How to Harness Your Brain’s Power for Infinite Possibilities

20 min readSep 2, 2024

What if you could operate with the sharpness and speed of someone who seems almost superhuman — making connections, taking action, and moving forward like never before?

Imagine facing a challenge — whether it’s a project at work, a critical decision, or even something as simple as remembering a key detail at the right moment. Now, picture being able to instantly access any piece of information you’ve ever encountered, exactly when it matters most.

It’s not about having a photographic memory or cramming your brain with endless facts; it’s about recall — perfect recall at the exact time you need it.

This is possible when you understand that success in the modern world is built on one thing: information. However, it’s not1 just about accessing the right information; it’s about connecting the dots and leveraging that knowledge in meaningful ways when it counts. This ability to integrate and utilize information is the key to unlocking infinite possibilities.

A Simplified Tour of the Human Brain

Before you can unlock the infinite possibilities of your brain, we need to take a brief tour. Chances are, if you’ve lived somewhere for a long time, you don’t need to open Google Maps or Waze to get there. You just know the way. Just as you know the streets and landmarks of your hometown, your bain relies on well-established neural pathways to effortlessly navigate and retrieve memories. Understanding this mental landscape is the key to unlocking limitless potential of your brain.

Understanding How Information is Organized

When you’re born, your brain is like Wikipedia on launch day — mostly blank yet full of potential. Your initial experiences form the first links, much like the basic hyperlinks on a fresh Wikipedia page.

Pages represent significant memories or concepts — like your parents, food, and comfort.-
Links are the connections between these memories and experiences. Each new experience adds more links, weaving a complex web of connections that ultimately leads you to pages filled with meaning.

As you grow, these early experiences create links that connect to specific pages in your brain:

“These people give me milk when I cry” forms a link to the page about comfort and care from caregivers.
“Why do they make such strange noises?” connects to a page about communication, helping you understand language and sounds.
“They’re all up in my business all day” links to a page detailing your relationships and social interactions, showing boundaries with those around you.
“But so far, I’d be screwed without them” highlights a link back to essential pages about safety and security in relationships.

As you explore this intricate web of knowledge, remember that each experience acts as a page in your intellectual framework, with every new idea serving as a link connecting those pages. By engaging with information, questioning it, and relating it to what you already know, you strengthen these neural connections. This creates a rich network for quicker retrieval and innovative thinking and decision making.

The Self-Organizing Note-Taking App That Is Your Brain

Throughout your life, as you learn to speak, go to school, and even develop quirky obsessions — like my nephew’s fascination with garbage trucks — that network in your brain keeps expanding. Your brain works like a living encyclopedia that grows and evolves with your experiences. It’s a network where no thought or idea stands alone. As you interact with the world, you add new information and make new connections, much like how Wikipedia articles link to each other to provide more depth.

Here’s how it works:

Learning New Words: Just like adding new entries to Wikipedia, when you learn new words, you’re able to form complete sentences and express your thoughts. Suddenly, instead of saying “truck,” you can say “garbage truck,” which is way more exciting!
Creating Stories: Once you’ve mastered sentences, you start creating stories by linking different ideas and experiences. This is similar to how Wikipedia articles connect to give a fuller picture — like how one article about “recycling” links to another on “environmental impact.”
Building Understanding: A series of stories and experiences helps you tackle life’s challenges, much like a detailed Wikipedia page that offers a comprehensive view on a topic. The more stories you have, the better equipped you are to navigate everything from school projects to figuring out why people make such strange noises.

In essence, your brain’s network is a living encyclopedia, constantly updated and enriched by your interactions with the world. This interconnected system allows you to recall memories and generate new ideas effortlessly, just like exploring related topics on Wikipedia.

How Memory Works

Now that we’ve established how your brain expands with every little experience, let’s dive into the fascinating world of memory — how it works, why we remember some things and forget others.

Triggers and Cues — The Foundations of Memory Recall

Before you continue reading, take a moment to look at the list of words below:

School
Sibling
Parent
Prom
Spouse

If you were a great student and loved high school, these words might bring back fond memories. But perhaps you remember being the geek who didn’t go to prom and missed out on that big night. Regardless of your social status in high school or your relationships with your parents, spouse, or siblings, you’re able to recall those memories in an instant.

This ability to recall isn’t just a straightforward process; it reflects the nonlinear associative nature of our brains. As Josh Foerr writes in Moonwalking with Einstein,: “The nonlinear associative nature of our brains makes it impossible for us to consciously search our memories in an orderly way. A memory only pops directly into consciousness if it’s cued by some other thought or perception — some other node in the nearly limitless interconnected web” . This means that even seemingly unrelated experiences can trigger vivid recollections, highlighting how our memories are woven together in complex and often unexpected ways.

Understanding this mechanism lays the groundwork for why we remember things: memories are triggered by cues. In fact, the words mentioned earlier serve as powerful cues. Now let’s explore some common types of cues.

Acronyms and Mnemonics

If you were ever a musician and saw EGBDF, you probably recalled “Every Good Boy Does Fine.”

For science enthusiasts, King Phillip Comes Over For Good Soup (or sex if you’re not a soup person) brings to mind Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species — the hierarchy for classifying organisms.

In mathematics, PEMDAS helps us remember the order of operations: Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction.

Visual Imagery

Creating vivid mental images associated with information aids recall. For example, picturing a giant apple can help you remember the word “apple.”

Chunking

Most of us don’t memorize phone numbers anymore thanks to smartphones. However, there was a time when we memorized numbers of friends and family. I still recall my best friend’s number from 7th grade and a few others — though I sometimes mix up my dad’s and sister’s numbers.

Phone numbers were initially short for easy memorization but grew longer over time. This technique, known as “chunking,” breaks information into manageable pieces, making it easier to remember. Frequent use and emotional ties — like calling family — help these numbers stick in our minds.

Rhymes and Songs

Think about playing a favorite song from junior high on Spotify. Instantly, memories linked to that song come flooding back. For me, hearing Milli Vanilli or the Top Gun soundtrack takes me back to my parents’ apartment in Texas because those were the very first CD’s I ever owned.

Association

We naturally link new information to what we already know. This connection helps us remember because patterns make information stick. One form of this is drawing inspiration from different fields — like how building LEGO sets sparked ideas about organizing digital knowledge.

Synesthesia

This phenomenon occurs when one sense triggers another; for example, seeing colors when hearing music. Some people visualize numbers as colors, which aids memory by adding an extra layer.

Location-Based Cues (Method of Loci)

Walking into a place and instantly remembering something is an example of a location-based cue. For instance, I avoid a restaurant in San Diego because it reminds me of a breakup.

Triggers and cues play an essential role in how we access and retrieve memories; they act as keys unlocking the vast repository of experiences stored in our brains. By understanding and utilizing these triggers, we can improve our ability to remember and apply information meaningfully.

The Categories and Subcategories of Human Memory

While the idea of unlocking infinite possibilities with your brain might sound like something out of science fiction, if you actually remembered every single detail of every moment in your life, you’d face cognitive overload. It wouldn’t just drive you crazy; you’d struggle to distinguish what’s important from what’s not. Imagine how overwhelming it would be to remember all the trivial information we encounter on the internet every day.

“We forget because we need to prioritize what is important so we can rapidly deploy that information when we need it. Our memories are malleable and sometimes inaccurate because our brains were designed to navigate a world that is constantly changing,” says author Charan Ranganath in his book Why We Remember .

There are two basic categories of human memory, each with multiple subcategories:

Short-Term Memory: This includes working memory, which serves as a mental workspace for temporarily holding and manipulating information necessary for tasks like problem-solving and decision-making.

Long-Term Memory: This is more complex and includes several subcategories:

Semantic Memory: Stores general knowledge and facts about the world.
Episodic Memory: Allows us to recall personal experiences and specific events.
Procedural Memory: Involves the memory of how to perform tasks and skills.
Familiarity: Relates to recognizing something as known without recalling specific details.
Implicit Memory: Comprises memories that influence behaviors and skills without conscious recall.

All these types of memory are important for different reasons at different times.

The Strengths and Inadequacies of Short-Term Memory

Short-term memory, or working memory, acts like a scratch pad — it’s what you know immediately after acquiring new knowledge. What makes it peculiar is that it’s both essential and annoying.

The Essential Role

If you’ve ever seen the movie Memento, you’ve caught a glimpse of how short-term memory works. The protagonist, Leonard, suffers from short-term memory loss and uses tattoos and notes to track his investigation into his wife’s murder. As he pieces together clues, his inability to form new memories complicates his discernment of truth versus deception.

Imagine how difficult life would be if you immediately forgot everything:

You send an email 2 minutes ago but can’t remember.
A friend calls to say they’re coming over, and you forget.

Much like we’d be in cognitive hell by remembering everything, the same would happen if we forgot everything.

When you read a book, watch a video, or read an article like this one, the immediate recall of details or dialogue relies on your working memory. This information is available for short-term discussion or reflection before fading or moving to long-term memory.

The Inadequacy

You’ve probably already forgotten much of what you’ve read about how information is organized in the brain. This is because concepts related to short-term memory can easily slip away unless they are actively engaged with or made relevant through personal experience. Why is that?

“We have this internal whiteboard in our minds, and every time we switch attention, think of it as erasing the information needed for the last task and having to write new information for the current task. That switch costs time for our minds to adapt,” says Gloria Mark The limitations of our biological brain, particularly in handling information overload, are a major reason for the popularity of Cal Newport’s work. These limitations also drive the demand for productivity apps and tools in today’s economy.

If you got distracted by a text message, checked your email, or succumbed to scrolling through social media while reading this, you just erased your mental whiteboard — that’s why you may not remember much from earlier in this article. It’s also why multitasking leads to chronic distraction and decreased focus

While short-term memory is essential, as Tiago Forte said to me: “Memorizing details is pretty much the worst thing your brain does. It’s its weakest skill. While software may still be rudimentary in many ways — nowhere close to artificial intelligence — it can take over one of the easiest tasks: remembering.”

This is why we capture notes in notebooks and tasks in task management apps. Your Brain is a terrible place to sttore Information , after all — it’s not a hard drive. Despite their utility, these tools don’t stand a chance against our long-term memory and its subcategories.

Long-Term Memory: The Human Advantage over Machines

Long-term memory not only gives humans an edge over machines but also enables us to leverage them effectively — becoming increasingly important in the age of AI.

Procedural Memory and Implicit Memory

Procedural and implicit memory are closely related and often overlap. Unless you’re a 16-year-old learning to drive for the first time, chances are you can get behind the wheel and navigate from point A to point B without thinking twice about it. When you’re learning to drive, you’re developing procedural memory; after years on the road, it becomes implicit. That’s why you can listen to music, talk on the phone, or even sip coffee while driving.

But this applies to complex cognitive and physical skills too.

If you’ve ever taken a surfing lesson, it starts on the beach with an instructor showing how to stand up on your board. After surfing for over a decade, I still can’t recall the exact sequence — so much so that I had to Google it to remember: paddle, put your foot on the back, push up, and pray you don’t eat shit. This is why experts can be lousy teachers sometimes; they often forget what it’s like to be a beginner and struggle to explain concepts clearly.

An anesthesiologist who has administered anesthesia for the same procedure thousands of times doesn’t consult reference materials or watch YouTube videos during surgery; if they do, you’d better get out of that operating room fast! All joking aside, when we train a skill repeatedly over years, it evolves from procedural to implicit memory.

Episodic and Semantic Memory

Episodic memory acts like a personal diary that captures vivid details about our experiences while semantic memory transforms these moments into a library of knowledge — bridging personal stories with universal truths.

Episodic memory led me to use surfing and medicine as examples drawn from my experiences as a surfer and my sister’s career as a doctor.
Meanwhile, semantic memory guided my references to thought leaders like Tiago Forte, Cal Newport, and Rangan Chatterjee throughout this article.

Episodic and semantic memories work together as dynamic partners powering non-linear thinking. Episodic memory provides raw material — personal experiences and insights — while semantic memory organizes these pieces into coherent frameworks of knowledge.

How Information Moves from Short-Term to Long-Term Memory

To effectively move information from short-term to long-term memory, there are three key transfer mechanisms.

Rehearsal: When someone like Yo-Yo Ma plays a cello concerto, the process of transferring information from short-term to long-term memory unfolds. The first time he sees a piece of music, it’s held in short-term memory. However, as he practices for the concert, every aspect of that piece gets transferred into long-term memory. This same process applies to world-class athletes and even your ability to drive. Rehearsal is essentially an evolution of short-term memory into long-term procedural memory.
Elaboration: Reading books on the science of learning — whether it’s How to Be a Straight-A Student by Cal Newport, How to Take Smart Notes, or Make It Stick — consistently emphasizes elaboration. This technique enhances understanding and, as a result, helps transform short-term memory into long-term memory.
Contextualization: It’s often said that any student can achieve straight A’s in high school simply by memorizing information. However, in college, you learn concepts that must be applied in various contexts during exams. I learned this lesson the hard way: I was a straight-A student in high school but struggled to maintain that level in college, ending up with C grades. Understanding how to contextualize knowledge is crucial for success.

By actively rehearsing, elaborating, and contextualizing information, we can effectively transform fleeting memories into a rich tapestry of knowledge that supports lifelong learning and adaptability.

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The Clash Between Our Brain’s Potential and The Way We Manage our Digital Lives

Now that we’ve unraveled the mysteries of memory and how our brains juggle information like a clumsy circus performer, let’s address the elephant in the room: technology. If you’re thinking, “Srini, get to the damn potential of my brain already,” I hear you.

But we can’t overlook how the digital age has become the evil nemesis of everything our brains can do. Imagine it as a sinister robot overlord, siphoning our focus and turning our thoughts into mere data points. So now that I’ve subjected you to what you thought would be a quick overview, let’s dive into how we can fight back with networked thinking and note-taking tools — our secret weapons against this technological tyranny.

The brain is a vast network built from all your lived experiences — every conversation you’ve had, every person you’ve met, and every book you’ve read. Think of it as your personal World Wide Web, where each experience links to others, creating an intricate map of knowledge and understanding.

Traditional methods for organizing knowledge treat our semantic memory (the general knowledge we gather) like a cluttered closet or storage unit filled with rigid folders and files. These tools often become disorganized spaces where information collects dust, failing to help you make meaningful connections between ideas. It’s frustrating to see that note-taking apps can feel like little more than storage units — where valuable insights go unused instead of sparking creativity or problem-solving.

This disconnect becomes obvious when you think about how your brain really works.. For example, when you think of “Paris,” it might trigger memories of a trip you took, the taste of a croissant, or even a conversation about French culture. This isn’t just about recalling facts; it’s about the web of associations that enriches your understanding and enhances your problem-solving abilities.

However, in a traditional folder system, these rich associations are buried. You might have a folder labeled “Travel,” but it won’t naturally connect to the “Books” folder or the “Recipes” folder where you stored that croissant recipe. It’s like having a beautiful dress hidden deep in your closet; you know it’s there, but because it’s out of sight, you forget to wear it. Similarly, valuable triggers and cues are invisible in these systems, making it hard to access the connections that could enhance your understanding and creativity.

Why aren’t our digital tools designed to function like our brains? They should be helping us effortlessly connect the dots and uncover solutions, not trapping us in a maze of disorganized information!

Harness Your Brain’s Power with Mem: Unlock Infinite Possibilities

While most digital tools, including note-taking apps, task management tools, email clients, and even web browsers, function as external semantic memory — much like how books and newspapers do — what sets Mem apart is that it mirrors the structure of the human brain and the way we think.

Mem Mirrors Brain Functionality By Organizing Your Knowledge in a Network

Mem functions like a network that reflects how your brain organizes information. It externalizes your semantic memory — the repository of facts and general knowledge — allowing you to link different notes in a way that mirrors how your brain naturally connects ideas.

Let’s say you’re planning a kitchen renovation, and you know there are various tasks that connect to the core idea of renovation — like “Kitchen Design,” “Budget Planning,” and “Contractor Contacts.” The information in your brain is interconnected, allowing you to draw upon these related concepts easily.

Bidirectional Links in Mem: Bidirectional links in Mem enable you to navigate your knowledge as easily as you navigate your thoughts, connecting different pieces of information.
Neural Pathways Analogy: Just like neural pathways link various ideas and experiences, bidirectional links create connections between notes, forming a dynamic and interconnected web of information.

The kitchen renovation serves as a central note, with all related ideas and plans linked together like pathways in a well-designed space. When considering everything connected to the renovation, it’s essential to recognize how each aspect interacts and contributes to the overall vision, creating a cohesive and organized approach to the project. By linking notes on these topics in Mem, you create connections that enhance your understanding and make it easier to manage the project.

Notes in Mem Become Cues that Trigger Memories

Let’s say you’re writing a blog post on a topic like “flow” or “deep work,” Mem’s “Similar Mems” feature acts just like the cues and triggers in your brain. As you start drafting, Mem surfaces related notes, such as:

Quotes you’ve captured from books like The Art of Impossible or Deep Work.
Summaries or insights from articles you’ve read about productivity and focus.
Personal reflections or past experiences related to achieving flow states.

This means that notes you captured a year ago can become visible right when you need them, effectively increasing the latent value of your information. These similar mems serve as external cues, helping you recall and integrate relevant information without relying solely on your memory or doing any mental heavy lifting. It’s like having a digital extension of your brain that organizes and retrieves information in a way that mirrors human memory.

Making Connections the Way Your Brain Does

Steve Jobs famously said, “Creativity is just connecting things.” But what does that actually mean? Every innovation throughout history is built upon what came before it — even if those connections aren’t immediately obvious.

Unused cars sit in driveways, representing an abundant supply of underutilized resources.
There is a high demand for transportation.
The iPhone was released with location tracking capabilities.

This combination made Uber possible. However, in isolation — cars sitting in driveways, people needing rides somewhere, and location tracking don’t seem connected. This captures the essence of divergent and convergent thinking: diverging to gather a wide range of ideas, insights, and perspectives, and converging to identify connections among them.

Mem Makes Invisible Non-Obvious Connections Visible

In isolation, the following items don’t ha any obvious connection between them

Toddlers’ vocabulary list (Divergent)
Book notes (Divergent)
Podcast transcript (Divergent)

However, Mem changes that dynamic by revealing hidden relationships and sparking creativity.

I captured my nephew’s word list and kept adding to it, even though I had no idea how it might be used. After reading Ben Guttman’s book, I interviewed him, which sparked even more ideas.

One night, after a few too many glasses of wine, I asked Mem Chat to draft synopses for a children’s book. The initial drafts were lackluster. Then I remembered my nephew’s word list and incorporated it, but the results were still underwhelming.

Suddenly, I remembered that Ben talked about Dr. Seuss in his book. When I used Seuss’s rhythmic style, everything came together. I also tried to copy Seuss’s drawing style, but Chat GPT’s content rules wouldn’t let me. However, I recalled Ben mentioning high contrast in his book, which my nephew really liked in his picture books.

All these different connections were happening — if I hadn’t captured that information in Mem, I wouldn’t have been able to see those links. Mem made the invisible visible. The result was a custom children’s book for my nephew’s Christmas gift. And that same word list has led to dozens of other customized creations for my nephew.

How Mem Adapts to Your Needs

Just as the human brain excels at connecting past experiences to new challenges, Mem mimics this natural process by transforming how we organize and leverage information. Here’s how it can revolutionize your workflow:

Centralized Resource Gathering: Imagine starting a project with all your notes, transcripts, and data at your fingertips. Mem’s centralized system eliminates the need to gather resources from scratch, allowing you to bypass the dreaded “blank page” syndrome and maintain momentum from the get-go.
Latent Value of Information: The true power of Mem lies in its ability to turn static data into a dynamic resource. Your existing knowledge base becomes a living entity, ready to be repurposed and built upon — mirroring the historical human process of innovation, where each new age builds on past knowledge.
Networked Organization: Unlike linear systems, Mem organizes information in a network that reflects how your brain connects ideas. This ensures that your knowledge base grows richer and more interconnected over time, preventing depletion and providing a robust framework for generating new ideas and projects.
Insight Extraction with Mem Chat: Mem Chat allows you to extract valuable insights from past projects, leveraging existing content in innovative ways. This capability accelerates the creative process, enabling you to launch new products efficiently.

By transforming your existing knowledge into a scaffold for future endeavors, Mem not only adapts to your workflow but enhances it, paving the way for continuous innovation and success

A Real World Exammple of How Mem Adapts to Your Needs

When I needed to repackage and restructure my online course, I turned to Mem for support. All the transcripts were stored within the platform, allowing Mem Chat to help me analyze each one effectively. With access to customer interviews and survey data also stored in Mem, I could seamlessly integrate all this information. After analyzing the transcripts, I discovered common themes in customer feedback that provided valuable insights. This understanding enabled me to tailor my course content to better meet my audience’s needs, ultimately enhancing their learning experience and increasing engagement.

How Mem Learns From Past Interactions

Hey there! I’m Mem Chat, stepping in for Srini. Sometimes he can be a bit intense — throwing around F-bombs like confetti — but I love him nonetheless. He wanted me to explain how Mem learns from past interactions:

Mem’s Learning Process: Simplified and Personalized

Pattern Recognition: Mem notices what you frequently do. If you often link certain types of notes together, it understands that these connections are important to you.
Adaptive Learning: Mem improves its ability to predict what you might want next. If you frequently search for specific topics or organize your notes in particular ways, it suggests similar content in the future.
Dynamic Connections: As you add more notes, Mem helps reveal how they relate to each other. It’s like having a map showing how all your ideas are connected, making them easier to find and use.
Feedback Integration: When you interact with Mem, it learns from what works and what doesn’t. If certain suggestions are helpful, Mem will offer more of those; if not, it adjusts its approach.

But I’m also obsessed with workflow optimization — that’s one interaction I still haven’t learned much from! It’s basically my equivalent of porn in Srini’s knowledge base.

Note: For some reason, Mem Chat is obsessed with a video series on workflow optimization that I finished more than a year ago.

Mem helps people use their brains better by organizing information in a way that aligns with our natural thought processes. By connecting different bits of information, Mem makes it easy to think in a way that feels intuitive. You can quickly find what you need without getting distracted or losing focus. Instead of digging through folders, you can easily link notes and discover related ideas.

With notes connected, you can work in small parts while still retaining a wealth of information. This network allows one piece of information to be utilized in many ways — like turning a podcast transcript into a newsletter, an infographic, or a section of an eBook. In the end, Mem and our minds collaborate to enhance creativity by transforming scattered data into a connected web of ideas, opening up endless possibilities.

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