How can I remember things better? How can I get other people to remember what I say?
- To remember something, you must pay attention to it.
- People pay attention to things that affect their internal model of the world -- that answer some kind of question about the world. (see previous blog entries on surprise and attention) (I suspect people have less direct control over their attention than they would like to think.)
- Therefore, to remember something, you should have some kind of question in mind that it answers. Some existing model for which you want to estimate parameters. Which can be anything at all, even something trivial.
Corollary: To give a memorable presentation, you should begin by posing some questions that your material will answer. Is this the essence of storytelling?