A well-known technique for remembering arbitrary items through visual association is the method of loci (also known as “the journey method”):

[...] In this technique the subject memorizes the layout of some building, or the arrangement of shops on a street, or any geographical entity which is composed of a number of discrete loci. When desiring to remember a set of items the subject literally ‘walks’ through these loci and commits an item to each one by forming an image between the item and any distinguishing feature of that locus. Retrieval of items is achieved by ‘walking’ through the loci, allowing the latter to activate the desired items. [...]

Even though the journey method is useful for remembering potentially long, ordered lists, I never really found much practical use for it in my everyday life. It’s a fun party game, but I think it takes too much preparation time to be useful in “real life” (probably only because I haven’t practiced it enough, but never mind that).

“To Do” Lists, Ideas, Thoughts and Random Notes

The canonical example of stuff we need to remember on a day-to-day basis is, of course, the (in)famous “to do” list. The list typically consists of an unordered collection of unrelated items with one or more actions associated with them. (Yeah, I know some people like to prioritize their “to do” list, but that’s usually just a symptom of the fact that they have too many items on it to begin with.) Another trait of the “to do” list is that its contents are highly volatile, typically changing from day to day, or even through the course of a single day. Also, once an item on the list is completed, remembering it typically no longer serves any purpose.

If you are a creative person you most likely also have other things you would like to remember, such as ideas, insights, decisions, random notes and other potentially interesting thoughts that may pop into your head during the day (or night). Of course, when possible, immediately persisting your thoughts is the best thing to do, but if that’s not an option, remembering them until you can is a good second.

Mental Notes

So, in order to remember everyday stuff like that, I came up with a very simple visualization technique I like to call “the mental cork board”. (I’m probably not the first person to come up with this technique, but I had never heard of it before, so I thought I would give it a try to see if it worked.) Here’s how it works:

In your mind, imagine an empty cork board hanging on a wall. As the board is initially empty, you can fill it up by pinning notes on to it, describing what you need to do or what you need to remember. For example, if you need to buy milk on your way home from work, imagine taking a physical paper note and writing down “buy milk” on it before you pin it up on the board. Need to fill gas on your car too? Write down “fill gas” on another note and stick it up there next to the first one. Now, as you drive off from work, you can easily recall the mental image of the cork board and read the notes that remind you to fill gas and buy milk on your way home.

If your visual memory is good (and if it isn’t, using this and similar techniques as exercises will hopefully improve it over time), you can add even more information to the notes by writing stuff on the back of them. Say that you needed to buy more than just milk in the grocery store. If so, you could write “buy groceries” on the note, then imagine flipping it around and writing out the shopping list on the back. Now, when you arrive at the store, simply imagine taking the note down from the board, flipping it around again and reading what’s written on the back.

Association with Physical Objects

If remembering text seems hard, don’t worry. You don’t have to limit the items to be paper notes or words. Why not hang other physical objects up there to remind you of whatever you need to do or remember? Say you need to deliver your car at the dealer’s for a service check. Just mentally hang your car keys on the board. Need to remember to pay a bill or post a letter? Pin it up there, and you will be reminded of it the next time you visualize the board in your mind. Need to remember a specific date, like someone’s birthday or an important event? Imagine a calendar hanging there and draw a red circle around the day. Need to buy oranges? Stick an orange up there. Whatever items will help you trigger the association and remember, put them up on the board.

Scaling Up

If you have a lot of stuff on your mind, the technique can also scale to include items of different topics. For example, you can keep separate mental boards for your personal and professional life or other projects you are involved in. When dealing with multiple boards it can be useful to distinguish them from each other by putting labels or signs above them, giving them different colors, or even putting them on different walls or in different rooms. Although it’s probably possible to extend this technique quite far, if you have so much stuff on your mind that you fill up more than three or four boards, I think it’s time to start writing things down…

Last week I read about Jeff Atwood having some database problems on his new site. Being a popular blogger, he soon had hundreds of comments, most of them telling him how elementary his problem was and how disappointed people were that someone of his skill and reputation did not know how to solve such a trivial task as avoiding database deadlocks. Luckily, one person was wise enough to provide a different view (quoting an earlier comment):

“It’s always a little disturbing to see a well-known coder ask a dumb question, but come on, database locks?”

Wrong. Dead wrong and incredibly dangerous. And egotistical. If I were interviewing you I would immediately flip the bozo bit and thank you for your time.

It’s impossible to know everything. The hallmark of a good programmer is not what they know but their ability to learn what they don’t. If you do not promote an environment where any question can be asked, no matter how naive and trivial, problems become intractable because people are too afraid to ask for help. Just because someone has been in the industry for a while doesn’t mean they know everything.

Chris on August 25, 2008 12:09 PM

As children, we ask “stupid” questions all the time, and (hopefully) nobody gets their head bitten off for doing so. We might laugh and smile, but after all, we expect children to ask about everything, as this is how they learn. But does this method of learning stop being valid once we grow up? I hope not.

I remember once sitting on a public city bus observing a small child asking her father if the buses were on teams. The father, somewhat baffled by the question, did not seem to know what to answer. After a pause of silence, his expression of surprise transformed to a smile, followed by a short “no”, while trying to hide his laughter. The question may have appeared silly to the father, but considering we were on a red bus and a yellow one had just passed us, it made perfect sense to me. Assuming the child was familiar with the tradition of sports teams wearing different colors, it seemed logical that she would infer this also to be valid for buses. The analogy of sports teams might seem strange applied to public transportation, but even though both the yellow and red buses were operated by the same company at the time, the green ones were not.

In my opinion, there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers. Never bite someone’s head off for asking a “stupid” question—it can be very destructive. In these situations I think it is best to follow the good advice of Marge Simpson’s mother. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Belittling someone by lecturing them on how trivial their question is, or how what they are asking about is something they should already know, does not really help anyone. If you don’t want to or don’t have the time to help someone, tell them so, but don’t ridicule them for asking.

Also, if asked about something you think the person should be capable of finding out themselves, you don’t have to give a direct answer. Often I find it better to provide the person with some reference material or relevant search keywords. That way they can do their own research, and hopefully gain a better understanding of the subject than a quick explanation or a direct answer to their question would have given them. When people do make an effort to conduct their own research, you should also be more willing to answer specific questions that may come up while they are studying the topic.

Often, asking a “stupid” question can reveal holes or misconceptions in your mental representation of a problem or knowledge domain that would otherwise go undetected. I much prefer someone to be honest about their uncertainties, and ask a stupid question, than pretending to understand something they don’t. In many cases you may not even be aware of your own lack of understanding until you do ask that “stupid” question, which is what makes asking them so important in the first place.

That being said, there is a huge difference between asking about something because you are unsure if you understand it correctly, or something is unclear to you, and asking because you are simply too lazy to look up the answer yourself or think through the problem properly. Personally, I ask stupid questions all the time, although these days most of them can be answered by Google or Wikipedia. However, if you do indeed make an effort to find and answer and you are not successful, please, don’t be afraid of asking someone.

I recently read an interesting blog post asking “what’s the most fun you’ve ever had… programming?” After thinking about it for a while, I realized I wasn’t able to answer. Not because I don’t have fun programming, but because I have so much fun programming, I can’t easily single out one project as the one I enjoyed the most. Of course, not every project is fun all the time, but I find programming to be great fun most of the time.

I think almost any project—be it programming or something else—can be fun if you want it to be. If you tell yourself “this project is going to be boring”, or “this task is boring”, chances are you will be bored. I have the most fun when I achieve something and when I learn something, and in almost any project you can accomplish at least one of the two. Most of the time you can get both. Even a seemingly trivial task, like creating a simple snake game, can be challenging if you want it to be.

When I was a teenager, I thought games and graphics was the most fun things to program, and I couldn’t understand how anyone could possibly enjoy themselves writing “boring” enterprise code in systems with no graphics at all. To me, real-time graphics and interactivity were essential requirements for a “fun project”. As I grew older and learned more about programming, I realized there was a vast landscape of challenges out there, and the opportunities for fun and learning was by no means limited to visual effects and interactive games. I discovered that writing a script parser in a high-level language or implementing a routing algorithm can be just as much fun as pipeline-optimizing rendering loops in assembly or programming an animation engine.

Flow

To me, an essential part of having fun while programming is being able to enter a state of flow. The more often I can work in flow, the more often I will have fun. The flow state can be very consuming—almost intoxicating—giving you a great feeling inside. I like to describe this feeling as the programming “high”. For me, the feeling is especially strong if I am learning new things and discovering new truths while working in flow. The point when I realize I have solved a problem or mastered a new skill can be very exciting and rewarding. When entering flow state as a group, i.e. in a meeting or brainstorming, the effect can be even more powerful, often giving a major productivity boost. If you are able to enter flow on a regular basis and create challenges for yourself while working, it doesn’t really matter what kind of project you are on, you will have fun anyway.

Personal Accomplishment

Another variety of the programming “high” is the feeling I get when I have achieved something. This is of course not unique to programming, but is common to many areas of life and is a basic human emotion. For me, this “high” comes in two types. One is the feeling I get when I have completed or accomplished something, like solving a complex problem or managed to get a date with a cute girl. The feeling is usually immediate and comes right after completing the task or event that triggers the emotion. The strength of the feeling is often directly related to the complexity or difficulty of the challenge. I can only imagine, but I guess this is also something like the feeling—in a very strong form, I am sure—athletes have when they win an event or break a record. The feeling is not based on any external feedback, and will mostly be determined by what the accomplished challenge means to you, personally, rather than how impressive someone else may think it is.

External Feedback

The other form is sometimes more subtle, but can be even stronger and more overwhelming when it first happens. This is the feeling I get when someone appreciates my work or gives me a compliment. This feeling can come long after the initial accomplishment, and it may even come as a response to something you did not consider a big accomplishment in the first place. It is triggered by external feedback and can be very strong, filling your body with an overwhelming rush. Again, I can only imagine, but I think this is how musicians, actors and performance artists may feel when they are on stage. It is also interesting to note that if the receiver does not think the feedback is justified or honest (i.e. the task for which you are complimented was trivial to you), the feeling may not trigger at all. I think this is one of the reasons why this feeling can be so strong when it does trigger, because it is not directly caused by yourself, like the first variety. However, when the feeling is genuine, it can boost your motivation and self-esteem for days.

Whether it’s working in flow, the rewards of personal accomplishment or feedback on your work that makes a project fun, it’s up to you to find ways to trigger those emotions as often as possible.

New Challenges

In a recent interview, Steve McConnell was asked what had been been his toughest challenge in the past. I don’t know McConnell personally, but having read some of his material, the answer did not surprise me:

I believe that if you’re not struggling, you’re not growing. And if you’re not growing you’re probably decaying or dying. So my life has been characterized more by “the challenge of the month” than by any one toughest challenge.

To me, this is as logical as Boolean algebra. If you constantly seek out new challenges, the recent ones will always be the most difficult you have encountered. If not, you are not evolving. And we should all be evolving, as professionals and as human beings. When you have challenge you have learning, when you have learning you have fun. If you have to think back a long time to find the “the most fun you have ever had”, you are probably not having fun on a regular basis.

Please share your thoughts.