a lot of experiences – makes time go slow because of all the memories. Boredom, or being aimlessly busy, say at work, will make time go by fast, not in the moment, but when it’s too late because of a lack of experiences.

Three Stages of Expert

“The secret to improving at a skill is to retain some degree of conscious control over it while practicing – to force oneself to stay out of autopilot.” (p. 172)

Why don’t we get consistently better at typing, if we do it almost every day of our lives, for decades? Because of their “OK Plataeu” which says that once we get good enough, the skill goes to the back of our mind and we no longer focus on improving it. There are three stages that anyone goes through when trying to acquire a new skill:

1. Cognitive Stage – active focus on improving, by default
2. Associative Stage – less active focus, making less errors
3. Autonomous Stage – switching skill to autopilot (learning/improving stops)

I find this especially relevant given my language learning. I can speak Spanish well and fluidity in 75% of situations which I have deemed to be good enough. Only recently, have I been recoding the instances of when I’m not speaking fluently, later trying to reconstruct the proper way to say what I couldn’t in real time, and then cateogirzing them to understand the specific words or tenses that give me problems.

This blog will contain both my summary and review of the book Moonwalking with Einstein.

In Chapter 9, Foer discusses an interesting concept about the web of intelligence. The bigger the web, the more things it catches. While some look down on simply rote memorization of facts in the digital age, Foer argues it’s a necessary foundation to grow knowledge into something greater because you have more potential connections to retain information better.

As I read the book, you will find my in-progress Moonwalking with Einstein review and book summary notes below.

You are reading my book review and summary by Joshua Foer. Be sure to check out my digital bookshelf for 100+ book summaries.

Did you know I’m an author? I wrote four books on real estate investing, travel, and language learning.

“..normal is not necessarily natural.” (p. 12)

The Major System – Book Highlight

Days, or even the same day, I was thinking it would be a cool pickup trick to be able to memorize a phone number on the spot. Then I read, this system phoneticizes numbers, making them easier to remember.

0	1	2	3	4
s/z	t/d	n	m	r

5	6	7	8	9
l	j/ch/sh	k/g	f/v	p/b

Turn each 2-pair of numbers into words using the consonants above, then into an image. Most numbers have 10 digits, do you’ll have to create 10 images.

For more complex memory systems, you’d want to use PAO or “person-action-object”.

The Doomsday Rule

How to calculate day of the week for any date

Step 1: Anchor day for the century:

2000 – Tuesday

1900 – Wednesday

Step 2: Divide last two digits of year by 12 (ie 2022 is 22/12 = 1), divide remainder by 4 (ie 10/4 = 2), add all three (ie 1 + 10 + 2 = 13)

Step 3: Add century anchor to step 2 (ie 2+13 = 15), divide that by 7 (ie 15/7 = 2) and match the remainder (ie 1) to a weekday for the doomsday of that year (ie Monday for 2022)

Sunday = 0

Monday = 1

Saturday = 6

Step 4: Use doomsday date for month taking into consideration leap-years

Jan 3 (leap year = 4)

Feb 28 (leap year = 29)

Mar 14

Apr 4

May 9

Jun 6

Jul 11

Aug 8

Sep 5

Oct 10

Nov 7

Dec 12

So February 28, 2022 is a Monday, now count back to February 22 which is a Tuesday

Note: You can easily calculate a leap year by dividing the year by 4 (22/4 = not a whole number), except if it’s also divisible by 100 (1800, 1900) unless it’s also divisible by 400 (1600, 2000, 2400)

My Criticism

I wish the author provided more actionable advice. I bought the book to improve my memory, and it delivered and sufficiently. I’m happy with my purchase. But, I’d prefer if it were more structured like The Game by Neil Strauss, being full of tips and tricks and techniques.

For example, Foer says you can calculate any calendar day of the week with only about an hour of practice, but doesn’t go further into it, leaving the reader to search. I believe he’s referring to the Doomsday Algorithm, and it is incredibly simple!

New Words!

ebullient (adj) – cheerful and full of energy (his children were always so ebullient no wonder they’re child stars!)

erudite (adj) – having great knowledge or learning (She gave such an erudite explanation of the theory that even the professors were impressed.)

apocryphal (adj) – doubtful, but circulated a true (the media today specializes in apocryphal journalism.)

aesthete (n) – a person who has, or expresses to have a special appreciation on art and beauty (The old man was an authentic aesthete on all things architectural.)

apiarist (n) – a place where bees are kept – I wanted to set up an apiary on my rooftop in San Francisco.

chagrin (n) – the feeling at having failed or been embarrassed – The confidence in his heart, to his chagin, has disappeared as soon as he was standing in front of a woman in public.

bard (n) – a poet, reciting, a historical term (He was the monotone bard everyone dreaded to experience.

humbuggery (n) – deceptive or false talk or behavior – His confident humbuggery in all things dating was only known to his family.

duffer (n) – incompetent or stupid person, especially an elderly person with a specific activity – As much as it pained their family, she became a duffer at water skiing, her favorite activity, in her final decade.

vanguard (n) – a group of people leading the way in new developments or ideas – Those boys constantly improved at picking up women in college; they were true vanguards of charm.

loquacious ( adj) – talkative – She was the most loquacious of the group, having enough words for the whole family.

Thanks for visiting and thanks to Joshua Foer for writing Moonwalking with Einstein!

Date Started: Thursday, April 17, 2025

Date Finished: April, 2025 (~10 days)